Spring sprung for the day and the riders responded to the lovely warm day by turning out at Conders Bend for some fun riding. The evening was fine and warm with a bit of a breeze and riders ages ranged from under 6 to over 60.
There was also the sideshow of Madsen-Clark very junior entertaining himself and anyone watching on his tiny wooden motorbike, this is a kid with attitude and not much in the fear department. Jason was doing the minding duties for the evening so that Rachel could have a turn on the bike.
It was a great family turnout with four Blacks, four Blakes and four Martellas swelling the ranks along with two Blackmores and Joel joining mum in the proceedings.
It was a chaotic start with the 29 riders funneling their way from the wide open car park into the very narrow single track. It is vital to get a good start with overtaking opportunities limited for the first couple of Kms.
Kiel outsprinted the field to get the hole shot and took advantage of the clear track ahead. He cut out the first lap in an impressive 14 minutes 23 seconds and was well ahead of chasers Matt, Justin, Sharn and Joel with Kris recovering from an encounter with a tree next.
Kris managed to remove some bark but it was from his shoulder. Sarnim was surprisingly missing in action among the leaders having decided to go on an excursion. His first lap of 16 minutes 53 seconds was a clear three minutes slower than lap two where he scorched around in the first ever recorded sub 14 minute lap in my recollection.
After lap 2 Kiel was maintaining his speed but Justin was showing signs of responding, with Sarnim’s record lap promoting him into third. Lap three was a similar story, Kiel keeping up the pace but Justin nibbling away and Sarnim taking bigger chunks from the leaders. Justin was quickest on lap 4 ( 14:14) and was only 8 seconds behind Kiel at the finish. Sarnim held on for third and will be hard to beat now he knows where the track goes. It was an impressive display of consistent lapping from Kiel with Justin and Sarnim showing some great speed less consistently. Another consistent performer was Bailey McKay whose three laps were within a 6 second range.
Susan, Rachel, Abbey and Donna were the quickest ladies with Cheryl and Charlotte nurturing the next generation around the tracks. Geoff Blake also had a lap of escorting duties before unleashing himself.
The juniors were divided into 7 categories to cater for the wide range of ages and both genders. This is very encouraging and rewarding for the club and organisers and we hope that this trend continues.