The Development Racing: Sun-Ringle

Showing posts with label Sun-Ringle. Show all posts

Wednesday, 20 May 2015

UK Gravity Enduro Season Opener - Triscombe, May 9th-10th 2015

I was delighted when The Daddy, Steve Parr, announced that for 2015 one of the venues for the UKGE was going to be Triscombe, a mere fifty-minute drive from where I live! This area is an understated biking gem hidden deep in the South-West of England where you can ride as hard as you like, I love it there and if you can’t find it I will happily show you around one day!

Living in the South-West I am blessed with great areas to ride my Orange Five. Bike Park Wales, Afan or anywhere in Breacon Beacons are all within two hours, however I'm normally found at the Haldon Forest Park where I can ride straight from my work door and be there in 45 minutes, awesome! If that doesn't tick your boxes the stunning scenery of Dartmoor or Exmoor surely will especially with their great surfer's coastlines thrown in for a good measure! A lot of the people I ride with rave about how sensational Scotland is however my area is proof that you can always find great trails to ride with like minded people, and this is true wherever you are, the fact the UKGE came to Triscombe is proof of this.

I arrived ready to practice the race course and transitions on the Friday, the weather was fairly bleak with fine rain and low lying cloud. Stage one and two both had freshly cut sections which, although were a riders paradise whilst the racing was underway, were as sticky as hell in practise! Both of these routes were going to see a lot of traffic with being raced upon across the whole weekend and I liked everything about these stages, tight, twisting turns, jumps and berms! I rode the transitions over to stages three and four, the stage three transition was the longest at 45 minutes and was a breeze compared to the hour plus transition over at Afan! The route here took you along a beautiful ridge where you were rewarded with sweeping views over the distant Taunton and despite the hard pedalling these stages were great fun with plenty of airtime to be had off all the jumps.

Race Day Saturday, despite being so close to home I was slightly less organised with food for this event than I normally am, I didn’t panic though as I knew the awesome Billy Can Catering team would be on site. And sure enough a little while later I was patting my tummy after a huge bowl of their creamy porridge laced with some cheeky chocolate buttons, I was now set up for the day, bring it on!

My seeding run was clean and I felt good on the bike taking the steep freshly cut section in my stride, with hindsight though I should have pushed harder on the flat section to make more time. The second run on Saturday went really well too, well until the end when I lost concentration and caught my handlebars on a tree seeing my catapulting skywards and, thankfully, landing softly in a large bush. I've only just got all the blasted ticks off my body!

Race day Sunday, I was pleased with my first two runs which went fairly smoothly, I got some mint air-time off some great little jumps and really enjoyed my riding. No dropped chains this time thanks to the Rideworks enduro chainguide which I am race-testing for them.

Ooooh, shiny!

I was absolutely flying on stage three when I clipped another tree with my wide bars and lost a load of time trying to re-align my cockpit. Struggling, I cruised down the fourth stage not wanting to push it with wonky steering and feeling absolutely gutted with that carry on. I finished the weekend taking 13th place in the Elite women category.

Wonky bars aside it was a wonderful event and I for one am grateful to the amount of hard work being put in behind the scenes to stage them. It is a hard kick in the privates then, as some of you are aware, when learning that so many bikes were stolen by professional bike thieves that evening, it really beggars belief and I hope that they're caught sooner rather than later. Maybe we could crowd-fund some replacements for the riders, just an idea?

It was lovely to see so many friendly faces from last season and, especially as a PE teacher, it is great to see so many young people coming into the sport, I was really impressed with Tyde D'Souza and Martha Gill.

A big shout out to Steve Parr for hosting such an awesome event and again to sing the praises of the little guys like The Billy Can Catering and the other unsung heroes behind the scenes who help to make the events what they are. Well done guys, see you all at the next round.

Robyn

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Borderline Events - English Downhill Championship, Hamsterley Forest, 10th May 2015

Nick: Although Hamsterley Forest's my local riding spot I hadn't been there for a fair while and was looking forward to seeing how the track chosen by the Borderline Events posse flowed, quite literally at first as it turned out.

It's a fairly short course by today's standards however it's physically demanding with no time to rest between sections, you take one big breath at the start gate and then it's a full on hammering until you cross the finish line. Guess Danny Hart was at home with the weather that morning as it was absolutely pouring down, I was being kept warm and dry under my Berghaus coat so there was no grumbling from me mind!

'Tommy Gun' Newrick arrived early Saturday morning and walked the new section of the track, he was at home from the word go as he practically lives on these courses! Tom's had the new Manitou Revox shock fitted to his FTW, no bedding in required he was straight off ripping the course up with his mates.

Both of us got more than enough runs in, the course is a game of two halves, keep the cadence up down the top section and then keep it loose across the technical sections down below. It's a hard course to make up time due to its short length even if you merely clipped a pedal that would be the end of any winning run there and then. Both of us were running Sun-Ringle's 650b A.D.D. Pro wheels for a bit of advantage over the rocks, power to the dark side of the force.

As Saturday progressed the track was drying out nicely making it a claggy in places I was building up pace and starting to blitz my lines. Tom was absolutely nailing the course down, six runs in and he was on fire!

Come Sunday morning I squeezed in three steady runs and chilled out 'til race time. Tom was a purple and red blur as he shot past me whilst I spectated on his first race run, I later learned he accidentally unclipped from his pedals before the table top and couldn't clip back in, unlucky. I stalled near the finish on my first run and turned the air blue as it had all gone perfectly up until that point. Hit my second run full on but just couldn't make up the time and took the fourteenth place in the Masters.

Tom had a little embarrassment through the new section on his second run when his foot slipped off the pedal, that said he still crossed the finish line in a respectable 7th place in the youths.

Next up, the big bad Fort Bill with the British Downhill Series.

You can follow The Development Racing Team's shenanigans on their Facebook page here: The Development Racing Team

Wednesday, 1 August 2012

British Downhill Series, Glencoe 8th July 2012

Here's Nicklaus with the Glencoe British Downhill Series weekend run down:

I was back up at Glencoe for the BDS, and back from my holiday where I may have overdone the free food and drink *pats tummy*. Can you believe it, it wasn't raining....unlike the rest of the UK which was being flooded! The track was looking pretty dry compared to my last visit and was also taped out a little differently which opened up a lot of sections. I was also debuting the new Development team jerseys, and I have to say they do look bloody good, yes, I know, such modesty!

Come practice on Saturday I was really stoked to ride in the dry. My first run didn't go quite to plan, my rear shock blew up through the rock garden and I had to take the walk of shame to the chair lift station and took the trip back down to the pits. A quick dash back to the car I soon had my old shock fitted to the bike so I hadn't missed too much practice time, phew!

Photo copyright of Ian Linton

As I progressed through my first main run I began to notice that although the track was much dryer then normal it didn't have a massive amount of grip. However the bike was riding great and the new Boxxer fork upgrade from the guys at TF Tuned were working awesomely, taking all the huge impacts with a plomb. It was apparent where the toughest parts of the track were as there were a lot of riders stopped at the side trying to scout the best line. The two steep and rocky shoots where causing the most trouble, lots of crashing, lots of punctures, lots of damaged bikes! I found my bike was more than capable of doing its job and tracking well through the sections, this is one of Frank Wadelton's legacy's....he knows his shit when it comes to frame designing and building! Glencoe is very steep, very rough and very fast, I had 100% trust in my Sun-Ringle wheels and Hayes Primes brakes, no dings, no buckling, no fading, no arm-pump, everything was working flawlessly.

Practice went pretty well, stoked with the bike's handling. Come race day my qualifying run went well, made a couple of mistakes but nothing out of the ordinary and knew where I could improve.

Photo copyright of Ian Linton

I was really motivated for the race run, feeling good and the bike was riding perfectly. I set out of the start gate spinning it, took a chunk out of the ground with my Burgtecs, get in! Blitzed along on the top section and hit the the more difficult parts of the track bang on. Came into a right hander half-way down where my front wheel washed out on some loose rocks and I hit the deck, Couldn't lose the time and I knew I was pinning it, jumped straight back on galloping the FTW down the hill like a demon possessed determined to make up the lost time. When I got to the open section near the bottom before the big ski jump, a spectator was shouting "Rider!" at me so I pulled to the side as I thought with my crash the next rider had caught me. As the rider got closer he was telling me to keep going, turns out I had passed him further up and he had caught me up after my crash, bloody spectators, god! I got back on the track and sprinted through the finish line. I was really hacked off by the incident, by pulling over for no reason lost me some considerable time. Taking the crash into consideration and the pulling over for no reason I still got 20th place, however it's left me with a big 'What might have been', sure, it's all part and parcel of racing. I was just so gutted, I loved the course, the bike was handling it so amazingly well and I was gunning for the podium. Gutted!

Tuesday, 31 July 2012

Introducing the 2012 team racing jerseys!

Stand forth Brian at The Cycle Jersey and David Keningale for helping with the design and manufacturing! Nick's tops have now been debuted! I think you'll agree, they look stunning!