What a start to the year. After four years off my Downhill Bike and two years away from the Mountain Bike scene I had an AMAZING weekend at the first Australian National round of the year.

I came up to Mt Buller the weekend prior to the DH National round to attend the Gravity OZ summer gravity camp run by Shannon Rademaker, Tim Chadd and Rhys Attkinson. The experience and skills that I gained were priceless. I basically came into the weekend's camp starting from square one and feeling pretty uncomfortable on the bike. Having the three coaches over the three day camp I was able to go right back to basics and retrain myself how to ride a downhill bike and how to ride it fast.

The Mt Buller track is the most technical track on the Australian Series its roughly 4 minutes long full of rocks roots and technical tight tree sections.

I loved being back in the MTB atmosphere relaxing in the pits with friends I haven't caught up with in years, SRAM fixing my bike and being back in the beautiful scenery of the Mountains.

I seeded in third place on Saturday knowing I had plenty more in the tank. In my race run I made up a lot of time going coming across the line in a time of 4:06, ten seconds faster than my seeding time ahead of Canadian Claire Buchar the current bronze medalist from the 2012 DH World Championships and Cross Country Olympian Lisa Mathison.

The elite mens podium was won by Sam Hill followed by Chris Kovarik and Connor Fearon.

Next race in the Mountain Bike National series will be held at Thredbo in two and half weeks time.