K-Captial Challenge Rnd1

Last Sunday was the first of a series of 3 ‘challenge’ races run by Team WORC with an emphasis on fun mountain bike racing and great trails. The event took place at Kilruddery Estate just outside Dublin – a place with some really cool riding that is normally off limits for bikers.

180 riders, including UCD’s Cait Elliott and Rob Higgins, lined up in a chaotic mass start for 2 laps of a 17km course. Although the weather was quite good, really heavy rain overnight meant most of the trails were super muddy. There was lots of sliding around, out of control bike surfing at its best!



After a congested singletrack at the start, a 10 minute fireroad climb up the Little Sugarloaf began to spread the field out a bit. From there was a new descent, fast and rocky then into slippery steep switchbacks. After that was a mixture of short fireroad climbs and long sections of fun singletrack twisting through the forest.

Cait had a strong ride to win the Female category in a time of 2hrs 27 and Rob came in at 3hrs 11, 73rd overall. Next round will be August 23rd on Carrick Mountain in Wicklow. Details here. Cait's full report here.