Saturday saw the best street riders in Sheffield showing just how much fun can be had on a set of stairs… Dunk organised an epic street jam in Sheffield all in aid of raising some money for the Stephen Murray Fund, for those of you that haven’t heard Stephen Murray fell hard doing a double backflip on dirt and has damaged his spinal cord and vertebrae. You can read all about it on his website http://www.stephenmurray.org
Check out the video footage, thanks to Walsh for putting it together.
Will Swinden, 2nd on the day, 1st overall in the series in hardtail
Tim Pearson, 5th on the day, 3rd overall in Senior
James Swinden, 2nd on the day and 2nd overall in senior.
Also making the hardtail podium was Jolley from dirtyhalfpipe.co.uk in 5th place overall.
Great weekend, cool new track that was a bit of a mix between the old track and some new stuff. Brilliant crash of the weekend was watching Jolley slide of the side of the track and eject himself about 20ft down the hill through pine trees and brambles leaving his arm in a bit of an emo state, while rescuing Jolley, Jack Reading (well done Jack for the win) flew off the track and head butted a pine tree breaking his peak of his troy lee and getting it stuck under the chin piece blocking his vision. It nearly had me in tears from laughing.
Peaty and Rennie have both got some custom spray jobs on their V10’s just in time for Fort Bill. Mark Wilson from 2Wheelracer.com has been taking some sneeky photos on his mobile for you all to see.
That was one of the maddest tracks I have ever raced, I have ridden down steeper and more tech, but raced? It was only a 1:40 track for the top lads and boy was it steep.
It was none stop crashing for the majority of people, with the weekend starting out with a lad flipping over the bars on the steepest part of the track and head butting a tree, the medics were scared he could have damaged his neck and did a brilliant job of safely passing him in a stretcher up the hill, it took about 30 people to help move him the hill was that steep. Albeit an hour and a half later until riding started again.
Results for nocycling were:
James Swinden: 11th: 1:52:707
Tim Pearson: 18th: 1:55:923
Full Results:
http://www.mikrotime.com/mtb/nps2007/caersws207.html
Just to give you an idea of the track, this is a video of James doing the last 2 step downs into the field.
Big well done to James who came 4th Senior at the NPS downhill race this last weekend at Moelfre. Putting Nocycling.com up there with the top lads. Rob Warner must be feeling a bit gutted after giving James tuition in the MBUK competition only to see James beat him by 4 secs.
Why does fancy dress amuse me so much, I never thought I would have enjoyed an XC race that much. And followed by fantastic party with live bands. Have a look at the photos as they better represent the weekend than I can explain it. Look for the brilliant undertaker with coffin (he won the fancy dress) And peaty as a pirate with his not so optional peg leg, he dislocated his foot at Rehola, click here for the photos of it on stevepeat.com)
Its got to be the best race of the year, 1350 people racing a 2600 metre descent on a 32km track. Some people moan about it having uphills, which it has but how can any UK rider who push’s up wharnciffe, etc for 30min to get a 2min downhill run complain? When you get a 1 hour downhill with less than 10min of uphill?
The race runs with qualifying on the Saturday, setting 200 riders of on a 30min downhill every 20mins. The top 58 riders out of each qualifying then get placed in the final on sunday, the next 50 some get put in the promo final, then everyone out of this gets placed into the Mega Affinity they give you a timing chip and you start when ever you feel like it.
The qualifying for me this year was quite a lot easier than last as I was placed on the first row and by the first few corners I was in 3rd place, this was easily knocked down to 6th place on the uphills / flats but I never really got held up. Swinny did a top effort of setting of at the very back (he was late) and finishing in 27th. And with the Hemo’s starting last and finishing in 12th and 14th.
The final was just incredible, I had to be on the lift at 6am to go to the top, they have to do this to get the race started at 9am getting 400 odd people to the top and organised is not easy or quick. Arriving at the top of the mountain and watching the sun rise is something that not many people will ever get the chance to do without climbing or sleeping at the top.
When the race started it was only 5 deg C, so the 1.5km of snow was still hard packed and unbelievably fast, I would have loved to have known the top speed, I would not be surprised to see plus 50mph. Riding on snow is an experience that anyone that is good at riding should do, so much uncontrollable fun.
The track has just about every type of riding you can find, starting on snow, then onto the sheet ice of the glacier (this is a lot grippier than expected) onto rocks more rocks, off camber rocks, slippy rocks, sharp rocks, round rocks and loose rocks all on a some amazing single track that wraps around the side of the mountain, you then do a couple of uphills into some nice grassy corners. Arriving into a mini slopstyle park in Alp Dhuez just incase you want to throw some tricks for the kids. Followed by a long easy uphill followed by the steepest gut wrenching climb, followed by singletrack, grasy bermed turns, uphill roads, single tracks in the woods, followed by up/down/up/down/up/down (vomit) and finishes with some of the fastest best downhill you can ride, I think its because you get too tired to care you just go faster and faster and faster the trees become a blur so you don’t seem to care about hitting them. Then to finish it all off a 200m sprint (yea, right?) on the road to the finishing field. Ah the joys.
Final Positions:
46th - Tim Pearson (nocycling.com) - 57:57:340
101st - Ryan West - 1:04:05:340
103rd - Chris Pearson (splatshop.co.uk)- 1:04:41:810
158th - Joe Bowman (dirtyhalfpipe.co.uk) - 1:08:54:190
191st - James Swinden (nocycling.com) - 1:10:46:350 (with puncture)
Because of the rain that never seems to end at the moment, both Neil and Baino chickened out of what turned out to be quite a good weekend. It drizzled all day Saturday and the ground was slippy as, which lead to lots of funny bails and me hitting my head on a tree in my brand new Troy lee, boohoo!, just a crack in the peak, a dizzy head and the most bizzare conversation with a bloke:
him: “Ouch, that looked bad, are you ok?”
me (laid on floor): “Not bad cheers”
him: “Have you seen my bike?”
me: “Nope, why?, what?” - very dizzy and now confused
him: “I can’t find my bike”
him: “I put my bike down to walk the track and I can’t find it”
I was struggling to work out whether this was reality, so left him to it. I saw him later down in the bottom field:
me: “You find your bike?”
him: “Yea, after i put my bike down I must have walked up the track, I thought i had walked down it”
Classic, first time I have ever seen that happen!
Sunday was mainly sunshine, and a few showers, but the track had got very rutted and still as slippy. Most of the Youth / Junior riders were running the top 50 meters rather than riding it, slackers!
Results:
Will Swinden: Hardtail - 1st: 4:02:779 (missed his first run, due to braking his back brake for the 2nd time that weekend)
James Swinden: Senior - 2nd: 3:18:726 (Good work James, happy to be on the podium)
Tim Pearson: Senior - 4th: 3:20:168
Because of my slack updating of the site for a while, i thought i best write an update for the last few months:
Winter Series Round 3 - Hopton Castle
The most bizare weather, bright sunshine on the saturday for practice, shorts weather. Followed by snow storm and hail on Sunday. All fun and games though. Results for nocycling were:
2nd: Tim Pearson - 2:29:022
4th: Rob Stokes - 2:31:250
6th: James Swinden - 2:32.532
Winter Series Overall
2 Nocycling.com team members got into the overall podium, happy days and whatever anyone says there was no fighting on the podium, just a loving tap. I would tell you the points but i can’t find them.
1st: Tim Pearson (won a set of spy goggles, only to snap them on 2nd ever time used)
4th: Rob Stokes
Dragon Round 1 - Abercarn
This was Chris Pearson’s first race on his new Muddy fox huck with 30″ of rear suspension, maybe a bit of an exageration but it still rides like a horse. I personally hated this track, its a sub 2 minute if you fall its going to hurt track, not good.
4th Senior - Tim Pearson - 1:52:517
7th Senior - James Swinden - 1:52:833 (.3 of a sec = 3 places, 5 people on 1:52)
11th Senior - Chris Pearson - 1:54:248
Summer Series Round 1 - Caersws
Wet Wet Wet.. I’l put my excuse in now and get it over with :). Me and Chris were in Fort William riding the Scotish 6 day moto trial the week before this race finishing riding moto at 4pm on Saturday, to drive back to Sheffield, then wake up silly early Sunday morning to get to the race, managed to get there at 9:45am, got 1 practice run in then raced. All thanks to Chris who thought it would be a good idea. Can’t moan though it was a good laugh on the slippy fields. This race was also the first race that Will Swinden raced, and what an effort.
Hardtail 1st - Will Swinden - 2:41:846 (17.5 secs up on 2nd place)
2nd - James Swinden - 2:28:960
20th - Tim Pearson - 2:43:464
21st - Chris Pearson - 2:44:087 (can you tell we had been riding at the same pace for the 7th day now)
54th - Neil Hawley - 2:59:712
66th - Lee Baines - 3:14:183
Summer Series Round 2 - BALA!!!
Round 2 was at the wonderfull Bala, how can a track be soo damn good. Will started of Saturday well, getting his bike out of the van to find he had no front brake and the oil had leaked all over his disc, thanks to Goodyear for letting us borrow his bleeding kit. Top weather all weekend, couldn’t have faulted it. James Swinden decided to give it a skip and went to download festival, unlucky.
2nd Hardtail - Will Swinden - 3:25:710 (beaten by one of the fastest XC riders i have ever seen)
3rd Senior - Tim Pearson - 3:00:506
Welsh Champs - Rheola
Just James Swinden and Joe Bowman went, both seemed angry with their results. Joe managed to get a faster time chainless on the Saturday than his chained on the Sunday, good work!
13th Junior - Joe Bowman - 3:51:658 (chainless sat: 3:50:998)
6th Senior - James Swinden - 3:46:301
