This weekend was destined to be a nightmare – it was supposed to be the start of a 3 week trip for me and Joe Barnes (fellow Elite who I travel to all races with) which would go to Italy for a race the weekend after and then to Maribor in Slovenia the following weekend to compete in the first World Cup of the year.
Here’s what really happened…
I was driving, we had been going for about an hour out of Fort William when the brakes in the van failed. This was pretty scary! I must have pulled the hand brake hard because when we had come to a stop in the middle of the road it took both my arms to release the lever! Just shows what a bit of adrenalin can do for your strength… Two hours later the RAC turned up and confirmed that the brakes didn’t work and organised for a truck to pick us up. Another 2 hours saw us on the recovery vehicle on the way to be dumped outside the garage in Dumfries. Unfortunately - with not much of a plan as to how it would all work out! We all fitted into my brother’s van and went to the race on Saturday morning. We hadn’t had much sleep or even walked the course. To make things even more interesting we didn’t have spare tyres but just guessed we would need spikes as it was raining hard. Practise was really tough for me as I have just got some new contact lenses and they seem to get knocked out of focus which is a serious disadvantage. Come the race run - 10 minutes before my run by contact stopped working. Nightmare! I managed to get it back into focus before setting off. In my run I felt pretty scrappy and made mistakes, but, in hindsight I am pleased to have come 12th as there was a lot of competition and I felt on the back foot the whole weekend. No thanks to my contacts! I’m just glad to have got a consistent result and it keeps the hopes of doing well in the series alive. We should be in Italy now but we are still in Dumfries trying to hurry the garage along. Oh well, we will be back in the country for the SDA at Fort William so that should be good and I might have some new contact lenses by then! We live in hope, I guess…