Crazy Yowies

I raced the You Yangs Yowie on the weekend, I got 9th place. I was a little worried as my forks were buggering up again and I only had about 40mm of travel, but as it turned out, it may not have been such a bad thing. It was a pretty small field and there was about 5km of fire road with a good climb at the end. I managed to ride with the lead bunch though this section and reached the top of the climb in about 5th place and stayed with them through the first small section of single track. However when we reached The Clam I didn't really know what was coming and had to walk and dropped my chain in the process. I caught a few others who had dropped off the back but lost them again when things got technical again. the last 15km of the track was super flat, super smooth and super easy. I was in the big ring half the time and just hammering away. At the end of the first lap I could see a guy off in the distance and made it my goal to beat him, I caught him on the big climb and we raced each other for the rest of the race until the final real climb of the lap before halfway when I got a good lead and opened up a good gap by the end of that lap. By the final lap I was feeling pretty smashed and decided to take it easy in the belief that I had an easy lead over this guy and everyone else was too far away, but the the descent at about halfway he caught me and the race was on again. He was way more skilled than me and had a good 30 second gap, but I managed to pull him in, and got away with out being chased. I ended up about 30 seconds in front at the finish in 9th place, 20 minutes off the lead.