Just got back and I’ve got to say, it was a great weekend.

Good mix of stages, only short but plenty of classic, technical DH. Usual good atmosphere, especially as the start/finish & camping were all together for this one. Plenty of banter on the climbs. And, it actually stayed dry for once!

Big shout to LeisureLakes Wolverhampton for putting a lot of work in to get my Zesty up and running in time for the race too- top effort 🙂

Great weekend. Stages were short but sweet. Dry weather was nice after the rain at the other rounds!

Have Singletrack given up on the Gravity Enduro, 2 no shows now??

Yeh great use of a small venue, logged it on my garmin and chuckled at the number of loops on the plot – ha!

Superb weekend. I learnt a thing or two about my technical ability. As in, it’s not all that. 148th.

I am determined to go back next year and thrash the field. You are all warned.

Nipped over on the roadbike on saturday (90 mile round trip 😕 )to have a squizz and a natter with the Campbell Coaching mob.
Never realised how big the whole thing is…or how many sweaty fat blokes in body armour you could fit in one field 😉

100mphplus – yeah, another conspicuous Singletrack abscence. I guess they were busy at SITS! Not very good for the “official media sponsors” – really disappointing IMHO.

You’re right about the garmin too – quite depressing to be that knackered after such a short distance 🙂

I remember the Long Mynd being pretty windy and an ‘aero tuck’ being useful at times, but not at Eastridge!

http://www.ukgravityenduro.co.uk/public/event.aspx?id=2066

Must have been ducking under a flying sheep.

Great fun yet again and ive still got a lot to learn – like staying on the bike!
You cant beat it for great stages and great banter inbetween them! (although you can keep all those hills we had to push up!)
Just a shame I cant do Afan, but hopefully a more suitable bike (without bar ends so Parr cant take the piss anymore) and more practice and I will come and play again next year.

Walleater…when we were lads,it were all hills and fields.MON.

Heres the full route from saturdays practice (no short cuts etc)
http://connect.garmin.com/activity/104554435

Ha, here’s the route with all the short cuts 😉

http://connect.garmin.com/activity/104704585

Glad I was shown the short cut from 3 to 4 today. Great weekend’s riding and racing.

I really enjoyed it but just how rough it was really got my attention, especially being one of the only guys on a hardtail. I won the Under 18s category because I was the only one 😆 Ah well, I’ve got a coaching session and a £20 Leisure Lakes voucher as well as some good craic out of it. I’ve learnt not to try to blast through at race pace on the practise as it doesn’t pay off. I had to do my seeding run and race with my wrist strapped up by the medics. 😳 🙄

I’ll hopefully be at the Afan round and at least I’ll know what to expect this time.

Really good racing. Gutted to have punctured on stage 4. I know now why a lot of top boys run a downhill tyre on the back. Surprised not to see any of the Singletrack crowd.

Brilliant weekend of racing – was nice to not feel underbiked for once.

Any idea when/where results are up?

remember the Long Mynd being pretty windy and an ‘aero tuck’ being useful at times, but not at Eastridge!

too right!

Eastridge…. like back in the day when I did the cover for the 92 event programme…

of course the main event then was XC and the log pull!

memories – shame I was shite on a bike 😉

still a twiglet in shape as well!

Results

Photos starting to appear on roots and rain

Photos

Another stage 4 puncture victim here – straight off the first jump/corner! Overall a great weekend though and I will be back with better tyres and more time to practice the courses on the Saturday.

How to the results work then? 5 stage times but the “Finish” time adds up to more. I thought the seeding run didn’t count. Where has the extra time come from?

And video:
http://www.campbellcoaching.eu/Campbell_Coaching/home.html

Guess who the clown is going over the bars on stage 1?? 😳

ACE event. Still got that post race buzz. Shame I made the mistake of looking at the results…

I really enjoyed it. Fantastic trails, great atmosphere and a very high standard of riding, IMO.

I was about two-thirds down the field riding a black Foxy, so hello to anybody I was chatting to.

really want to do the afan one after reading peoples comments on here

i take it theres camping included in the price or do you have to arrange accomodation yourself?

Camping is included, but there were no showers or drinking water at Eastridge. Don’t know what the situation is at Afan.

Hopefully they’ll get something better organized for the camping next year.

I think they should have got somebody to go around the camping field picking up every little piece of thistle beforehand.

Although it did get funny after about the sixth “ouch!”.

yea, I made the mistake of taking my shoes off and walking on the lovely green grass. Had to make a rapid monkey walk back to the car (OO OO OO AAH AAH AAH)

How to the results work then? 5 stage times but the “Finish” time adds up to more. I thought the seeding run didn’t count. Where has the extra time come from?

I think it’s rounding up, as the 5 stage times do not show decimal places.

Yeah, the timing was actually recorded down to 1/100s – rounded down for the stage times but obviously counted towards the total.

what, 43 seconds worth?

0:03:07 + 0:02:05 + 0:01:55 + 0:07:47 + 0:03:01 doesn’t equal 0:17:58 regardless of roundings.

I’m just puzzled. There was talk of penalties for ‘jumping’ the start but pretty sure I went after “2…1…Go” on each stage.

Oh, I also fell down in that vid. 2:49. I love the loose stuff, but am crap at it.

The steep soil section at the bottom of stage 1 had me over the bars twice, glad to see i wasnt the only one having problems with it….in retrospect i should’ve pushed the bike down like the bloke in the video….probably wouldnt be typing this from the sofa loaded up on ibuprofen and tramadol with a stiff back!
Will be back next year though, the trails were epic.

Thankfully my vile swearing has been edited out of that clip (although I do get a slo-mo replay!!) – I was so hacked off I’d stacked on that! Was fine on practice and was through the steep, techy bit 👿

Paul@RTW – 0:03:07 + 0:02:05 + 0:01:55 + 0:07:47 + 0:03:01 = 17:55.

You can get 3 seconds via rounding errors

A few of our guys on that vid too (including the chap running over the double – 2 punctures on 2 stages and 1 face plant = not a happy man!)

FBK – Thanks for pointing that out. Too little sleep over the weekend….there are 60s in a minute. I just punched the numbers in a calculator absent mindedly. The word ‘chump’ comes to mind.
I’ll go back to sleep.

😀 I’d guessed that’s what you’d done. And I know the feeling – I could do with not being at work today really, comfy sofa and a beer would be lovely 🙂

Yep, glad I’d been dragging those heavy assed dual ply’s around all day when I rode through stage 4 – must have passed about 6-8 ongoing puncture repairs as I went through!

Was a bit disappointed to have missed it, but looking at the winning time I am kind of glad I did. 10 minutes! That is less than half the riding time of Inners which had a winning time of 22. A bit short for this type of event?
Perhaps this round should have been stretched out by a couple of more stages.

I went to this one having not done anything like it before. I was expecting more ‘trail’ riding – flat bits, short ups etc. on the stages. It felt a lot like 5 short course DH blasts then a half hour walk back up – no need to ride unless you had had a mechanical and needed to catch up. So ended up thinking I should have brought my burlier bike with bigger tyres etc. instead of my Fuel.

Have the other rounds all been longer stages then?

@chakaping – good to meet you, i was the guy on the Green Foxy

Enjoyed it a lot – my favourite round so far (didn’t do Inners), loved the natural trails and the challenge of the steep stuff

Not the biggest hill, but it was steep enough.. 10 minutes seems short (it was longer for most!), but they were action packed, and it was good to get away from the trail centre type trails.

It’s not just the race day anyway – i did more riding on Saturday than Sunday, and arguably had more fun too.

Shame I can’t make the revised date for the last round, already looking forward to next year though.

Revised date for Afan? I had 10-11 Sept – is that right?