rest of the day went clean, I felt smooth and fast, finishing 4th overall, genuinely stoked, only two minutes off the day’ s podium. That moved me up to 5th overall after two days, just a minute off 4th but still a mountain of nine minutes off the actual podium. It was at this point that a new goal quietly formed in my head; top 4 by the end of the event. The tracks were fast again, faster than I was fully comfortable with, but we were adapting to whatever was needed, and for the first time all week I felt like my head was working with me instead of against me.
BEST TO WORST This one hurt in a different way. The first 15 minutes of Day 3 were the best I’ d felt on that bike, properly gelling with it, flowing, comfortable, genuinely fast, which of course is exactly the moment a serious issue tends to show up. I missed a left turn, brake-slid to pivot back onto the track, and in my rush to get back on line as quickly as possible I misjudged the distance between the bike and a big tree limb lying across the ground and caught my rear brake lever on it. The lever folded up and jammed on top of the footpeg, leaving
KIWI RIDER 29