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…