The start of downhill season 2022- Challenge Descent VTT Blausasc, France. It was a local downhil cup #1 with mostly local young racers but also some professional team riders. Track was very fast but quite short which meant big time loss for every little mistake. The soil in France is mostly gravel so with rainy weather it won’t get very slippery and it also dries quickly.
Saturday was day full of rain and it was pretty muddy. At first weather forecast promised rain also for sunday, the day of the race. I decided to put mud tyre in front, but the weather forecast was not the most accurate and there was no rain anymore in sunday. In the morning of the race day, i could do only one training run and after that there were 2 race runs, the best of which took into account. During morning training run the track was still bit wet so i still decided to ride with mud tyre in the front. The first race run was a complete failure, because i had zero grip and had few really sketchy moments where i lost a lot of time.
My first race time was 1.46.08, losing 11.6 seconds to first place, overall 23rd place and 12th place in men’s category. By the time of the second race run, the track was already completely dry and I decided to change the mud tire to the dry tire and reduced the tire pressure a bit- thanks to which I was able to improve my time with the second race run. Second race run time was 1.38.74 so almost 8 seconds faster, the loss to the winner was 8.2 seconds, resulting 17th place in the overall and the 10th place in the men’s category.
I was really satisfied with this weekend and the results of this race and i believe that this is a good start of the season. I would want to feel myself more active and not so cramped on the bike and get more speed, so I will continue training and hope to get better results in the upcoming races!