Registration took place on Sunday, which resulted in a rather frantic dash around trying to get our international racing licenses printed. Somehow Mark, Cobus and I had not put two and two together, and the angry man and bewildered young lady at the registration table managed to firmly tell us that showing a picture of it on our phones was not good enough. Note to self: if the CSA say “should you wish to have this licence printed you need to pay another R30 etc etc…” just make the effort to pay the extra R30 and the courier fee. Honestly, it’s not worth being scolded in French, Spanish, Catalan and English…
With registration out the way, we all eagerly bundled into the gondola to head off for track walk. Woo hoo! Glee! (PS Video is at the bottom of the post)
Shortly after this picture, we were on track and analysing every rock, root, bump and possible line choice. This went on for about an hour as we happily and confidently realised we could totally manage this track. A mechanic at Cedricate (Cedric Gracia’s shop) had said “Do you ride Cedric Gracia trail? Yeah? It’s similar to that”…which had perhaps lulled us all into a false sense of security. Here are some pics of the merry old times…
It was after this point on the walk when we all started to go quiet. It was all well and good analysing what root, bump, rock etc. to go around, over, next to…if we were just going to somersault down the mountain for the last 20% of the track. Nigel is typically a pretty positive person and sees lines for everyone…but when he just stopped and said “oh sh*t”… we knew that perhaps there was only one kind of line. The down line. Straight down.
Rika took much better pictures of the gradient…and these are her pics of areas we walked down.
And of course…the obligatory video:
Good luck guys and girls..will be watching the results closely