Hopton midlands round 2;

We arrived Saturday morning at around 1am and it looked to be dry. We set up Sam’s tent and got to bed for an early morning start.

-As usual we drove up in the Transit!

I woke up at 7 and gathered with usual people; Bill, Will, Ali, Granddad, Sam and myself and Dad to walk the course. It was so nice to walk up a dry, dusty track being able to pick the lines that really push the limits on downhill. Apart from the top wooded section the course was very well ridden with big braking bumps towards the end.

My newly servised forks gave me a smooth ride over the braking bumps.

Practise was really good. The uplift was good and it took you all the way to the top. It was still dry and I got around 7 or 8 runs in. It really made effort to section and find different lines... some really good and some not so. The top root section was catching so many people out. I sectioned this part on my last run of the day with Bill and Ali and it took us awhile to find the right line. We practised it a couple times and then Nathan Vials came through. He spent most of the time in the air and it was by far the fastest way. It was the same line as bill spotted but it would be a couple more goes until we had it that fast.

-Sam on his new bike!-My dry Saturday's riding

I later walked the course with Nathan and his family. I wasn’t surprised to see that all my lines were very similar to his. However I was surprised to find that most of our lines had been taped off. All off the middle open section had been adapted from practise and posts were moved. That was very annoying as I now had to practise the section again Sunday morning. We didn’t stay at the top long enough to find out what they were going to do but roomer was a stump was going to be chopped out. After a good walk dad cooked a pasta stir fry for the three of us. By now it had been raining lightly for about an hour and it wasn’t looking good for the exposed parts of the course. I decided to put spikes on and an inner tube mud guard. I wasn’t going to wait until the morning to mess around when all I want to do is relax. It was around 10pm now so we called it a night and went to bed.

It rained through the early hours of Sunday morning quite hard and eased off to that kind of misty rain that gets you really wet in time for practise. Even though it was very wet the course was still running really fast and grippy. However it stopped raining only around an hour into practise and the course began to dry. And this meant thick, slow running mud. I got 2 practise runs in and cleaned my bike for race runs. I was happy with what I had practised and was pleased with my new lines in the open section.

- The open section

My first race run was a bit off as I hit my shoulder in the dirt of a ledge on a corner. But I had a good run apart from that and came in 4th place at the bottom. Up against 3 big names of the second year juniors; Sam Dale in 1st, Sam Shucksmith 2nd and Nathan Vials 3rd.

-Nathan Vials on the open section

My second run was good and I had fun but I found the course slower than first runs and I ended up going a second slower and ending going down to 7th place. Bummer! I was still happy with this though. And I feel in a good attitude going into this weekend coming... the first round on the Nationals at Ae Forrest, Scotland.

Thanks to DMR, Rezurgence, Lifestyle Ford, Mojo, Mace, Nike 6, Funn, Geax and Motor tabs.