The Borrowdale Shakedown - time to put the Orange Fives through their paces

Every couple of weeks I get the urge to go and ride in the Lakes, I just love the whole getting away from it all and smashing some loose wide open lines with my mates. Borrowdale is the perfect playground with which to get to grips on our new Orange Fives and so, once some phone calls were made, a motley bunch of loveable rogues were soon put together and we hit the A66 across the Pennines.

The warmer Spring weather was starting to hit and it was soon to be a really nice day. Rather than starting at Keswick, i.e. the way all the guide books recommend, we started at the Swinside Inn.  This meant that we thankfully missed the big road section and could instead go up and over the gorgeous Catbells twice - a fully stacked day of rock strewn climbs and descents galore, perfect for seeing how our new bikes handled.

Getting up and over Catbells isn’t easy, a technical climb to start you off where you need to get that rear wheel dug right in and then as it gets steeper the bike goes up and over the shoulders.  

I found my Five Diva easy to carry, it’s a lighter frame to what I was riding previously and this in turn held more advantages later in the day. You see the descent over the other side is absolutely nuts, really steep with very tight corners.  My Five skipped its way merrily down the descent with aplomb, the combination of the 27.5 wheels being fully armed with the new enduro Michelin Wild Rock’R2 tyres and the light frame made for excellent handling and traction.  

Having said that you can’t rest on your laurels down here, I did take a spill or two such is the technicality of the terrain, Steve was the only one who made it down clean, whooping away as he went.

All too soon we were crossing over the bottom of Derwent Water to the start of the big climb up to Watendlath, ready for the next descent…… rocks, rocks and more rocks in no particular order. The last time I rode down there I was on 26 inch wheels, these new 27.5 puppies quite literally swallowed the trail up.  Still getting used to the Diva, which was the whole point of the day, I made a note to drop the front end a little bit when I got home, just to balance the front to back weight out a little, other than that I couldn’t fault the frame.

We had a quick ice cream stop at the picturesque Rosthwaite, for our defence they make their own gorgeous ice cream here and it would e a shame not to try the local delicacies! 

Back on the bikes and up the next mega climb to the Honister pass. From here it’s a U-turn into a traverse and then down another sick loose descent to Grange.

I was pretty spent by this point but it wasn’t over, another hike a bike up Catbells was definitely worth it for the descent on the other side, I came a cropper again towards the bottom getting my bike tangled up amidst rocks and boulders.  But hey, still smiling, that’s the adrenaline buzz for you.  

 Loved the day so much we all went back up with a bigger bunch the following weekend, in the snow!

All in, the Diva is a very agile bike, I need to drop the front a little bit but it’s more or less dialled in from the word go, definitely benefits from a dropper seat post I must add.  Acceleration is good and it feels really stable in high speed rock strewn turns, I’m looking forward to railing this baby at the enduro races.  Look out!

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Durty Events, the Aviemore Triathlon, 11th August 2013

.....Looking back, I remember standing at the side of the loch on that Sunday morning thinking "Who the hell's crazy idea was this?" and then I realised..... it was mine!!......

It all started with a conversation at work over lunch when a few of us decided we might give the Aviemore Triathlon a go.  We are all fairly sporty in some way or another from Donna who is massively into Cross-Fit to my good friend Helen who practically has 2 wheels attached to her and proved to be somewhat of an underdog when it came to the swim.  If there was one place to do your first ever Triathlon why not travel 5 hours to beautiful Aviemore and do it properly!  Oh yes!

L-R Dan, Donna, Jenni, Helen and Angie... all set!

We road tripped it up there on Friday night and arrived at the lodge fairly late after a 5hr drive but still managed to watch ‘Dirty Dancing’ on VHS, which was a great start to the weekend in my book!

.... "Nobody puts Baby in a corner"....

Saturday morning we grabbed our wet suits and made our way to the Badaguish Outdoor Centre race venue at the foot of the Cairngorms.  Since none of us bar Jenni had ever swam properly in open water, or for that matter in a wet suit, we thought it best to dip our toes first.  For some reason I hadn’t thought about the fact that it would be so dark when I put my head in the water, I was used to the clear blue chlorinated water of swimming pools so that was a shock to the system.

The X-Men!

Brrrrrrrrr.........

The bike course had been marked out and the eager beavers that we are wanted to suss it out see what we had to contend with the next day.  I’d decided to take my hardtail and hoped I had made the right choice.  Donna at heart is a roadie and was braving it on a borrowed mountain bike.  We rode the 14km course and most of it was fire-road however there was a sweet bit of technical and rooty singletrack through the woods where I hoped I would be able to make up time on my race run.

The early morning Sunday start soon came around, the weather was good and we were all raring to go. We lined our bikes up at the edge of the loch and stepped into our wetsuits, suddenly it all felt very 'real' as I looked around to see lots of uber-serious athletes, some who were obviously in it for the win! It was at this point where the old nerves started to kick in for us all and there were lots of toilet trips, which is pretty annoying when you're wearing a full wetsuit I must add!

The swim was a deep water start which meant that you had to swim out till you couldn’t touch the bottom.  The whistle went and there was a whole lot of splashing, I lost sight of Helen, Jenni and Dan, in fact I lost sight of everything whilst I fought to take my steamed-up goggles off, flapping around like a seal.  Maybe it was a bad idea to start at the very front when you can’t swim for shit!  

You can't deny the scenery.....

Half a mile through the water later my feet touched the bed of the loch, up I stood and quickly scrambled over to my bike feeling unbalanced and delirious, peeling my Speedo wetsuit off and grabbing my helmet.  I could hear Donna next to me getting changed as well but the others were long gone.  This was my only chance to pull any time back and I started to pass a good few riders.  

Photo copyright of Peter Diender

Only a 6k run left and then it was all over, yes, six more kilometers left, oh my legs!  Some how I managed to get lost with another girl near the end and lost a load of time, later it turned out that Jenni did this as well, the route obviously needed better sign posting!

C'mon Angie.......

I crossed the line, utterly spent, cheered on by my buddies at the finish!  The swim had to be the hardest but we were all buzzing and can’t wait to do another one!  The results came out and Helen ‘underdog’ Gaskell totally smashed it taking a podium with her 3^rd place position! 

Well done to Helen for her first Triathlon, so happy for her!  

The results within category’s are below:

Helen 3rd out of 32

Jenni  6th out of 32

Angela  11th out of 32

Donna 21st out of 32

Dan 23rd out of 34

All over, still smiling!

At last, the new 2013 racing strips are all set....

Been working hard with Brian from The Cycle Jersey to get the team's 2013 racing strips sorted, sadly we had a few delays and a completely incompetent courier company to deal with but we got there in the end......

From the template....

To the finished garments.....

And not forgetting some rather funky road jerseys which will soon be winging their way over to Frank Wadelton in the States.....

In order to get them done in a rush I missed the cut off point to have the team's funky sun-burst d-logo effect added to the panels, rest assured it will be back next year!

Please step forward the team's 2013 sponsors to take a bow:

FTW Industries

Berghaus Outdoor Wear

TF Tuned Suspension

Rock Shox Forks

Ride 100% Goggles

Urge Helmets

Thomson 

Burgtec

Powa Products Dfender Mud Guards

Hayes Components

Sun-Ringle Wheels

Goodridge Hydraulic Hose

SDG Saddles

X-Fusion Shox

Oury Grips

The Cycle Jersey

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UK Gravity Enduro Rnd 3, Hamsterley Forest, 25th & 26th May 2013

Hey everyone, it's Angie here, let's get y'all up to speed......

After a wet and cold start across the first two rounds it was great to see that Steve Parr had ordered in the sunshine for Round 3 of the UK Gravity Enduro Series at Hamsterley Forest, County Durham, well done that man!

Hamsterley is our local stomping ground being only 30 minutes away.  It is the first place where I learned how to ride and indeed how to crash a bike..... back in 2005 on the back of an Intense M1, hardcore!  Even now I still love the place, there’s something there for everyone; cross-country trails, downhill track, dirt jumps a-plenty and one of the country's best 4-cross courses.

Steve and I were aiming to get some practice in on Friday afternoon but due to a few mechanical issues with Steve’s bike we never got out, it was actually chucking it down as well…it’s grim up North!  I was actually pretty happy that it was raining though, some of the tracks at Hamsterley get seriously loose in the dry, it’s like riding on marbles.  Fun to ride in general but scary as hell to race on.

(Photo copyright of Doc Ward)

Saturday morning dawned and after a good sleep we got to Hamsterley early to practice the five stages and allow enough rest time before seeding in the afternoon.  We started off by smashing Stage 4, called 'Special K/Brain Freeze', it's pretty trail centre-esque, with it's, dare I say, forged trails but it's also really fun to ride with a steep and sharp up hill sprint in the middle.  I remember last year when T-Mo overtook me up there, like a goddamn express train, she's so powerful! 

Stage 1, the 'Beehives', was next, this one has long been my favourite secret track in the forest.  A secret no longer after a National Enduro event has flung its way down the hill.  It starts off with some mint off camber rooties, awesome in the wet, and then into a pedally tight n'twisty section.  It flows really well and is a total hoot to ride. 

You need to head across the river for Stage 2's aptly named 'Route 666', by this time it was getting on for late morning and the sun definitely had his hat on, ooopht, sweaty!!  Stage 2 starts off being really flippin' pedally alongside a wall before dropping down into the rut-strewn tree cover.  There had been a new wooded loamy section cut in which I was loving however Steve couldn’t get his wide bars through easily and he was getting a bit sweary, hahaha!  Next up was Stage 5, the 'Transmission' route.  (Please don’t ask why we practiced in such a random order!).  The 'Transmission' is the longest, fastest and most Strava’d stage out of them all, it's an all out modern trail centre track.  You should be able to find it easily on YouTube if you fancy a look.

Seeding runs started about 3pm, the girls were up first, it’s always interesting to see where people are going to place. Steve was nervous too and didn’t feel like he was on it, possible down to clipping his bars in practise.  He placed 3rd in Masters though and I was 4th in the Elite so both of us went home feeling pretty happy. 

We got some practice in on Stage 3 before we left, this was the downhill stage taking in the old NPS track, a great track starting off at the top of the 4-cross with a tricky rocky and rooty left hander in the middle.  (Lee here: that ain't the old NPS track, the original old-school NPS track no longer exists due to forestry cutting *sad face*).

(Photo copyright of Doc Ward)

Sunday was another hottie, I'm not complaining at all though, not after all the winter snows we had during the so-called spring!  The girls were off at 9.30am and Steve at 10am so we were up with the larks again.

I would say that my stages went well, a few messed up lines and a couple of stalls but nothing serious until Stage 5, same track as seeding.  I felt like I was going way faster but went into a corner on 'Nitrous' too hot and rode off the back of the berm. Absolutely gutted!!  I still finished 1 second faster than seeding so it was a shame that I crashed with a "what might have been..." looming over in my head.  Steve had good runs but felt like he could have gone a bit quicker on some sections, he changed his tyres between seeding and race run which was probably a bad choice in hindsight!  They may have been grippier but it looked like they slowed him down a tad.  This reflects what I was saying earlier, Hamsterley Forest is an awesome place to ride, yet its looks can be deceptive, you gotta know the type of trails you're gonna be riding to get the best of it all with good tyre choice.

We had to wait a few hours, impatiently I add, for overall times and positions.  Steve did mint with a 5th place, he could have done better as I said but he can't grumble with a category that big.  I came away with 4th in the Elite category and I must say I was flippin' buzzing!  I’m normally down the pack at this level but felt really happy to put in some respectable times this weekend.  Big thanks to Helen Gaskell’s tyre choice advice I reckon!

All in all a mint weekend, can’t wait to ride my bike again.  Summer is here at last .......touch wood!!

Angie xx

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Step back in time to the Haglofs Open5 Series Round 5, Threshfield, Yorkshire, 3rd March 2013

Angie here m'loves.....

So there I was, sat one evening looking at dates and planning the year ahead when Jenni came across the Haglofs Open 5 series.....  

We were pretty excited straight away, it was new and we were inexperienced in this type of thing but thought it sounded fun and that we would have time to get fit for it.  We entered the Yorkshire Dales event which started at Threshfield, only 2 hours from home.

A few weeks passed and race day came, Jenni rocked up at my house at 6.30am(!!) and we made our way over through all the twisty weaving little roads.  As we drove into the car park it was full of lycra clad athletes limbering up.  It didn’t make us feel nervous at all!!!  Yeah right!

Got ourselves to registration and figured out the format of the race.  We were given 2 maps, each covering different areas, one was the mountain bike route and the other the run route.  Each route has checkpoints laid out across the mapped area, some points are worth more than others and the aim of the game is to collect as many points as possible within the 5 hours.

Before the start we sat and planned which routes to take, however as you leave the start line you are given a list of checkpoints that are not getting used which means you have to quickly adjust your route on the fly.  We decided to start the run first and covered approximately 12 miles collecting all but  two checkpoints.  Girls done good!! 

We ran into the transition area, quickly changed shoes and got our helmets on.  Away we went off up a big climb onto the moors, trying to remember to keep drinking as my legs were cramping up.  It probably didn’t help that I was on a borrowed bike that was too big for me either.  Time was ticking and we had two hours left after getting slightly lost at one point, made it back to base with 10 mins to spare, phew!  No time penalty for us!

It was such a relief that it was over, we both lay on the grass catching our breath and relaxing after a five-hour relentless race, our first adventure race complete and with massive grins on our faces!

It turns out we got a 4^th place in the female pairs category.  How cool is that!  We’ve definitely been bitten by the bug and are hungry for more, it’s such a great concept and the not to mention the scenery was amazing! 

See you next time….

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