Comp attitude update. I've always wanted to ride a Gate Trial, and Sunday I finally made it to one. My attitude going to this was totally to just enjoy myself, whatever it took. I was nearly beaten in that effort by my bike which decided it was going to contract a mystery 'splutter & die' illness. After a couple of trips back to the car to replace the spark plug, dismantle the carby twice, and fiddle with most every electrical connection, I managed to get my 4 laps in before it died the last time. Despite that, I had a cracker day. The Gate Trial format is a heap of fun. Choose your adventure, but get penalised hard if you mis-judge. This one was run: * Blue gates = 3 points, easy * Yellow gates = 2 points, moderate * Red gates = 1 point, hard Each section has possible total of 11 points. Choose any combination you like. If you dab you get zero. High score wins. First lap I rode moderately conservatively and had a reasonably low number of zeros and an acceptable score I think. But gradually I just challenged myself a bit more, or simply whipped through the sections with a certain abandon (I was at least a lap behind most people). By last lap I decided to go for 11 in every section - I got a total of 11 points out of possible 122 that lap. π But had a heap of fun. No clue what my score for the day was - not much though. Personally I really enjoyed this format. If I wanted to compete I could. But if I wanted to simply compete against myself I could do that too. In a 'normal' trial you're always competing against the section setter to an extent. If a single obstacle is too scary or too hard you take a 5 and don't get to ride the whole section. In this you could just choose to bypass it and still get a quite decent score & a complete ride. But the best rider will still win. Probably not so good for the top grades because it doesn't really lend itself to a sustained difficult series of obstacles in a section. Almost made me keen to go to a regular trial again.
Posted by Peter Mack at 2023-10-23 07:33:03 UTC