This was my first race in a few weeks so I was very interested to see how my form had progressed since racing in Bluff in early January. I lead into the first singletrack and shortly after up the first climb Dirk Peters came flying past so I jumped on his tail and over the next few laps we opened up a sizeable gap. With 2.5 laps to go I decided it was time to put the hammer down and I left Dirk to take the win by about a 1min 30secs leaving me very satisfied with how far my form had progressed in the time spent away from the race scene. This was also my first win on my new Cannondale F29 so all round it was a good day, with Nationals in a week’s time I was left in a good headspace.