Dusty trails!

Now I'm no racer these days so, as a break from running the Yeti demo van to various races and events, I headed off to the Sierra Nevada mountins in Southern Spain.
On a pal's recommendation I went with Ciclo Montana, the longest established mtb holiday company in Spain. Lisa, my better half, had been out with them last year and had raved about her holiday ever since and, after many weekends in muddy UK fields, I was eagerly awaiting it.

Right from the off it was a perfect mix of lovely weather, great company and food mixed with some ace technical singletrack riding. For anyone looking for a riding trip away from the more obvious Alpine areas, I would highly recommend it - the riding is true 'big' xc riding with long climbs (or sometimes minibus lifts!) followed by seemingly endless techy, rocky and dusty singletrack descents. Luckily modern trail bikes such as the 575 from Yeti make such riding so much easier, light enough to make the climbs a breeze but enough travel to rip up the downhills!

If you fancy some ace riding, check out these guys
www.ciclomontana.com
Stu

Midlands Champs - Round 2: Hanchurch

As some of you might know both Martyn and myself (matt) live very close to Hanchurch and in the small period of time when it’s not like a bog or overgrown with brambles there is some amazing natural and man made single track some of it built by our very own Martyn (Dibley) who is the course designer for this event.

Last year was the first time there’s been an event at Hanchurch and it was met with glowing reports with the only ‘a nice to have’ was bigger climbs and descents… (The descents I can understand, but climbs… Please).

Race day and with it come my hangover, the sun and a feeling its going to be a long day… As I’m in masters I don’t start until 2 so I strolled over around 12ish to find Martyn standing in the arena with a massive grin on his face, its seems he’s built a proper technical course and some of the ‘roadie’ mountain bikers have asked for their money back due to it being to technical… The comment which kinda summed it up for me came from one of the stalls: “Courses have got to easy these days and it’s nice to see a proper mountain bike course again… I’d be too ashamed to ask for my money back if I couldn’t ride it!!!”

As I wasn’t sure of the course a couple of us went for a wonder around. (Stu the Yeti rep on a fully ridged bike). The course consisted of kick ass single track, small rock gardens, linking sections of fire road, two VERY fast decants and a stinker of a climb… A proper mountain biker’s course!!!

Start Line: And the only plan I had was ‘get into the single track first’ and take advantage of knowing some (not all) of the trails but the only flaw was a 1mile fire trail and a missive climb to get to the first section. With the sound of the gun we were off, I slipped into 3rd place and held the wheel of the guy in front until the top of the last climb and made a do or die attack for the single track just beating the 1st place rider. Like a dream I managed to open up a massive lead to the point I couldn’t see second place that was until my hangover truly kicked in along with cramp and I went backward on the start of lap 2 dropping 6 places…

Screaming friends at the side of the track were great motivation and with my second wind coming at the end of lap three I managed to claw my way back up to 4th only narrowly missing out on a podium for the race. On a bright side this was the midlands champs I didn’t go away empty handed, I picked up 2nd place with was a nice bonus.

Martyn and Christian didn’t have any better luck, Martyn broke his front mech and was stuck in big ring where as Christian had been suffering all week with the after affects of all that rain at Bristol the week before; but he still managed to finish high enough in the race to get 1st place in the Midlands Champs – Expert cat.

Next race in 3rd round on the Nationals with the National Marathon champs the next day… See you there.

Bristol Bikefest

I’ve been going to Bristol Bike fest for the last 5 years and it’s always been one of the highlights of my racing calendar and this year was no exception even though we were taking a ‘Band aid’ team (2 members were missing due to work commitments).
Each year the as part of the race briefing the organiser tells us how he sold his soul to the Devil for good weather but this year I think he’ll be after a refund !!! Friday night shortly after putting up my tent up the heavens opened and it rained all night made worse by finding out my tent wasn’t waterproof! (Sitting in your tent race morning with water dripping into my cereal really isn’t the way you want to motivate yourself)

Come start time the rain had stopped and the sun was trying to come out but it didn’t make that much difference for the people picked for the honour of first lap as the open sections of the course were water logged… We gave as our normal level of team support (laughed our heads off) as our first rider splashed through the muddy field into a respectable 7th place. As time went on the course dried really well just leaving the odd sketchy rock and by lunch time we’d made it up to 3rd, fighting for 2nd.
With just a couple of laps to go we were down 3 mins on 2nd due to race traffic and bad light so we decided to put the two full time yeti members out for the final laps to see if we could make the time up and even though we set the fastest laps of the event we missed out on 2nd place by a matter of 20 seconds finishing 3rd, what made it worse is we were friends with the 2nd place team and beers were on us !!!

For those of you who don’t know the format of Bristol bikefest its split into two days worth of racing and our original plan were to stick around for Sunday’s 6hr race but as all of my kit was soaked form my leaking tent I had to bail… I do know Ruth our female team member entered the mixed pairs and got a very respectable finish in 4th on a very muddy course, so well done Ruth.
While I’m congratulating people I just want to thank Daz and Patrick our two friends who were roped in at the 11th hour for doing such a cracking job, well done lads…
If anyone see’s us at events please come and have a chat, we’ve usually get a Yeti easy up and you’ll find us chillin out there…