Harry Molloy - Glen Coe BDS round 3 - Fort Bill World Cup

Glen Coe BDS round 3 – Victory was taken on a 450 in Bubbas back yard So it was up to Scotland for the first week of the 2 away. I arrived to a windy Saturday morning at Glen Coe and saw the course tapes winding down the mountain already struggling to cling to the posts. After a quick course walk it began to rain and looking up at the clouds crawling over the mountain tops, it didn’t look like it was short term. I went up the chair lift for my first of just 3 runs to come. The rain soon turned to hail and the wind was constantly pushing the hail horizontally across the mountain. Put it this way, I was glad I had put my 661 body armour on that morning because the lift up wasn’t very enjoyable. By the time I reached the top I was quite literally frozen solid and as I stepped off the lift, ice cracked and shattered off of my coat and trousers. It was a good course and considering the persistency of the horrible weather, I think it held up pretty good too. Most riders seemed pretty over the whole ordeal after a run or two but everyone in the Madison/Saracen pits still loved it. The only thing dampening spirits was the constant roomer of the race being cancelled. The lift was not running very well because of the wind and when I looked at the weather report for Sunday the wind was meant to be a lot stronger again. All we could do was carry on as normal and wait to see what race day brought. Sunday was definitely windier, going up on the chair lift was quite scary and I had to hold my bike at times to stop it blowing off. I tried to fit in as many runs as I could to get an advantage if the race was to go ahead still. I got back into the queue for the lift and the people staffing the lift were stressing a lot about the wind. They came to the conclusion that they would stop it and see if we could start the race earlier as the wind was only getting worse with time. A meeting was called and I went back to the pits. I knew what the meeting would result in so I went back, got changed and started cleaning up. The race was cancelled as I thought. It was the right decision to make for obvious safety reasons but we were all disappointed. We packed up the truck in the rain which took quite some time and took the race back to Manons apartment. Jason fired up MX vs ATV on his Xbox and I gave everyone a schooling on that. Jason has been practising since I think... he needs it though! Fort William World Cup; It was my 20th birthday on Monday and I got a Sponge Bob birthday cake! It wasn’t around long enough to take a picture which I’m regretting now but it was blooming tasty. From Monday to Wednesday we stayed in the truck and rode xc most of the time doing some photo shoots and generally having a laugh on the Arials. Thursday was the day to knuckle down though and we had already set the pits up. I went on a ride around the world champs xc loop with Jacky G and did all the normal signing on and course walking etc. My Dad had got me 3 tickets to the “3 minute Gaps” Premier for my birthday which was Thursday eve. The film was amazing! The whole film was flat out with the best riders around going flat out. It was definitely the best film I have seen and shows the amazing lifestyle everyone leads and how different everyone is pre season. I struggled for some time to sleep Thursday night. Friday was wicked! It was dry and the sun was out. I couldn’t wait to get pedalling but I tried to wait for a few riders to chew up the few soft bits on the track. The track was awesome as usual. There were two new sections. The woods went a similar way until the ending where they slowed it down more and sent it off a new road gap out of the woods and into some new berm before joining the old track. There was also a new table top going into the motor way section. Apart from that, the track was the same and pinned! I did 5 practise runs and was more than happy with it. I found my limits whilst filming a chest cam run with the Go Pro and shot off on a corner. Friday night the team went out for a curry. I’ll own up, I only had a Korma. Jack manned up and went for a Vindaloo but ended up drinking so much to cool his mouth down we found him in the morning like this... funny times! I had a bit of a big one in practise before qualifying. I got it on the Go Pro though so it should be in the video of the weekend. I bruised my back really bad and I think I have bruised a kidney or something. I knew qualifying wasn’t going to be very fun at all anymore. I couldn’t pedal around the pits but I knew with a bit of adrenaline and some no pain no game attitude I would get it done. I pedalled as fast as I could out of the start. It hurt a lot still but I was definitely giving it all. I got to the first jump and nearly missed the corner after it. I drifted wide and carried all my speed into the next corner. This was not a good thing though. I should have braked and admitted to myself I was going too fast. In the next corner I washed out going wide and lost my bike. I was getting up off the ground still sliding away from my bike. I had landed on my side again but now anger was running my body and nothing was going through my mind but grab my bike and ride fast. Last year I crashed in qualifying and pinned it to qualify well still so I wasn’t too worried but I knew I had lost a lot of time with this one. I had a lot of bad moments from then on which probably meant I could have gone faster but I was really angry and everything was forgotten but go fast. I sprinted the bottom as fast as I could but as I came through the line I just heard “81st Place”. For the rest of the day I was the definition of gutted. I looked at my split times and was a few shy of last place at the first split. I had managed to gain back over 80 places by the time I went through the line and my second and third splits were well inside the top 40 but I had thrown it all away. It’s been a painful weekend both crashing hard and mentally and I’m now just concentrating on Leogang this weekend. I’m just washing my clothes now and going to the sauna and Jacuzzi to rest my very battered body and its then off to Austria early in the morning. Keep on the limit, H