Welsh Champs - Caersws - July 09

We were told that this was to be run on a new track, specially for the event. And what a track it was, walking it Friday afternoon I was really impressed. Steep dusty section in the remaining few trees towards the bottom but the top 3/4 all in the open thanks to the logging. The track was real fresh and unridden, a real change from the beat up motor-ways we get to race all too often. The weather stayed pretty good all weekend with a few small showers here and there and the biggest only arriving as we were packing the vans up on Sunday. Practice Saturday went real well as I got used to the big (for me) jumps, specially the big road gap near the top were the landing was a 90 degree right-hand berm. The course was laced with line choice nearly all the way down, a few lines got blown out but most remained ridable. Come race time I started off well but got a red flag part way down as one of the women in the category before had had a major stack on one of the final jumps in the field. I used the end of that run as a final practice then  back to the top for a re-run. Finished my re-run with a reasonable time of 2 minutes 3 seconds which put me 15th with one run left. Gave it everything in run 2, blew a couple of turns but it still felt a bit faster, 1 second slower. Ended up 18th at the end of the day, wanted to be in the top 20 so quite happy. Another good race at Caersws, last one of the year. Roll on Kidland Forest for the last round of the Northerns on the 12/13th September.

Chris Lazenby.