NPS #1 Djouce Woods 19/04/2015

I have returned from my holiday on Thursday evening and on Sunday morning I was still tired as I assume that the jet lag took its toll. I wasn't feeling great, even though I knew I was quite well prepared physically. I have heard that the course is quite technical but when I arrived and did a trial run it become clear that I will struggle a bit more than I thought. 

I have been off-road this year only a couple of times and my technical skills seemed to evaporate. What a shame! I decided to start from the end in order not to become an obstacle for other riders. Well, during the race it became obvious that I am not that bad, some skills are still there and it is not that bad as I have imagined. 

It showed up that I made a mistake to start from the last line as I was able to ride most of the bits; while I have been stopped a lot of times as someone at the front wasn't capable of that. I pushed as much as I could what you can see on the video. 
I am happy with my race after all and I know I can do better next time.

There was a bunch of MAD riders in a race with Rob (MADMTB) leaving all of us far, far behind. What a form! He came 7th with a loss of only 4 minutes to the winner! Thomas (MADMTB) was 28th, myself 34th, Simon (MADMTB) 40th, Dave (MADMTB) 43rd, Alan (MADMTB) 62nd while the rest of guys did not finish/start (Nigel, Keith and Sean). 

The main S1 race was won (without anyone surprised) by Robin Seymour (course designer and the best XC rider in Ireland), S2 by Chris Campbell, S3 by Dave Egan and S4 by Colin O'Donoghue.

I am looking forward to the next race. I will take a better start position and will aim for the first 20.

Finally I present the recording from onboard camera from the first Irish XC NPS race in Djouce Woods of Chain Reaction Cycles XC NPS powered by Vitus. The first S3 lap only is presented here: https://youtu.be/FTqawlLpsgkThe video of the full S3 race is here: https://youtu.be/nL-cC4IQiNEI started from the last row, so those who didn't take part at all or did take part in S4/S2/S1 race can take a look how it looked like from the back of the race.
The results are here: http://www.elitetiming.co.uk/Results/NPS_2015_RD1.pdf and more information about NPS series can be found on it's facebook profile or website.