nat is! she placed first in the two-day superflow rollercoaster state championship in the under 13 junior female category.
we made a late call to go, the weather looked pretty dicy. the forecast was for quite a bit of rain on both days of racing, not a lot of fun when you know you have to spend a few hours in the bush riding over pretty rough stuff. in the end we actually did get a lot of rain but luckily it always stopped just as we set out to ride.
kris again found a great spot for us, not too far from kempsey, in a great caravan park. it had a real fake pirate ship in the pool and resident kangaroos with joeys. cute.
even with the rather atrocious weather forecast over 100 racers and one trail dog showed up. can you spot us in the photo below?
day one was really busy and exhausting. nat and i pre-rode two trails before the race and then the race required nat to ride three timed sections (two of them obviously the ones we had checked out before). one of them was really long with a few uphill sections and nat was understandably tired but finished the day … and then fell asleep in the car.
day two started with a huge downpour which only finished as we were gearing up to ride to the start. everything was wet and muddy but the trails were not slippery at all, rather the contrary. natalie enjoyed riding in the dirt but the nicest thing all day was when at the finish of the last trail on day 2 a bunch of other girls – sophie, bec, emily and becc – waited for nat and cheered her across the line. that was such an amazing thing to do.
nat found her flow pretty early on and rode really well, even in these difficult conditions.
i only tagged along for the fun, i really could not race with my sore finger (not sure what that would have done to the stitches).
even mum had a job to do. martin was without his family and needed a few volunteers so kris took on a role a marshal and helped the exhausted racers clock off. the second day she was at the start which was great for nat as she saw mum before every timed section.
congratulations to the state champion! she has done really well over two difficult and tiresome days and never gave up, even when the going was really hard.
natalie even made a little speech and dedicated her win to me! i was very proud, as you can imagine.
on the way back – the weather was much better by now – we stopped at the smoky cape light house, just a few minutes from the caravan park.
we love that camper and our ‘go anywhere’ car.