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Friday after work I shot up to Loughborough. There I met a few friends, got the keys for our new house, unpacked some crap I need at the new house but don’t use here in Essex. Had a nice relaxing time, I even brought my bike up but didn’t ride it! My room complete with brand new double bed looks like this:
Saturday evening / night we went out in Loughborough town to celebrate kim’s 21st birthday. Good times by all, here’s a few photo’s.
  
  
Highlights include: discovering taxi from our house to town is a bit more expensive than we’d like, buying lots of cocktails in revs during the 2-4-1 off that only happens between 8-9pm, slipping over going under the limbo thingy but still getting a free shot, and once again getting into echoes when it was empty initially.
A week or so ago, we went up to Round 4 of the British Mountain Bike Series, Dalby Forest. I shot down after work to Peterborough and stayed at Sam’s place for the night. Then early morning we set off to Dalby Forest. We arrived and it was really quiet. Admittedly we had arrived before the first race had set off, but it was really odd. Anyway, we signed on, saw the first race set off, got our bikes ready and went to scope out the course before we could go round to practice. Medusa’s and Worry Gill as a spectator seemed pretty hairy and lots of people during the womens race were taking the chicken run, one woman even ran down the chicken run…we’ll see what it’s like on the practice lap.
   
1200 we set off for a practice lap, the race starts at 1230, so we had to make sure we could make it round. The lap was really good, we both had the balls to go down the big drops, Worry Gill feel vertical and you just have to have the nerve to tip your bike down, don’t touch any breaks and lean right back (you go down on your front wheel after all), it’s not that bad, you then have to go down the valley which is lots of little rocks, and it’s wet and muddy and slidey, you bounce all over the place…and then there’s the side of a tree you have to go down, bit like worry gill, but no chicken run, but not as far to fall. Then a steep uphill where if you’re weight isn’t far enough back the wheel spins out. After this you go along to Medusa’s drop, where you go halfway down the hill on a load of nice switchback berms, then you have a choice of carrying on a load of switchback berms or just shoot straight down the side of the hill over roots and rocks and stuff..so i did that! Other noteable bits of the course are the big climb, another big climb, a bit just after some boardwalk where you can either go over some bumpy rocks or go on some loose smooth curves, oh and another climb with some rocks on it which are just enough to make it quicker to run than ride up – however Nick Craig did prove you can ride up them!
Anyway, we had a good practice lap (Sam and I went round together), nice and warmed up turned up at the start line. We saw the regular faces, to name a few, Trevor Allen, Chris Peddar, Chris Irlam, James Sanford, Toby Rose,Phil Lenney, Job Pybus, Harry Penn oh and Ben Oglesby had made a guest appearance for his first nationals race. We also had Mike Grainger being our personal photographer! Here’s a few of mike’s photo’s of people we know:
    
     
Quick shout out to all the girlies that had raced earlier on in the day (namely Jessie, Rach and Maulin from the wxc team), think they all did well, well Rach had a nightmare that day, but she seemed cheery enough afterwards.
Anyway, the race pretty much went like this, I’d do well on anything fairly level / technical sections, I remember first time down Medusa’s drop I overtook about 5 people who took the chicken run, I’d manage to overtake two people down Worry Gill, all going well. Then the course went uphill, and I just couldn’t handle the pace, the people I’d overtaken on the technical bits all flew past and then a couple more. I’d then regroup once it levelled up, start catching on singletrack and technical bits, overtake a load of people on Medusa’s drop, and then get dropped up the hill again. I had no idea how I was doing during the race, the elite’s had already started lapping me on lap 2, but once I’d settled into a kindof pace people weren’t catching me and I’d hold my own on the fun stuff…so I rolled over the line just behind Harry Penn (pleased with managing that, I’d overtaken him down Medusa’s, I fully expected him to catch me uphill…but it never happened until the last lap, and I managed to keep him in my sights). Sam finished behind me by a couple of minutes, so 21st, 22nd and 23rd for the lboro boys! James Sanford (I beat him at the BUCS MTB this year) came 3rd in sport. You can see all the results here. Also Joolze’s photo’s here and the race report here.
After the race, we all chatted etc. Then nearly everybody decided to go there separate ways, Sam and I thought it would be a good plan to try out the demo series as we see them but never get the chance to ride. So we went to the camping section, found a place to camp, setup my event shelter, got some food a cooking and chilled into the night. We (now only Mike, Sam and myself) thought it would be a good plan to make a little fire to keep ourselves warm, so we chopped the top off a beer can and started making a fire in that. This then got a little big, so we made it spread into a cooking pot. This also then started getting a bit large, so we cut up a square of turf, rolled it back on itself and made a fire on that. We also cooked banana’s and chocolate on some of the remains of the beer cans we had. End of the night, put the fire out, roll back turf, it’s now better than new with all the fertiliser we’ve put there! We also had cake because it was Sam’s birthday on Sunday.
   
   
We woke up in the morning. Sam opened his birthday cards, we had some porridge and stuff for breakfast. The big yorkshire marathon was set off, by the sounds of things it was laps of pretty much the course we did with medusa’s missed out and some extra fire road. We then went off to the demo series and firstly borrowed a trek fuel ex. Same had a carbon bling version and I decided to take an alu version like the one I would probably get. I was very impressed with it, it took up all the little stutter bumps nicely, and the bigger stuff, and it was so good round the berms and bends, I didnt need to touch the brakes. It felt so dialled, I was very impressed. I then wanted to try a yeti verion of 120mm travel, but the guy wasn’t very helpful, so in the end I tried a merida one-twenty. This wasn’t as good as the trek put simply. We tried the trek’s down medusa’s…now I did fine down it on my cube carbon hardtail racing bike, yet somehow I almost stacked it on the trek because I grabbed a fistfull of front brake for some odd reason…it all went ok though, so it’s all good!
 
Afterwards, we packed up, stopped in Pickering for fish and chips which was nice and then carried on our way to Peterborough. Traffic was rubbish, so rather than carrying on home after Peterborough, I stayed at Sam’s for some tea and then watched top gear…eventually i got home at 1130pm!
Good fun weekend though 
p.s. before and after cleaning of my bike:
 
So having done Mountain Mayhem in 2008 and 2009 in a team of 4 or 5, this year Loughborough Students Powered by Tropical Birds was a 10 man team! This meant we were racing for 24 hours like everyone else, but spread amongst 10 of us – super idea! We also fancied a shot at the podium.
For me, I left work Friday evening and drove over to Henry’s house, there I had some tea and some sleep and we loaded up the car early saturday morning to head off to Mayhem. By this point the car had got quite heavy, gained some roof bars and was quite slow…we still made it to Mayhem though. Everyone else was already there, and straight away we got the bikes out, got changed and went round for a practice lap. The course was a bit different to the last couple of years, including one section which was completely different, but overall an improvement and some nice sections which were technical enough that I could make up for my lack of fitness by being alright at the technical stuff. Whilst we were going round our practice lap, Henry got pulled off the course for practicing without a number board, luckily they hadn’t spotted me and I managed to do a full lap before I went back and registered. Registration I almost missed because I’d left it so late, but I managed none the less.
 
2pm came around quite quickly and we sent our elite rider off to the start to run round to his bike and do the first lap. I hadn’t even put up my tent yet, so I watched the start, put up the tent, chilled, chatted with everyone, went round the event village, swapped my inner tubes, got my free bottle, caught up with some friends etc. and got ready for my lap which wasn’t until about 8pm…which means I needed a light on my bike, but I probably wouldn’t use it, so I just put my little Exposure Joystick on the handlebars as a token gesture. Josh Morgan from Lufbra Old Skoolers had his bike dressed up as a horse!
   
My lap was quite good, it’s nice being able to absolutely hammer it round the course knowing you’re getting more rest than most…still had an elite rider pass me and an absolutely mental singlespeeder spin away! In fact, the biggest obstacle on the course was the sheer number of riders going round the course, and as in a team of 10 you’re one of the fastest riders out there, it’s a skill to just get past everyone politely! Anyway, I enjoyed my lapped and handed over in transition, it was a whole 50 minutes and 5 seconds of sprinting…
Anyway, more laps later, our team still winning from the outset, I even managed to get some sleep (sleeping in my newly purchased coleman event shelter, think we had 4 of us in there with our bikes and kit, loadsa space!). I had a 4:30am lap, which was horrible waking up for, but oddly the lap I didn’t really need my lights. Another lap down, got some more sleep when I got back, some nice cooked breakfast – it was all quite relaxed and good fun actually. The weather stayed brilliantly dry and dusty throughout, and we were more than 2 laps in front of the team coming 2nd in the ten man category! In the end, to see if we might be able to squeeze another lap out of us, I did a lap instead of Phill and so I got to join in the heckling or riders and cheering them on the last lap. We went on every hill, and saw the same set of riders every time as we followed Phill round – we got a few thankyou’s in the arena afterwards when they spotted us!
   
  
So after winning quite successfully the 10 man team category, we settled round for the podium. The legend that is Ant White won the solo 24 category, Trevor Allen came 7th in solo, good effort for his second ever 24, Jessie’s WXC team won the Open Women Category, also WXC team mate Rickie Cotter won the solo womens and James Williams with his team won the open mens category, Scott as ever won the elite category.
    
Overall a fun time had, 10 man team was tougher than I thought, but it was definitely less tiring than a 4 or otherwise…it does make us wonder how we ever did it as a four. I think next year, we need silly costumes or something…
Photo Album, all 6 pages starts here, I missed a few good photo opportunities when I ran out of battery…
A holiday to watch the 24 Hours of Le Mans legendary motor race. Our trip started at 3:30am on Thursday morning, 3 of us and camping kit loaded into a Andy’s Seat Ibiza FR and set off to Dover for our 6am Ferry, all tired but a stickered up car and seeing a few other cars heading to Le Mans on the way. Got onto the Ferry, which set sail in a very foggy sea with the fog horn sounding the whole trip. Got off the Ferry and had a uneventful drive down the peage to Le Mans. We saw a few supercars stickered up and heading the same way, we managed to get a few to rev their engines for us and drove in convoy with a few for a while.
    
We eventually got to Le Mans, pitched up Ben’s mega tent, literally the moment we did this and it pissed down with rain. With that sorted, a trip to Carrefour to get a load of food and a bbq, then we went for a wander round the event village and watched some of the car qualifying. We even picked up kangaroo tv so we could watch the tv coverage etc. anywhere we wanted. A few nice things round the event village and masses of people.
    
    
We had a bbq at our lovely tent, then headed back out to watch some night time practice and see other bits of the event village.
    
After some sleep in the tent hoping it wouldn’t leak, we woke up to a lovely sunny Friday morning. The plan was to go round the pit lane as it was open and have a look into the garages where the cars were being worked on. Have a bit of lunch / food, watch a bit of Mad Friday down the road outside our campsite (basically any car gets stopped and has to perform a burnout in front of the crowds, or anything else cool in their car – very childish but great fun), go see the drivers parade in Le Mans town centre and then wander back to see the rest of Mad Friday. We managed to get a spot under a gazebo chatting to some guys who had camped up by the side of the road!
    
    
    
    
Saturday morning came around and due to staying up late for Mad Friday we woke up quite late. I chilled for a bit whilst Andy went for a wander round. We then found a pretty good place by Ford Chicanes to watch the start of the race at 3pm. Then we went round to different parts of the track to watch the cars go round. By this point my battery was starting to get low annoyingly, to be fair I had taken far too many photo’s! Highlights of this include walking to Arnage to jump up and look over a solid fence to see cars coming straight towards you just before the 90 degree bend, this would have been brilliant photo’s, but Andy took some of them so that should be ok. Next time I’ll bring a step ladder, but you really got to see the cars up close it was amazing. We then wandered up towards Mulsanne, well we were going to get the shuttle bus, but it was massive, so we just carried on walking as we thought it would be quicker….wrong, but we managed to hitch hike! We watched the cars go round at Mulsanne for a while then thought about heading back. We walked over to the bus stop for the shuttle busses laid on by the ACO which we believed went on 24 hours a day during the race – it would appear they didn’t and we would have to walk back, a Gendarme directed us down a road in the pitch black with no pavement and told us 3km. In fact it was fricking miles, but somehow we managed to hitch hike back to Le Mans, amazing!
    
   
After all this, I got some food and headed out to watch the cars at night. We stayed up till a good 4am watching the cars at night, which I would say I think was better than during the day. I wish I’d seen the Ford GT that was spitting flames during the night! We went up on the Ferris Wheel for a grand total of €5, the view from this was pretty amazing watching the cars go down the pit straight. Eventually I fell asleep in the tent whilst watching the racing on the kangaroo TV!
    
Sunday morning we woke up, watched the finale of the race round by ford chicanes, a lovely Audi 1,2,3 despite the Peugeot’s dominating for the first 21 hours or so – reliability for ya! After some umming and arring the other’s decided that we should just drive back home if we could, but changing ferry’s proved costly, so we stayed in a campinile in Rouen and got a 9am Ferry. On the way back we took some very tiny little roads through some lovely little villages and farms as there was heavy traffic on the main motorway which tom tom live had picked up on, but we half ignored, then it tried to put us back on the road where you couldn’t so I ended up navigating using the tom tom in map mode! That was fun. Eventually got home about 1330, unpacked and went through my photo’s. A great trip, learnt a few things to make the trip better for another time and a great time was had
 
Initially the plan was to set off 1630 Friday after work, arrive 2030, set up camp and enjoy a catch up with my lboro uni mates. Although as it was a bank holiday, I looked at the traffic map, and decided that 3 hours of delays on route isn’t great, so I’d go home first, have tea then set off….traffic was still solid on the M25, so in the end I slept at home and left at 0530am Saturday Morning, arriving at Margam at 0900 and had a traffic trouble free journey eventually. Although the moment I entered Wales, it got properly wet!
When I arrived, hooked up with the lboro lot and we headed round to support Jessie racing in the elite female race, took a few photo’s, got soaked and found out the course was pretty much just slippy slippy mud! Jessie came 8th.
    
We were chatting with Joolze for a bit round the course, and I agreed to do a lap of the course with a camcorder mounted on my handlebars. My race started at 1230, I set out on a practice lap at just after 1200 with the camcorder, felt ok, then up the first climb instantly felt I had no power and started going Dizzy, I clearly hadn’t recovered from being ill thursday, and I’d picked up a cold somehow that morning when I woke up. I carried on round the lap, still feeling weak, the course was pretty difficult being pure mud, off camber, in a groove that if you touched the edge the bike would squirm. I crashed twice and bailed once..interesting. So I made the decision not to race as I didn’t have the strength to get round, let alone race in these conditions. I didn’t get back round to the arena in time for the start anyway! So I watched the race, had a nice cup of tea courtesy of my camcorder duties and saw a few of my friends do well. It was slightly annoying being at the sidelines, because I could have got some points for just finishing the race – oh well. Highlights for me include Nick Craig racing with the elites and getting 3rd, Harry Penn came 5th, Toby Rose 13th and Sam Roberts 17th – good work lads. Shout out to James Williams who was riding really well, then snapped his chain.
   
   
With that over with, we all went off to Pizza hut, had a pizza, came back and hung around in Dave’s bell tent. Had some sleep and the next day we were greeted to some lovely sunshine. Dave and Shep were doing the Marathon, I felt a bit rubbish still, so I went round to Afan with Matt and Mike, we went at a gentle pace round the wall, had some fun, took some photo’s and a generally nice day riding the trails in the sun. Highlight for me was seeing the family going round the Wall (red / black run), and they had their 6 year old child riding with them – I don’t think I could barely ride at 6!
   
   
   
After that fun, I headed home. Felt terrible by the time I was home, spent Bank holiday Monday in Bed! So as far as bank holidays go, being ill is rubbish, but I managed to have a bit of fun which is cool. BC Report here, Joolze’s photo’s here and race results here.
More of my photo’s here and here.
Last weekend was the BUCS Road Race and the AU Ball. Lots happened!
BUCS RR
On the Friday before the Road Race, I got phoned at work, and it suddenly turns out that I’m lead car for the Road Race! I turned up at Mike’s Friday night. Saturday Morning we rock up, pick up everyone, I’d managed to get Emily to stop me getting bored driving round as lead car. Highlights of the Road Race include the ladies main group sailing past men that had been dropped within the first half of the lap, Jessie got 2nd in the Womens Road Race, and Jack Adams got 4th for Loughborough in the Mens Road Race and Loughborough won the team medal. I took a few photo’s once I’d finished being lead car, you can see them here.
   
   
AU Ball
So, when I got back from the AU Ball, had a cup of tea round Emily’s, got back to Mike’s…I realised I hadn’t got my dinner jacket with me…and it was about 1730 in the evening! I found out Matt had brought up two sets of Jacket and Trousers, so thankfully I could borrow them, I then shot off to tesco at warp speed and managed to get hold of a shirt and tie for a tenner – crises averted…I had a problem finding a belt to keep the trousers up, but I was presentable for the Ball! We met everyone, the Ball was amazing, good company, occasional free champers, cabaret girls, pole dancers, nice setting, helium balloons that we breathed in, food, live music, and general fun, not forgetting that Wendy and Mike got it on again. Here’s a selection of photo’s, more are here, and I think Mike stuck a load of them on Facebook.
   
   
   
So, a good night. When Matt and I finally got back to Mike’s at 3 something am, we walked into the guest room where we were staying, it was dark and qiuet, switched on the light and had to promptly switch the light off and ran out of the room scarred for life, why Mike couldn’t have gone back to his own room with Wendy, no-one knows!
At 11am the next day, we thought it was a good idea to go for a fun little MTB ride. We went off to Whitwick where we played a game of what looks a bit technical, steep or rocky bit slightly rideable. I was doing ok on my Singelspeed Rigid, until I stacked it on something a little bit steep. I then borrowed Mike’s Cannondale Prophet, and promptly flew down every other possible descent thrown at me – I easily won this game, it was great fun, and easy peasy on Mike’s bike! I got back home not too late, parked up on my drive, and felt soo tired, I went to bed at 2030 Sunday evening! I’m not as young as I used to be, therefore I will not be drinking anymore this week!
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