There is a circus that surrounds the mountain bike circuit, and this is part of it- the feed and tech area on the XC course. These support crews spend the best part of the day, if they cover both men's and women's team's, out in the elements on the off chance that their riders will need more than a new bottle. It happens to be a dry, sunny day today but if it was pouring down, these guys would still be here. Hats off..
Another weekend, another.. Wait, didn't I say that already? Scotland, summer, midges. There's not enough insect repellent in the world!
Another weekend, another event. This time we're at the Camden Green Fair in Regents Park in London. Lots of people and a little sunshine goes a long way to having a good time ourselves. Some tasty mediterranean food next door is the icing on the Green cake.
Well, at last the podiums have started to roll in for the Clarke household. We have spent the last month completing some good training & bagging some solid result along the way.
First off was Wiggle Enduro6. Having competed in this event in the past I have fond memories of an enjoyable weekend. For the first time I raced the night TT on the Saturday. I had a great time swooping through the singletrack with my lights on, completing 1 full lap of the next days race circuit. I even managed to catch my minute man & take the win by a substantial gap from Jenn O Connor which was a morale boost after the disaster of NPS1 :-) It was good practise for Mountain Mayhem riding in the dark, as I expect to do my full fair share of laps in our SIS Trek mixed team.
Next day me & Barrie competed in the mixed pairs category. We decided it was best for my training (for XC) to complete 2 laps each. This in effect gave me the chance to ride three 1 hour races in one day as each lap was taking about 30 mins to complete. I think our strategy did not do us any favours for the final overall result but we managed to get a podium in 3rd never the less. The other mixed pairs teams seemed to be sending their female rider for less laps. It would have been a hard task though to beat Gareth & Amy who won, as Gareth came storming around after a lap with a huge margin on the entire field! Hats off to Pat Adams, Ag & all involved who even managed to hold off the rain until the prizegiving. A super event & a huge success.
Next off was an epic weekend spent at home, with a good road ride on the Saturday followed by a real out in the wilds type of MTB ride that we do not get to do very often, around Wasdale head & the Duddon valley.
Then it was up to Scotland for NPS2 at Drumlanrig. A unique & beautiful setting for our race. I decided on a steady controlled start, ensuring a solid result hopefully ending up on the podium. I was very pleased to finish 2nd behind Jenny on a challenging course with lots of roots that made for some technical challenges. This gave me the feedback I needed to take my training up another level & progress even more.
This past week has been quite tough, with some specific hill work aimed toward the Grizedale NPS in 4 weeks time, plus plenty of off road riding developing skills. We decided to make the hike 'down south' to race the Southern XC race on the course that is to be used for this years National XC Championships. The idea was to check out the course & take this information back home to start planning specific training aimed at Nationals with the nature of this course in mind. I ended up taking the win by a huge 10 & a half minutes from riders who pasted me in Thetford. This has given me a real boost in terms of confidence & knowing where my form is at presently. I rode a strong evenly-paced race, with the emphasis on nailing the singletrack & keeping it smooth. It was certainly worth the drive down for us!
Happy riding, Sue Clarke.
Another weekend, another demo. This weekend we're in Newnham Park near Plymouth for the last of the Future mag's bike demo days. Running alongside is the Newnham 90 challenge event, a 90km ride over Dartmoor. The rain has stopped but more is forecast and as the main event is tomorrow it could end up a bit of a quagmire. More later.
MiIlton Keynes Bowl is best known for it's rock concerts but tonight it was host to the UK's longest running MTB XC race series - the Friday Night Summer Series
I'm sure the results on the FNSS website will probably explain things more clearly but I can confidently say that I was 2nd in the 69er Single Speed category (Rich Wood was 1st) and Tom Armstrong was the clear winner in the Vets SingleSpeed 29er category.
The course was really slippery after yesterdays rain but this played into the hands of riders used to slithering around in mud of a British winter and hampered riders more used to a wet road ride.
The four riders from Trek UK has a superb time (winter mud pluggers all) and would like to say a huge thank you to the organisers Alan and Lynn.
Roll on the next round in a fortnight - the promise of the organisers is that you won't come last. Come and join us for a really fun and totally 'un-clicky' evening but be warned, you might just get hooked.
Well, last weekend took me all the way south to Thetford forest for the NPS series opener. I won on this course in 2002, but I must admit it is not one of my favourites! However, I was looking forward to the opportunity of getting stuck in with the rest of the best UK women.
I had the signs that something was amiss in the week leading up to the race, but ever the optimist I was hopeful of a decent result after some good training in Spain the week after Easter.
My race started well, getting into 2nd position behind eventual winner Jenny Copnall. She managed to get a gap in the trees. This left me leading out a chasing group of 4 riders, who jumped me & got a gap of 1-200 metres. I chased for 2 laps, dangling just out of reach! Mid race I started to feel a bit rough & this progressed into a full blown bonk! I had nothing left & could not understand why, as up to now I have been going very strongly. I somehow managed to haul my body around the rest of the race, feeling I owed it to my team, sponsors & all who have helped me. I am not one to give in but there are times when you should sometimes call it a day :-) However on reflection I am glad I managed to finish & believe it will help me in the future.
At the finish I was feeling rather below par. On the way home this rapidly developed into a chill & sore throat. Now I realise why I felt so rough in the race! I think I just about had enough in the tank to complete half the race before my body decided to go into shutdown mode.
Hindsight they say is a good thing... Those heavy legs all week, shivers & general feelings of lethargy were all the warning signs I decided to blindly cast to one side. On a positive note, it was good to be back on the scene after 2 years away, meet up with friends I have not seen in some time & enjoy the whole crack. Next NPS is Drumlanrig in 1 month. I'll be back, watch this space :-)
Keep riding & smiling, Sue Clarke.
Well, 2008 has finally kicked off. All of those months slogging it out in the cold & rain in preparation for the coming season seem to have paid off.
Newly signed up to the Science in Sport/Trek team, I am looking forward to a successful campaign this year. Having ridden Trek bikes on the National squad from 2001-2004 with great success, I was relishing the opportunity to get back on one this year.
A few early season mens road races provided me with enough pain to remind me what racing was all about (after a year out in 2007) & enough to let myself know I was super keen to get the ball rolling.
And so the big day arrived, the arrival of my Trek 9.9 carbon hardtail MTB. Everything I had hoped for & a lot more! More carbon than you could imagine courtesy of Bontrager & SRAM XO, Rockshox Reba WC forks, Avid Juicy Ultimate brake set & Bontrager wheels completed the package. But what makes this bike really stand out from the crowd is the custom P1 paint job in pearl white with red & black flames. Utterly gorgeous!
Two days later, my beautiful steed was totally unrecognisable following my victory in the season opener 'Early Dawes' MTB race set near Catton park (home of SITS). But that is what bikes are for after all, racing on, riding, enjoying. I turned up early to the event, keen to get a few practise laps in on my 9.9 & see what she was made of! Fields of thick snow greeted me, a first for myself & I am sure many of the other competitors. No fear though, as the sun soon warmed up to melt most of the snow away. But I am not sure if the mud that replaced it was any better! What was designed as a fast, flowing course soon turned into a total mudfest reminding me of 'the good old days' when every national race seemed to be in similar conditions. A bit of a shock to the system after a weeks training in sunny Spain with my husband & 7 friends!
My baby was not to be put off. The tougher it got the more we excelled, pulling back many elite & expert male riders on the way to the win. Gliding up the climbs & nipping swiftly through the singletrack in the woods, this bike was a pure pleasure to ride in spite of the tough gloopy conditions.
Now I look forward to this weekends NPS 1, in Thetford forest. We will see what we can do from here on.
Keep riding, keep healthy & enjoy the outdoors all you can!
Sue Clarke.
So how many times do you think "I'm going to go riding" and immediately start piling all your gear into the back of the car? Quite often I would guess - It certainly had started to feel like that to me!
I guess that hikes in fuel prices started making me think about whether or not I needed to do a journey before I did it. Don't get me wrong, I'm blessed living here in Swansea I've got a surfeit of great riding within an hours drive, so was never driving very far with my two wheels in the boot - but it was starting to cost me more every time I did.
So that led me to thinking back to when I first started mountain biking, when I couldn't drive. Or when I was a student in Glasgow and couldn't afford to drive. I always used to ride straight out of my front door, and head for my nearest trails. Why wasn't I doing this now? Well probably because Afan is only 20 minutes drive away made it a good reason to drive there... doesn't it? No. It doesn't. Its there, and it great - but what is just round the corner? Do you know what riding there is within a miles ride of your door? My guess is that a lot of people don't. I didn't - I was new to the area, so I kind of had an excuse. But if you've lived in your current home for more than 6 months, what's your excuse?
So I made it my mission to learn my new area, find all the local trails - there are ALWAYS local trails to be ridden - wherever you live - you just need to look! So I looked and I found, and I keep finding. So some of them are a let down, some are hub deep in mud, some are covered in broken glass, burnt out scooters and brambles - but some are absolutely magic - beautiful, technical, swooping bits of singletrack - often down the back of a housing estate, or through the middle of a patch of wasteland.
They'll definitely give you a different view of your area - here's a stunning view of the end of Swansea Bay that I came across by following a white line on a map. So get out to the shops and buy yourself a map - the OS Explorer 1:25000 ones are brilliant - they give every last little bit of detail - even where peoples garden walls are! Get yourself acquainted with your local riding, explore and experiment, and feel good that you didn't get into your car to drive to a trail head.
Just thought I'd get that out of the way - by Griff's comments on the last post he seams to think they're a badge of shame - they're not, not even close - and I'm sure there's a pic of me rocking my pink socks at last years 24/12.....
Anyway - I digress - I actually thought I'd give you a run down on my 'holiday' last week. It was actually meant to be a 'training' week, and one of my bezzie mates, Chris (who's the Trek warehouse whip-cracker), came to stay with us in sunny Wales for a week. Well, we did a heap of riding, but obviously we did our share of bar propping too - and after the first days post ride drinks I decided that stopping off at the pub when you're nearly at home after 40 miles isn't a good idea - Look road cleats, 3 pints and slippy floors don't mix - if you see what I'm saying.... suffice to say that I haven't shown my face in there since!
So - first day down with a road tour of the Gower Peninsula, and feeling a little silly after the pub adventure on the way home, led me to describing a route which I'd been eyeing up on the map ever since I moved out to Wales. It starts in one valley, just up the road from Neath and heads over the (big) hill into the Afan Valley, descending via the Whytes Level route to cafe for another session of bodily abuse - this time by way of Welsh Rarebit. Realising that we were only a few hours away from darkness and at the furthest point from the start, led to us climbing up the Whytes Level far quicker than was comfortable with a belly full of melted cheese - we weren't even rewarded with the view from the top - having climbed right into the cloud cover - we did get to experience being able to just see the huge wind turbines at the summit peaking ghostlike out of the murk. Also was the first time I'd been able to hear the forest I've been heading to before seeing it, very surreal. Heading down into the next valley - was a blast - a network of old mining tracks, crumbling bridges, buildings and small viaducts gave a very 'Lord Of The Rings' feel to the landscape. There's a massive amount of riding to be had in these South Wales hills - not just the usual trail centre destinations - I've been studying maps quite obsessively over the last weeks planning new epics! We did make it back to the car just in the light, though stopping to help/hinder a farmer heard his sheep on the way down didn't help!
The next day was a bit 'organic' in that we had no plan - we were due to drive to Bristol that afternoon for Shaggy's birthday - so we didn't have the whole day to ride (because I didn't wake up 'til late morning...). So we decided that a trail centre would be the easiest option. We headed up the road 30 minutes to Brechfa Forest. A pretty new trail centre, and quite strange in that it has two trail heads, and the two trail networks being separated by a large hill (again) - I'd always thought there was a way to link the two networks up by heading over the hill (again...) at the top of one trail and joining into the descent of the next. I was right - sort of - we did find the next trail after an extended trail blaze through undergrowth, forest and farmers fields - always good for a change!
We managed to find the 'correct' route on the return route - but lets just say the Ordnance Survey aren't on my Christmas cardlist at the moment....
Here's Chris railing the berms on the Gorlech descent at Brechfa. Brechfa has so much going for it, nice trails, great views, really quiet (at the moment) - they're due to open a new black route very soon, which'll have a much more natural feel to it - and offer a 'real' challenge to riders - if you're the type of rider who thinks fullface, pads and 6" are needed at Afan, then this stuff will scare you! Also planned is a cafe - which will definitely turn this into a destination riding spot.
