English
Strive /strīv/Verb
1. Make great efforts to achieve or obtain something.
2. Struggle or fight vigorously
I’m unsure as to which description is more apt for describing my cycling at present.
With a fun filled year planned of a few Downhill races and a craic at the new Gravity Enduro series, I figured best start a little bit of ‘riding preparation’. I refuse to use the T word. So Sunday morning, with the sun in the sky, I dusted off my legs and clipped them into the pedals setting off for a bimble round QE Country Park. A pleasant 2 mile spin on the road en route to the park turned out to be the best part of my anguish filled bimble, with the tyres losing the will to go on pretty much all the time sending me back down the hill on my muddy arse. Brilliant fun if you’re out to prove how awful XC really can get.
Luckily I am not an XC racer.
So with this years ‘riding preparation’ out the way, I turn my thoughts to racing. 2011, as I’ve mentioned, will bring the UK Gravity Enduro series of which I intend to compete in all 5 rounds. I hope to race a few Downhill events, Caersws Cup, MIJ Downhill, WDMBA races. Still being a Privateer I can’t quite stretch the bank balance to multiple trips up to Scotland, so Wales it is!
Being involved in the event staffing for Wiggle last year became a lifestyle in itself, a full week of work Monday to mid Friday, load the van Friday afternoon, head off whichever way the sat nav pointed us, get back late Sunday evening after no more than 4-5 hours’ sleep Friday and Saturday night and back to work Monday morning repeating that process from March until pretty much October. Good fun but no good if you like riding bikes. It made me appreciate how much I really like riding bikes, so this year plenty of racing for me and hopefully some entertaining flavour filled blogs for you.
Enduro 6 was the first stop on my racing calendar. A bunch of us here at Wiggle wanted to setup the staff pairs challenge again, (for those that don’t know last year around 30 of us all of varying degrees of cycling ability paired up and had a separate race against each other run alongside the main event) but even though we had the go ahead from the powers that be time got the better of us and it fell by the wayside. So unfortunately I only raced the night time trial which I won, haha no I didn’t! Oh dear I’m funny… I finished mid pack in that little giggle with a 33minute lap; to put things into perspective Matt Page came 3rd with a 27 minute lap, THAT’S why I’m only on the staff team :p
UK Gravity Enduro, Round 1, Ae Forest Scotland…Boom, new event series, very excited. Last year I raced the Avalanche Enduro here at Ae forest and loved it, so what better reason to come back. Aside from only receiving my bike on the Wednesday before the race weekend, getting it built Thursday, then driving to Scotland Friday, leaving me practice and the race itself to become accustomed with my wonderfully shiny new Rocky Mountain Slayer 50, oh and the HORRENDOUS weather, it was actually bloody good. The format for the race gave us practice all Saturday and a seeding run on the 5th stage Saturday afternoon. The 5th stage was essentially the Ae downhill course rerouted round all the big jumps and drops. EPIC fun, I was in my element. I don’t want to talk much about it though as I fitted some old mud tyres just for the seeding run, the rain was slowly destroying any known form of grip, and on my way up the fire road I discovered the beading in the rear tyre was knackered when a rock popped the tyre off the rim, dejectedly I pushed my bike the rest of the way to the start and walked down the course meaning no seeding time for me, which unfortunately was to have repercussions on Sunday..
The race route itself threw in some long dragging fire-road climbs between each stage to really test the mental and physical endurance (when your hauling 30+pounds of bike including yourself and enough supplies for a day in the saddle, things get pretty tough) some lasting up to 40 minutes, oh yeah and the extra weight from the torrential rain added to the mix. In total there were 5 of those climbs on race day, all of which had been done a few times the day before in practice.
Now the juicy bits, you are only timed on the 5 stages, much like a rally car race your given a start time for your stage and a set time to get between each stage.
• The first stage- ‘the shredder’ a very hard packed slightly rocky descent with big berms and jumps galore, and a lot of rain. Having never jumped my new bike before I was ashamedly tentative riding down this course, as usually I’d relish time in the air. Luckily last year the Avalanche race finished on this stage so I had a pretty good idea what to expect from the track, so had a pretty clean run. I got grit in my left eye on this one.
• Stage 2- ‘Rabs slippy one’ the seeding track used last year, I liked this one. Tight trail mostly downhill with some wet slippy roots and plenty of mud. And rain. Rather annoyingly though the course tape was pretty sparse so sneaky buggers had taken some epic short cuts, most of which I missed, annoying. I got mud in my right eye on this one.
• Stage3- ‘granny green love’, don’t ask, I don’t know. Along with all the rain there was a hell of a lot of pedalling at the start of this one through tight flowing single-track which (after killing you) opened out into a two bike wide rocky descent with some reasonably sized jumps and some big sweeping corners, it was after this stage I knew I was in for a tough day. Catching my pedal on a rock stopping me dead and almost flying over the bars as a result didn’t put me in good stead for a fast time, so a bit of a right off that stage was. I got gritty muddy puddle water in my left eye.
• Stage 4- ‘the edge’ so called as for the most part you are riding along the very edge of a very large very steep drop, one wrong move and it was going to hurt. So for a change it was still raining lots, but big open corners, a nice step up jump and the impending doom down the left hand side of the trail made this quite a fun track, seemingly unaffected by the glorious weather grip on the hard packed surface was aplenty. I got mud in my left eye.
• Stage 5- ‘Ae Downhill Course’ now for some real fun. I’ve raced 2 national Downhill events on the more intense version of this course before so needless to say I felt confident. Oh yeah the rain, Jesus up a tree, it had actually stopped raining, the sun started to appear! But a weekend of brake happy mountain bikers in horribly wet conditions had taken its toll on the track, ruts, bumps, roots and lines in odd places had appeared from nowhere, so my usual race line had to be adapted on the fly, kept my mind off my knackered legs that’s for sure! With plenty of foot out action and some incredibly sketchy moments I got down on the little Rocky Mountain reasonably well. I got mud in my right eye, just as I entered the dark wooded section…
Now the repercussions I was talking about. As I didn’t attend my seeding run, on the contrary to what I’m accustomed, the timing people had to add me back into the race Sunday morning despite me having already signed on for the weekend. This caused confusion at the start of each stage for the race officials, where I was on a separate start list to everyone else in my category, some under the impression I’d missed my start time some that I was far too early. So whether this was a factor in my result I am unsure but 154th out of 229 competitors did not make me happy. Far more preparation I felt should have been done on my part. But that’s just racing.
So all in all I’m definitely going back, roll on June 11th at Kielder Forest and another trip north of the border!
Ride bikes.
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