Mountain Hardwear Open5 - Grizedale.
Nail biting Finale for Keswick Bikes Team at Final Open 5
Andy Wrigley / 06.04.2011
The day started well enough with good weather conditions however even as we warmed up disaster struck. We chose a particularly gnarly climb and descent to shake down our legs and the new Trek 9.8 Top Fuel Bikes supplied from Amos at Keswick Bikes. As we flew down the descent I heard Chris shout ‘Take it easy. Don’t want to break anything just yet!’. I arrived at the bottom of the descent alone. A couple of minutes later Chris arrives unable to pedal his bike – a broken freewheel. Due to the technical trails and sharp rocks in Grizedale we had decided to run an alternative older wheelset in the new bikes, the back axle on Chris’ wheel had snapped due to a seized bearing.
Now we were in trouble, 20 mins to start and one bike down. For the first time in the series, luckily, we were based right next to a bike shop ‘Grizedale Mountain Bikes’ the guys at the shop were awesome, lending us a Scott bike and putting us back in the race! – We owe big thanks to these guys.
Eventually we were on the start line with a minute to spare, we had studied the maps well in the morning and had a good idea of our route deciding to play to our strengths and cycle first, fortunately at the start the checkpoint scores favoured our route perfectly and we charged off with only a minute to mark up scores on maps.
The cycle went well, we caught and passed our main rivals David Lawrance & Warren Mason pleased that we had a definite speed advantage, and a 2hr 55min route saw us clear all the available checkpoints without further mishap in an area covering Grizedale, Parkamoor, Ickenthwaite and Hawkshead, all superb cycling areas.
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