Sunday February 1 saw the second race of the year for the Adelaide Mountain Bike Club - "Summer Series" event. This was held at Eagle Mountain bike park. The summer series are usually shorter, faster paced races to increase fitness over the summer. They are run in the morning incase the temperatures are hot. Unfortunately heat was not a problem and it was in fact the cold! A dreary ride up to the park saw the roads and trails rather wet. To keep participants on their toes the course was run in reverse to its usual direction of flow. This provided some exciting racing with limited passing opportunities and copious amounts of rocks and slippery surfaces! This was something I really should have practiced before the race. As the saying goes - "Sometimes you are the hammer, sometimes you are the nail" in the case of todays race, I was unfortunately the nail! I got off to a sluggish start, made lots of errors and failed to find that "racing groove". But what is wonderful about these events is that they are a great learning opportunity and they are used as an adjunct to my endurance training goals. It is important when you are training for endurance racing, you do include some high intensity activity to prevent you turning into a diesel engine and just plodding around courses. I managed to achieve this in this session and keeping in touch with racing keeps you in touch with all the other wonderful riders in Adelaide. It is so important to support the local club that runs these events.
Here is a photo from todays race.
