Team Groover

Team Groover all enjoyed themselves this weekend and I'm very grateful for all the support I received, my wife was there constantly passing me food and drink and even putting it in my mouth so I didn't cover it in mud. Jason my 10 year old was there cleaning the drive train or passing me food for much of the race and Toasted although a bit soggy were always there to help clean me and the drive train before another lap.

A big thanks to JetBlack, they had some nice new kit for the race and when my Pivot ran out of brakes JetBlack Dave changed them with a smile while standing in a pond of water with my wife holding a torch.

Everyone took on the challenge the weather gave us and nobody could stop smiling due to how crazy the race conditions were, I was one of the last to head out before the race was postponed and conditions were markedly worse than the lap before, I had to back off a lot to avoid crashing.
It was a good call to postpone the race at that point, it was restarted in the morning but I was lacking enthusiasm to start again until I'd done 100m and already I was loving it, the track was good and I was now racing the open category(in my mind) as my competition had given up.

The organisation of the race was excellent and the track crew amazing, whenever there was an issue with the track they found and fixed very quickly and I don't know how they made the new track to bypass the swamp so fast, again thank you.

People had asked how I could keep smiling while racing non stop in these conditions, well I had people from WSMTB, NoBMoB, RockyTrail, JetBlack & my family all cheering me on, it was appreciated but I was slightly embarrassed.

The Pivot went like a demon with its stability and even slides in a relaxed sort of way. I had more grip than expected and real happy that Whisperer and I changed the rear tyre from a Maxxis small block eight to the much chunkier Nevergal set up tubeless on Saturday morning.

I'm also stoked because I finally have come 1st in a 24 solo, not that I'm not happy with my previous 3 2nd places but great not to be the bridesmaid and now I'm back to training tomorrow for the solo champs at Easter as I didn't smash myself with only 14 hours of racing this time

John.