BMBS Margam Park

The long awaited weekend quickly came upon us as our team once again headed off to Margam Park for the 4^th Round of the British Mountain Bike Series!

The start with Ant in front and myself on his wheel in 15th position

This was my main event I’ve been looking forward to all year as it is a tough gruelling proper mountain bike course, the way they should all be!

Leading up to the event I didn’t have the best preparation with a cold for over a week and working from 7am till 10pm at night all week, hence I took a well deserved rest from all the hard training I’ve been putting in from my delayed start to the year with training!

On Saturday my brother, Ant and I did a couple of practice laps in the rain to find an amazing course, which was wet and muddy which made it technical along with being hilly and awsome downhills! However we knew the course would dry up for our race as we were expecting 25degrees! (actually turned out to be 28 degrees)

Anthony and I after the first Lap!

Race day came and I started 18^th on the grid with my brother at 22^nd! Once again the cycleops turbo was set up to warm the legs up although we didn’t stay on too long as we were sweating like someone poor water over us!

Bros smashing the climb up!

The start didn’t go to well for me as we hit the tarmac so I decided to go out the outside on the grass and take the non race line! It worked as I moved up into 15^th position before making my way up to 12^th before the 1^st major climb!

How the chute should be riden! Flat Out!

By the time I got around to the top of the final climb I was in 9^th position before my brother chased us down and went straight in front to take the lead on the downhill! We dominated the downhill dropping a few off our wheels and took away 2 others! We stayed on the front of the group pushing the pace and dropping the rest of the guys on the technical course and opened the gap further by sharing the load on the hills!

Boyler Train about to up to the pace and drop the others

For the next 3 laps there was a Boyler Train on the go as we flew around and even moving up into 6^th position taking over Paul Oldham who now was behind us!

Paul Oldham chasing me back slowly at the end

As we went into the 4^th lap Paul put a huge attack in behind as he stormed right past without us even getting chance to get on his wheel!

Anthony and I with Chris

Half way round that lap Ant’s chain came off as I pushed on with one of the other guys as we came through the finish area going into our last lap in 7^th and 8^th!

On Chris's Wheel about to attack

With tiring legs and plenty of hills to go I was ready to give it my all and drain the legs in one last lap!

A quarter way round the final lap I was touching wheels with Chris on the descent before he suffered a minor mechanical. I saw my opportunity and attacked as I pressed hard with my legs screaming to stop!

I never looked back until I got to the final climb of which I saw that I was all clear and ready to enjoy the final descent with a massive grin on my face!

Me coming to the end of the final lap

Down into the finish arena I had a warm welcome and took a Very Happy 7^th place and 2^nd U23.

Anthony managed to sort his chain out and only losing one place and came in 9^th place giving the Torq Performance Team 2 top 10’s!

Next up is the National Champs in 3 weeks time which may or may not favour me, depending on the course!

(Photos taken from my mum)

BMBS Round 3 - Wasing Park

This weekend saw the full Torq Performance Team head to Wasing park for the 3^rd round of BMBS. This type of course doesn’t suit me very well as it is too flat and not enough technical sections to make my time up over the others!

However I tried to make sure that whatever happened was that I nailed myself really hard at the start to make sure I got myself into a good position and onto someone’s wheel and just cling on and stick to them like glue. On the start line I gridded up behind the legend Nick Craig and thought I would use him as my target.

Off the start I did just that! Managing to cling to his wheel and stayed with him until half way round the first lap where he got in front of another rider and I got held up before squeezing past too late as the gap was already 10 meters or so!

I kept pushing on hard and managed to get up to 22^nd position and attaching myself to Gareth Montgomerie’s wheel and doing sufficient turns we created our own group before being joined by 2 others! Over the next 5 laps we stayed together as a group before upping the pace and dropping one of the riders off the back!

Going into the last lap we were down to 3 of us before Gareth stalled as he tried to fix his gears.

Myself and Simon Ernest saw the opportunity to push on hard as Simon opened a small gap on myself before catching Tom Bell who was in front. Simon kept the power on dropping Tom as I was 10 meters or so behind. I pushed hard through the singletrack and using my strengths on the technical side to bridge the gap down I pulled it down to 4 bike lengths as we entered the arena. I pushed hard on the pedals as standing up hurt too much but only managed to get the gap down to 2 bike lengths by the finish line to take a really happy 21^st position and 2mins50 off my Team mate Ben Thomas who finished 12^th.

           After I rolled in a pigs bath to wash my arms and face : )
Overall I am really happy with my performance and still got a lot of work to do to get myself up there, but hopefully the light will shine more after a proper mountain bike course takes place in Margam Park in 2 weeks time!

Bristol Bikefest

On Saturday morning our Torq team headed off to Bristol for the Bristol Bikefest in hope of another Team victory to add to the set of results this year.

After signing on we discussed who should take up the run on the ritual le mans type running start. My Brother, Anthony, decided to take the challenge up and make sure we got a good start to our first team event of the year.

After a good running start we were into the top 20 as Anthony headed off into the woods to face some very bumpy and rocky singletrack.

By the end of his lap he crossed the line in 3^rd position overall, behind our Torq pair rider James lister, and speeding into the transition area to pass the next lap over to myself to nail for one solid 22minute lap.

The lap consisted of a few short steep climbs that gave a nasty sting into the legs and the rest offering lots of flowing gravel singletrack before heading back into a strong headwind before entering the arena.

After nailing myself to keep our great position we managed to move up and come into the arena with our other pair rider James Gleave on my wheel to come in 1^st overall and 1^st in our Mixed team consisting of myself, Matt Hart, Anthony and Lydia Gould

About 7 hours into the 12Hour race we were about 11-12mins up on our closest rival and a lap up back to 3^rd position. However as the saying goes, it’s never over until the fat lady sings, we hit disaster as one of our members faced a destructive mechanical forcing him to run the rest of the lap loosing our time advantage and position to fall back into 2^nd place but still managing to do really well limiting the huge time deficit we could have gone to as he ran flat out into the transition area with his bike on his shoulder.

Realising what happened and what was at stake I exited the arena blitzing into the singletrack chasing down our rivals only to find them a quarter of the way round. The gears dropped and I sprinted as hard as I could to chase him down only to catch him on the 1^st fire road climb. However as I was approaching I decided to keep the pressure on and go straight past him keeping the pace high so he wouldn’t be able to jump on my wheel. Luckily it worked and we took the lead once again only to come through the arena with 20 to 30 seconds now only keeping us in the lead.

As we rotated our turns between us we pushed ourselves harder and faster than we did in previous laps, draining our body and keeping us into the 22 minute a lap region making sure we opened up a significant gap incase anything happened again.

After a painful number of laps and coming into the final hour of the race we had no idea how far we were in front apart from a few hours previously where we were told that the gap was 5minutes.

The updated result we attained from one of our team members was that we were 2 minutes up in the last hour, only to mishear that we were actually 2 minutes off catching 2^nd place to take a lap up. This made us push harder once again to try and take that lap but our time ran out at the end to be just under a minute off taking the lap and giving us the 12Hour Mixed team Bikefest title.