National round 3 – Fort William

Despite being at Fort William a month before for the World Cup I walked the course on Friday afternoon. It was well worth it as there were a fair few changes just in how the course was taped. However there was only 2 little sections that were changed and made the course a bit faster.

I said to myself on Friday night that I would do no more than 6 runs. I knew where the corners were i just needed to practise a few different lines and get up to speed again. I didn’t want to wear myself out like I did at the world cup before my seeding and race run. My practise runs went well but I took a fall in the new wooded section. I was now jumping a root section but when I landed a new root grabbed onto my pedal and sent me on a little journey though the air. Apart from this I had a really fun day trying my best to whip the big jumps of the notorious motorway section.

Sunday morning I limited myself to 2 runs to keep my energy. In my first run the inner tube that was protecting my frame decided it would get pulled into my cassette which didn’t help pedalling matters. I had a good run down without pedalling and I felt that not being able to pedal made me try that much harder to carry speed and be smoother which was good. I wanted to do a race speed run down for my 2nd run but I got red flagged 2 times so my run didn’t go to plan but I was confidant about seeding runs and was just having a lot of fun.

My seeding went pretty well and I took it smoothly and pedalled pretty hard through the motorway section. I tried my best to whip the last few jumps and mess about a bit. I came through in seconds place and by the end of the category I got moved down to 3rd. I had a 5 min and 8 seconds. This would have been enough to qualify in the World Cup a month before and I am sure it was down to not being tired. I waited around for good friend Oli Burton to come down and see how he got on in senior. I waited at the finish and the clock ticked over 6 mins. I thought he must have a puncture; we had been messing about with tire pressures all weekend and we were managing to run them fairly soft without getting a puncture. I saw Oli slowly come over the last jumps and assumed he was ok despite he looked like he had a crash. When I asked him what went wrong he replied, “I think I hit my head”. It wasn’t hard to tell that he had been knocked out and didn’t really know what was going on at all. I had a chat as I walked him to the medics and he looked pretty lost. When he was surprised to see a chairlift and couldn’t remember what he had for breakfast I knew it wasn’t good. I was warming up on Mojo’s turbo trainer when he came out and got whisked away to hospital.

After all that had gone on i just wanted to put a good time in for race runs and see how Oli was getting on. My race run went well. I didn’t have any major mistakes just a few slow sections. I definitely put everything into pedalling the last section. On the compression I couldn’t hold myself up and the tire buzzed my arse which soon made me stand up straight again. I came through the finish in 2nd place but by the time everyone finished i got moved to 4th position. I was pleased with this and my time of 5 min 5 seconds. I think it put me around 21st overall too.

After podiums I went to the hospital and Oli was complaining about how he was bored so back to normal there. He looked fine now but they needed to keep him overnight to keep doing checks etc. I stayed in a B&B with his mum and picked him up in the morning. As unlucky as he was to have hit his head that hard he was lucky he hadn’t broken anything and postponed riding. He must of had quite a fall.

here are some pictures;

- Taken by Fraser Leadbetter
- Taken by Fraser Leadbetter
- Taken by Paul Mears
- Taken by Paul Mears

Thanks to Oli and his mum for taking me along and for a nice weekend away and of course Paul Mears and Fraser Leadbetter for their pictures. Thanks to Last, DMR, Rezurgence, Lifestyle Ford, 2026 distribution, Funn, Bell, Thor, KMC, Nike 6.0, Mojo suspension, and Shimano.