Welsh Champs 24th June Rheola

Saturday morning was wet and windy and waterproofs were on for practice. Practice was slow going because the buses couldn’t get up the road to the finish but later proved themselves on Sunday with fast moving short queues throughout practice. The whole day was wet on Saturday but dry tyres were kept on as the course contained more rocks than mud. In fact the rocks were more grippy in the wet. I got only 4 practice runs in before chainless seeding runs. Seeding runs went really well and I qualified 1st. It was raining for seeding runs and for most of Saturday night.

A Pierce Cycles rider had a very bad crash into a tree in practice and was unconscious and stopped breathing. He was rushed to hospital by air ambulance. News came in on Sunday that he had been conscious again and was being cared for after a long night of intensive care. This was a huge shock and scare for everyone at the event and was a reminder of how dangerous the sport is. He is now making a recovery and I wish him a good recovery at that.

I awoke to the sound of rain on the van and consequently made it that bit harder to get out of my sleeping bag. I had a further 2 runs in the morning practice. It stopped raining for practice runs and was sunny for the rest of the day. The track was still running with water and mud until it got all cloggy and was even harder to ride some of the sections. I got kitted up for race runs and got my bike clean and working again. My first run was pretty average and I came down in 2nd place just 2 seconds behind Gareth Brewin. It only got dryer throughout the day and despite it being cloggy on the middle section the top was dry and made up time making it faster and faster. My second run went better and a lot faster but I caught up the person in front of me and lost some valuable seconds in the end section. I went 3 seconds faster getting a 3min 39second run down. This gave me a comfortable 2nd place.

Here are a few pictures of the weekend:


-Your 2007 Welsh Champions

-Josh Brycland fastest time of the day winning the new belt

-the Youth podium

- breaking bumps were huge!

- mud, mud and a little more mud

- this section was probably the hardest one... can you see why?

- drop off of the road

-step down to root section

-north shore makes it easy to keep speed through sections

-rooty corner after north shore

-sketchy double nearing the end of the course










Thanks to Muddyfox, Rezurgence.com, Lifestyle Ford and Mojo suspension.

Bull Track race 3 June 17th

Race day saw some good riders in the line up, with a track that would take a bit of everything to win on. The top section consisted of field corners as usual. It was really fast and on the edge, especially the step-down onto the road with increasing speeds of around 25mph! After the step down there were more field corners with a sketchy rock section going into the bottom woods. The bottom woods were very hard to pedal on because of the soft clay despite the beautiful weather. Nevertheless, everyone had the same disadvantage. After switchbacks, jumps and pedalling, you hit the take off to a 10 foot double. It was extremely important to clear this with enough speed to carry speed to the finish line. As usual the tag-timing men were at the end with their National timing system up and running.

Racing didn’t go to plan for me. I was 2 - 3 seconds off of the winning time of the day. I still had some really enjoyable runs. I won the youth category and Chris Sinden got the fastest time of the day riding his hard tail.

Here are a few pictures of the racing, venue and results;




-This is me over the fast field jump half way through the field.



-This is Mike showing us how to charge through the rock section.


























-The senior catagory podium - Chris Sinden with the fastest time of the day!


















-The vets podium














-The juvenile podium














-The junior podium, Sam Shucksmith looking more than excited to have won!












-The youth podium - with my nice new race kit on











Thanks to Muddy fox (notice the new race kit), Rezurgence.com, Lifestyle Ford and Mojo and Alva for hosting another excellent race!

P.O.R.C. race June 3rd 2007

Bill had put together a very tech track for this race; No huge jumps this time. More of a pick the line and attempt to stay on it! Any mistakes would cost you time and be difficult to make it up again. The track had plenty of scope to go wide on the open or off camber corners and some good undulating ground sections, pushing the bike about unless you stayed on the fine line through several tricky areas. Frustration set in further down the course; Almost all the flat out lines taped off to make it more tricky to ride the faster you went. The track kept your mind occupied all the way down.
After last weekends National going so well, I wanted to set the fastest time of the day. Roger and Sam had other ideas. At the end of the race we were all within a second of each other, just a few hundreths of a second between us. Roger had managed to squeeze under 47 seconds with a 46.9sec to take the overall win. Spot on Roger!Nice one.

Here are a few photo’s from the race:

- Start to a beautiful day

- Top 3 in youth(left) and 1st and 2nd in junior(right)

- Oli Burton on the way to the 3rd spot in junior.

- Vet podium; 3rd - a very happy Dad! 2nd - Rob Brooks and the winner - Ian Wilkinson


- Youth podium; 3rd - Liam Barnes! - Back from a broken leg on New Years Eve, 2nd Jack Chapman, 1st - me


- Junior podium; 3rd Tart Boy, 2nd Oli Burton and the winner Sam Shucksmith


- Senior podium; 3rd Bill, 2nd Gary Drake and the winner with the fastest time of the day... Roger Marsh!








Thanks to Muddyfox, Lifestyle Ford, Rezurgence.com and Liam Barnes for supurb hospitality