This weekend saw the Tweedlove Bike Festival kick off with two great days of racing. First up was the Glentress Seven; a seven hour race for soloists, teams of two and teams of three tackling a mix of singletrack, grassy climbs, traverses and descents and clocking up as many laps as possible within the seven hour time limit.
With approx 450 metres of climbing over an 11k course, the racing was fast and fun with sub one hour laps allowing the fast soloists to clock up an impressive 11 laps. With a great turnout, friendly racing and the weather proving cool but dry you couldn’t have asked for a better start to the two weeks of events planned as part of Tweedlove. We’ve got a forum thread here about the race.
On Sunday the Family Day saw a fantastic turnout for a day of proper grass roots racing.
If you want to see the future stars of mountain bike racing there’s a real chance they were mounted on a balance bike in the Tweedlove Family Day’s Mini Mash Up racing. The Mini Mash Up saw ‘devil takes the hindmost’ style grass track balance bike racing slowly whittle down the field of 2 – 4 year olds in ‘elbows out and pin it’ style.
At the other end of the park the Mighty Mash Up saw a team of two relay race over an hour with kids putting in fast laps, quick changeovers and some decent descending style despite some torrential downpours.
It’s fair to say the Family Day had an impressive level of support, a great atmosphere with some serious racing effort and a very supportive and inclusive crowd keeping everything good natured and fun. There’s a whole range of bike talent being raised in this ‘bike valley’, the rest of the UK should take note.
If you fancy heading up to Tweedlove, you can find out what’s happening here.
Right now we’re off out on Natural Tweed to ride 45km of the best the valley has to offer.
