What would a National Round be without a bit of rain? Well, Buller really put it on for us this weekend. Not only did it rain, but blew gale force winds and even threw in a bit of snow for good measure - in the middle of Summer- what the? We managed a top of 5 degrees on Sunday for race.
Anyway, after driving through 38 degree heat on Thursday, we arrived at the Lodge and settled into our room. Thanks to Jeff Hughes for organising all the Canberra crew to stay in the Aeski Lodge, we had a great time. Lucky the Lodge was quite big, most of the time you wouldn't have known there were 42 of us staying there.
Thursday night saw a change in the weather with the rain and wind starting. Friday morning we headed to the top of the track to see what the go was. Low cloud meant you could barely see 2 metres in front of you and it was cold. Word at the top was to get in as many practice runs as you could today as the weather was expected to get worse for Saturday and the lifts could be closed. The boys managed to get a few runs in on the increasingly wet and slippery track.
Saturday morning the weather was even worse so with the lifts closed there was to be no practice on Saturday. With 42 of us in the Lodge, we managed to fill in most of the day but cabin fever started setting in by mid afternoon so some of us Mum's decided to walk to town in the rain. The boys who were too young or decided not to go to the pub thought it would be a good idea to take "Fluff's" toboggan's and go do some runs down the grass slopes. As a parent it's best not to know what they're up to sometimes. All good and no-one got hurt (at least badly enough for us to find out anyway).
With no practice on Saturday, Sunday's schedule was amended. For a change, Group A had the early practice start at 8am. Woo hoo, we got an extra 1/2 hr in bed (except Ian who went and set up the CORC tent so we could have a bit of shelter and storage space). Not much encouragement to get to the track with minus God know what temperature but we made it by start of practice so the boys could get in a couple of practice runs before race. With a few showers of rain the track was still quite wet and very slippery in parts.
Andrew was first of the boys to head to the start for his race run. Having done a total of 6 practice runs over the weekend (and nursing 9 stitches in his arm from a stack at Thredbo the previous Monday) he wasn't overly confident but thought if he could at least get to the bottom with a clean run, he might pull off a good result. With Mum and Dad watching the timer inside the Cafe, Andrew's time stopped on 4.02:21 which we knew from the previous seeding times that this was a good time. After all 9 riders in U15's crossed the line, Andrew had the win by just over 9 seconds. Andrew said after race that he didn't have a really good run, just trying to keep upright, but obviously a better run than anyone else. Well done Andrew, 3 from 3 so far.
Thomas' race time arrived so off he went to the start line. Thomas knew that this would be a tough race against close rival Dean Lucas as this is one of Dean's local tracks. Dean has come 2nd to Thomas at the first 2 rounds and we knew he would put it to Thomas for this round. Ahh well, with the track in the condition it was in after the rain and all, we knew that would open it up as Thomas loves the wet and rides really well in these conditions.
Thomas' time stopped on 3.42:15 which again we knew was a really good time from this mornings seeding runs. Next we saw Dean's time stop on 3.47:08. Thomas had Dean by nearly 5 seconds. We just then had to wait till the rest of the 26 riders finished as you never know who might come out of the woodworks. Anyway, all riders finished and Yes, Thomas has got the win. Sooooo stoked for him. His time would have seen him 4th in U19 and 6th in Elite. Not bad for a 15 year old.
Great result overall again. Next we are off to the Champs at the end of this month.
Catch Ya.
PS: Ya know what! One day I'm going on a holiday where I can sleep in and just do whatever I feel like for a whole week. Until then, we'll continue to do what we do :) but we love it.
