You Yangs National Park near Geelong in Victoria was the host to the first Victorian Downhill State Round for the 2011-2012 season. With mixed feeling going into the weekend after another summer in Whistler and no real expectations hanging over my head I went into the race quite relaxed for most of the weekend till midday Sunday this all changed!

Friday morning Richard Braithwaite, Ben Cross and I packed the van and hit the road. 10 hours later, with numerous pit stops, a few Google map navigation errors which were evidently blamed on me falling asleep over the back seat and missing the turn of we finally made it to Melbourne. Thanks again James Niemeier for an awesome night, a bed each and a few beers,

Saturday came along and we drove another few hours before finally arriving at You Yangs, the weather was pretty average to say the least. There had been quite a lot over rain the previous night and it was still steadily coming down on and off throughout the day. Although it was was the track drained quite well leaving everything rideable and with plenty of grip. Saturday was only practice, I got all my lines dialed and left that afternoon really happy with most of the track. That night we headed into the city for some dinner and sleep. Thanks again Haydn Williams for a place to stay!

Race day! Sunday came after Saturday as we had all expected (I hope so anyway) and I was keen and ready to give it all I could. I got a single practice run in that morning which is all I wanted trying to save as much energy as I could for my qualifying and race run. Qualifying came round and I was still super chilled and surprisingly not nervous at all even after a number of people had said I could quite well be up there in the results today, I think I passed these comments of not really expecting much of a result at all. I did my qualifying run and got to the bottom with a mostly clean run. I hit all the lines I wanted to, pedaled damn hard and only made a few minor mistakes. To my complete surprise I crossed the line with the second fastest time in Elite less than a second from first and held this place after all the other riders had come down.

I hadn’t really been in this situation before in a downhill race, being up there with the rest of the guys with a potential for a top 5 overall. Although I thought my nerves were kept at bay, after my race run I figured this hadn’t been the case. My race run felt like I was riding the track for the first time, missing some of my lines, hitting rocks that I shouldn’t be and just blowing out turns in general. On top of this I think I burnt a little too much energy in my qualifying as my legs were less than fresh to say the least. I got to the bottom of the hill 2 seconds slower than my qualifying run which was enough to set me back into 13^th place. Not what I wanted after the qualifying result I got but I learnt a few lessons that needed to be learnt and know not to make these again.

A number of people had told me the track wasn’t the best; by this they meant quite pedally, very few corners, not very technical and too many jumps and drops. The ‘quite pedally’ bit I was quite excited about with all the pedaling I had done over the years. I approached the track with an open mind wanting to judge it myself not letting those around me interfere with my overall thoughts. Looking back on the weekend, yes it was a very pedally track, it was a fairly simple track technically and there were definitely a lot of jumps and drops. Personally I think all this elements made for an all round fun track to ride and definitely made for an interesting race.

On the way home I picked up my new XC bike for the year. Check back soon for details and pictures…