Happy April fools everyone, I am sure everyone was quite happy that the Kiara race wasn't a joke with riders turning up from far and wide. A total of 136 participants took part, one of the bigger races we have had in Malaysia to date. FRM, (FreeRide Malaysia) the race organisers and trail builders, really out did themselves this time, a great combination of high speed sections, some nice steep technical sections and just a tad of pedaling to mix it up. Really shows the progression of trail building in Malaysia over the past few years.
With the large amount of riders present, most of race day was spent waiting around. Elites only came down for their final run at close to 5pm. Its the only real critique of an otherwise great race, we really need to start using 30 second intervals for seeding and finals. Makes the sport far better for spectators too.
It did rain over the past few days but it decided to stay dry today with beautiful blue skies welcoming in the month of april. Conditions were pretty much perfect in seeding run, just damp enough to keep the dust down and gives the tires something to dig into. Aaron seeding in 6th with a 3.12, I seeded in 3rd with a 3.08, rizal got a bit unlucky and crashed at the entrance to Bunians. Hong Chun put in an amazing run and seeded first in Elite with a time of 2.59.
With the blue skies and a gentle wind the track dried out further, leaving it pretty much bone dry. Watching the rest of the field coming down it was obvious that it was getting really slippery on the track from the amount of people crossing the line with soiled kit. Rizal too crossed the line with a frown, torn up his pretty new jersey. Just not his day today, crashed at the same place during seeding and warned us about the slippery conditions. He swears there is a stump hiding somewhere there out to get him. Me and Aaron were both pushing to go faster in the finals, Aaron unfortunately caught out on the slippery corners on the bottom of the track. I managed to hit all my lines and pushed hard on the pedaling bits, managed to go 11 seconds faster in the final. I was quite happy with my time, but was kicked out of the hot seat by the next rider down, beating me by 0.3 seconds. No surprise from Hong Chun, he put out an amazing run and went 2 seconds faster than his seeding time, getting a 2.57. It was nice to see a tight elite field, 1.7 seconds separating the top 3.
Back to the drawing board for me and trying to grow some legs again.
-Adam
Fakawi Team Blog
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