Dragon finals, 27/28th October;

The rain was already coming down on the way to the venue. I had my superstitions as it was a new track and hadn’t yet been ridden in at all. The rain persisted through the night as I lay trying to sleep in the van.

Saturday morning the misty rain continued through practise making the course get churned up like it had been ploughed. The course was very long compared to the usual dragon tracks. It was very flat in most sections but if the course was dry it would have been an awesome track to ride. It was a very jumpy and flowing course… however the rain unfortunately made it very much the opposite. It turned into a fitness game.

Here are some pictures to show what the weather and course was like;













Seeding runs are usually meant to be chainless but there was no chance of this happening so it was announced that seeding runs were to be done with chains on. After a pretty tiring seeding run I was in 2nd place. I got 4mins and 11seconds. I just took it easy and tried to enjoy a full run down.

Saturday night was even windier and wetter than Friday night. I stayed in a tent with two friends, Ross and Mark, and the sides of the tent were blown so far in they were swallowed by the tent. On a negative note, 9 bikes were stolen overnight.

Sunday morning was much the same and I got up early to walk the course, the course almost looked better off that it was wetter; the rain had made the mud really thin. After some serious debating on whether to get wet so soon I went for a practise run. It was really fun to ride as the track was gripy at technical sections and in the field sections some seriously big drifts were being pulled off. I only took a couple runs down in the morning. The track began to dry up and become cloggy during first runs, I took a bad run down the hill and got 3rd position. Second runs were so clogged up I not only got off at the bottom to push like my first run but I jumped off at the top as well. I got slower but luckily kept my position.

Here are the pictures of the race and series podium:
- series podium
- race podium





Thanks to Rezurgence, Lifestyle Ford and Mojo.

Tredz downtown race Penarth 2007

After a mini-mission to find the race venue, we saw the "saviour of downhill mountain biking," Chopper Harris, talking to the British Cycling representatives by the pier. After parking up about a mile away we went to see the course.

Once the course was marked out many people were queing up to see it. At first the course didn't seem quite as expected and many people had a bad opinion on it. Here is the course...
- the first corner is hit with serious
- going through the iron fence and into the park you go along a gravel path
- on the brakes heavily you go into a tight twisty maze
- on the exit of the mase some windy steps take you down to a drop into some tight corners
- its flat out down some stairs sets
- on the brakes heavy on the last set into a right hand corner.
- greeted by a horse box and riders pinged of the wall
- a quick sprint to the next horse box onto the main road. This horse box was really good because there wasn't any need to slow down, just hit the side and shoot out.
- the last few corners to the finish
- the truck jump was only in for practise because elite rider Rob Breakwell landed face first to flat and was seriously injured.


- Here is a picture of me doing it before it was taken out and used as a camera post


Sunday morning's practise was a bit miss-understood but the idea was that you were given two times to go up and you would only have two runs down before seeding runs. It soon got sorted out however and a constant stream of people shot down the hill.

The course changed even though it was a street race! The gravel paths and corners got surprisingly rutted and cut up and the paths got greasy as the tyres left there marks.

My seeding run was pretty shocking... I stopped in a couple places, loosing all my speed in important sections. I came in at 6th place. I waited for my dad to come in at the finish to see how his run went considering his shoulder was still in pieces. He seemed very happy to make it down and was chatting away like he does.

Going up for race runs i knew what had to be done and it was the only thing on my mind. watching the majority of youth go down I saw that everyone wanted it bad from the start. I took it relatively slow in the place's that I messed up in the seeding run as i knew one mistake on a short track like that would have cost a lot. I got through sections as I wanted with a couple mistakes here and there. Before I knew it, I was at the last corner and sprinting as hard as I could towards the finish. I came in just .15 of a second infront of good mate Mark Blackler. We managed to keep 1st and second to the end of the category. There were some big smiles after from me and Mark.

Here is a picture of the podium:







Thanks to Rezurgence, Lifestyle Ford and Mojo

N.P.S finals - Innerliethen October

The pressure was on to do well at Innerleithen more than just a normal N.P.S! It was the final and the tension and nerves were at an all time high.

We started to travel up on the Thursday night and stopped half way to sleep. In the morning we had a full English in the town of Moffat.





- Picture of the owl that greeted us in the town.









We arrived at the venue and made a priority of walking the course at least a couple of times. I also had a couple of jobs to do with the brakes and forks on the bike.

The course was only a couple of weeks old and only had one uplift day on it, so the new sections weren’t very worn in. The course was steep, rocky and tight in some sections, and extremely fast and jumpy in others; reaching speeds of 40+mph.

Saturdays practise was the best yet! I got 10 runs in with a couple of breaks. The course rode well throughout practise and little repairs were needed to be made at the end of practise.

Here are some pictures of Saturdays practise;








Saturday night the rugby was on and everyone was happy after a clean win for England. There wasn’t a camper van not watching it!

Sunday arrived and there was tension rising in the air. The weather looked pretty grime in the morning the weekend had been dry so far. I said to myself that I was only going to do 2 runs in the morning to save my energy. Here are a few pictures of Sundays practise;



Elite practise started with a casualty. It took Mojo rider, Stanny, 3 hours to do one practise run. Race runs weren’t delayed however so I went up for the all important run.

I felt like I had to do well as this race series is the most important for me. I started off well in my run and as I got further on I got more confident. This lead to a slip up and a few seconds lost that I thought cost me my series place. Being pretty angry I got the rest of the course good but aggressive. Luckily I got back some time and just managed a podium place. I later found out in the overall series podium that I kept my position of 3rd place. I was happy with this but a lot of improvement is need to be done before next year when I move up to Junior.

Pictures of the youth and elite overall standings in the Nationals 2007




Thanks to Rezurgence, Lifestyle Ford and Mojo suspension.

P.O.R.C Race 7th October!

This was a very different kind of track but was very good all the same! The weekend was nice and sunny! Mike (owner of P.O.R.C) just got married on Friday and a joyful mood overun the weekend!

Here are some pictures of the weekend:

- the Youth podium... Ross getting fastest time of the day
- that doesn't look good!
- 100 entries were recorded and many spectators
- Richard Abbot
- Hatch pinning it down the final drops
- oh dear Jonn
- Woahh!
- Thats how to do it.
- me entering technical bit.
- steep sandy berms from the start
- Will - looks like he is going to crash.







Thanks to Rezurgence, Lifestyle Ford and Mojo.