Scottish Downhill Series - Glencoe 23rd - 24th May 2015

The Scottish Downhill juggernaut rolled into Glencoe, a course I've done well on in the past and I was hungry for it.  Set off from home on Friday afternoon and arrived at dinner time, got everything sorted out and heading up for a track walk.  The course had hardly changed from previous events with the exception of resurfacing at the bottom while up top was boggy in places and I was hoping it would dry out before practice got underway.

Saturday morning and I woke up in an oven with the sun's rays beating down on my tent, sorted my kit, signed on, fitted my number board and with a cooked breakfast in my stomach I headed up to the gondola for the first runs.

The first few were good, got all my lines dialled in and my FTW was on rails feeling perfectly at home on the rough terrain, it caused me no problems all day.  Towards the end of practice I came to the most challenging part of the track and although pushing myself I was keeping the bike at a controlled pace when all of a sudden my front wheel washed out underneath me and I flipped off the bike smashing my knee up off a sharp rock.  Although I was wearing knee pads I couldn’t stand and had to sit trackside for a while.

The pain didn't subside so I cruised down to the car park to get it checked out, my knee had swollen up like a tennis ball and I had minimal movement in my leg. Absolutely gutted that this had happened, not only was I unable to race the next day but having gone to the A&E that evening I was advised that it would need time to heal and therefore I am not allowed to race the World Cup at Fort William, I am feeling absolutely devastated.

Jamie.

Scottish Downhill Series, Glencoe 20/05/2012

Nicklaus takes over again.....

Here's the scoop.

This was round 2 of the SDA up at Glencoe, close to Fort William where the weather had messed up the racing only a week earlier.  I am thankful to report that the weather outlook was much better for this weekend!

Photo courtesy and copyright of Ian Linton

I really like this track as it's steep, technical and scary, quite often people dont make it to race day! The track starts off fairly tame with a small amount of pedalling, then, like a rollercoaster, starts to get steeper with some fast switchback corners.  The steepness of the track continues to increase and it becomes rougher and rockier, it's important to keep your momentum whilst also controlling your speed.  Too fast and you'll crash, too slow and you'll crash, it's a fine line, lock your wheels up and you'll be having problems, you don't want to slam your body into these rocks that's for sure!  The new Hayes 'Prime' brakes were handling flawlessly, where some other systems would start to fade under the constant pressure the Prime's maintained their performance brilliantly.  

Photo courtesy and copyright of Ian Linton

The track continues down a couple of steep shoots then a very short straight that gives you about two seconds to sort yourself out until you drop into a really steep hairpin corner with a nasty compression at the bottom.  From here the speed really picks up, it's a case of holding on and staying off the brakes as you're merely the passenger.  There's no room for any mistakes, no matter how small, you'll be spat straight over the bars!  If you made it that far unscathed there was a tight hairpin into a massive booter-jump down the hill.  The jump was a bit daunting as it's completly blind and it wasnt until you took off that you could see where you needed to land....onto more rocks!  After this it was the last rocky straight towards the finish line.

Photo courtesy and copyright of Ian Linton

Although the new fork upgrades got a brief the weekend before this course would be the real test, along with running the new X-Fusion shock.  I was really happy with the performance of both particularly so as the track was rough as hell.

Nick's GoPro Footage from practise can be seen here: 

The weather improved across the weekend, when it came to the first race run I was really up for it.  Although having a clean run I knew I had to up the speed through some of the sections, this was confirmed when I saw the times.  My second run was much better and I finished in 9th place.  I was however a bit disappointed as there were a few people above me that I know I can beat.  Being back to full fitness I feel really good, the higher results should start coming in again and I'm moving forwards.

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