In the morning we hit the road and boated on the Findhorn gorge which was at a nice medium level. It was a new river for me and it was really fun with lots of big moves and punchy holes! After loading up again we made the final part of the journey to the campsite at the Moriston, we met with friends and I took an early night so I could be rested for the race.
Waking up to rain wasn't too motivating but none the less I slipped into my drysuit and got registered for the race and loaded my gear into the shuttle for practice runs! We got about two hours for practice so I squeezed in three runs as the walk back up was quite tiring. It was unusual as I had never paddled this river but I had studied Gopro footage of the course so I knew every feature and move as if I had already done it! My practice runs were on the whole pretty smooth and I felt confident for my runs.
We had our safety brief by the very entertaining James Flemming and people started launching off the ramp in 1 minute intervals, I was number 19 so it wasn't long before I was staring down the ramp trying to cool nerves. The most difficult part of the course is the first drop, it's a manky 10/15 footer with a shelf either side feeding most of the flow into the middle where it goes deep. A lot of people either get stalled out in the feature or get pushed river left into the wall which really slows you down.
My first run was pretty good, I came out of the drop pointing downstream, upright and with speed, result! The rest of the run was smooth except for the cheese grater rapid where I momentarily lost grip of my paddle in the bottom hole and got pushed down the left hand slot which maybe lost me a second or 2, overall I was happy. After getting out to check the results it became immediately clear that they were having issues with the timing as there were only 5 people on the table. Assuming they would work it out I watched over racers for an hour then walked up for my second run, still with no results.
Just before my second run I asked James (event organizer) if he could find out my time as a lot of others knew theirs. After radioing they confirmed I was clocked in at exactly 3 minutes (2 seconds faster than last years record). That was definitely good enough for the finals as long as I had a similar second run, I was confident!
My second run was a dream run, I have never performed so well in competition. All the drops went smooth and fast and I actually crossed the line at the same time as the competitor who went before me, I knew that was a fast time! But again, no results so I sat and watched. When the qualifiers finished the top 20 were announced and it was confirmed that they had big issues with the timing. My name was not called out and I was pretty gutted as people with a slower time than me went through.
I sucked it up, watched the finals and headed back to the campsite to get ready for dinner and the after party. I had a good night and the party was fun! Callum Strong took first place (well done mate!) and there were some cool awards. Monday was a long day, driving all the way from the Moriston to Herefordshire was a painful trip getting home at 11pm.
Since then the results have been posted and my first time of three minutes is not there but my second and fast run is. I clocked in at 2:49 (third fastest time of the day), adding this to my first run I would have been 7th going into the final, gutted! I am really disappointed I lost an opportunity to compete in the final but a positive thing I will take away from it is that I was really fast! My racing is definitely progressing and my Remix is definitely a fast boat! Thanks to James Flemming and Giles who organize the event and who I know are disappointed themselves with the timing system and dealt with it well considering the situation. I am looking forward to competing in this great race next year and hopefully with a better timing system ;)
Here's a short edit of my practice runs in the morning.
https://vimeo.com/96683690
