XC NPS RD4 – Ballyhoura, Limerick
Report by BVK
Sunday past saw round 4 of the XC NPS series take place at the Ballyhoura mountain bike trail centre, straddling Counties Cork and Limerick. The Centre boasts over 50km of purpose built trails to suit all abilities. Brother Brian, representing Lakeland Cycles, was the designated driver for the weekend. We Headed down on Saturday afternoon and made it to the course about 4 hours later for a quick look and practise around the loop.
Quite a lot of trail centre sections were used in the loop, with some natural stuff linked in including a tricky gravity enduro section called “the car door” thrown in early in the loop. Practise done, legs ruined, confidence drained… we headed on to the Ballyhoura Hostel (http://www.ballyhourahostel.ie) to set up camp for the night. XMTB’s Harveys and Creightons were already settled in and off to the pub by the time we landed.
Refreshed and fed, we headed back over on Sunday morning to get ready for the race.
I was gridded on the front row, persistency rules again.
Quite an aggressive start to the race saw Sean Prendiville (Killarney CC) set the pace and Jim Haide (IMBRC) give chase. Seymour to my left was taking it handy, while I was rapidly entering training zone 5c… I sat on Robins wheel for a while, until Ryan Sherlock came past trucking it up the hill so I switched wheels quickly. Good Thursday night roadie training kicking in. I was sitting in 4th at the end of the pre-loop with Tomasz and Graham from XMTB hot on my heels.
The race started to spread out and CarDoor™ caught a lot of guys out, myself included, as riding it at race pace in race traffic was like a scene out of Benny Hill. Less riding, more stumbling, running, slipping around. Apart from Graham Boyd who cheated by riding his bike down it every time.
Sean in 2nd then had a mechanical, turned out he had broken his Brake and Gear combo lever and had to stop at the pits. I was now up to 2nd and had a decent gap on Graham in 3rd, but he wasn’t for letting me away and closed up, riding past me on CarDoor™ as I made a hash of it yet again.
Unbelievably, Sean reappeared on the tail of us shortly after. His brake lever cable tied on. Who needs a rear brake anyway? The battle ensued for the final 2 laps between the 3 of us for 2nd and 3rd places.
Somewhat disappointingly I faded badly towards the end of the last lap and was unable to bring back the gap on the climbs I had been previously, The two guys were gone out of sight in the final few minutes with me left to bring up the rear.
Still 4th place was a decent result.
1st place to the Master, 2nd to the Beast and 3rd to The wizard.
Round 5 is in two weeks at Garvagh forest. Hopefully we will see a larger turn out from the club and get some good results on the board!
Many thanks to Adrian for letting me use his photo on the web site – go have a look at his site for photos
