Today was the fourth and final round of our Trail Series event. One event every 4 weeks with points achieved in each race which aggregate into a final series score. We only used two courses for throughout the series but reversed the directions on the final 2 rounds to make it feel different. Not that we needed to, the weather has been so different for each of the courses they felt would have come with their different challenges even if it was the same course! That said, this round contained some of the more challenging gradients with a nice couple of short sharp climbs at the end which had a few people blowing as they came over the finishing line.
Wayne got the course marked up nice and early in the morning whilst I got on the bike and did the course check. It was quite overcast at 7am this morning and it looked to be threatening to rain. The ground was quite soft so perhaps we had shower overnight, there were a few extra muddy patches around the course but nothing that would make it too hard going. I went home filled up my flask with that brown gold they call coffee (can’t live without it) and loaded up the car with the equipment.
As I got set up at the start point the weather was starting to clear up, the sun was burning off the clouds and it was shaping up to be a pleasent spring morning. The trusty volunteers Emma, Ann & Wayne turned up ready and willing to help out, we worked out our game plan just as our first particpants started to show up. We had 37 people signed up for this round, but once we kicked the race off we had 22 people head over the start line.
As the race kicked off, Wayne offered to lead the runners out but had a hard time keeping in front of Sean Willis! I watched them out only to realise I had, yet again, forgotten to take a starting line photo……damn. Knowing there was nothing I could do about it, there was only one thing left to do, I took out my mug and flask and poured myself a brew.
I hadn’t long finished my brew when Sean came trotting over the line. First place yet again with a chip time of 22:53, no messing for this bloke! Another fantastic time from Sean “Willnotstop” Willis with his somewhat limitless energy reserves!
Patrycja Jaszek was first lady who came in with a cracking time of 33:18 and 6th overall positioning. Judging by her times, if she had made all four rounds I think she would have been a good candidate for female serier winner!
As it happens Sean “Willnotstop” Willis took overall series winner, finishing first in each race and securing a total series score of 200. Zoe Goude took series first lady with an overall score of 153 and a gender scoring of 195.
For all series placings you can see the series table here or for race times you can view the round tables here
Thankfully, not many people got lost this time, just a couple who accidentally took a shortcut, but we’ll not say too much more about that 😉 Overall though, I am very happy with how the series played out, I have had some very positive comments from the particpants and I would like to thank everyone who came along to support. We will definitely be doing it next year!
For those of you who are interested in your race photos, everything that was captured by myself and the marshals is available for you to download here
