STW Weekender comment and pictures thread

Supppose it was ok 😉
Great weekend of bikes and beer/whiskey and good company
Funniest moment, the chap that pinched flatted on the drop into the arena and had a potty mouth threw his bike away in frustration only to see it roll away towards a young child, rider runs after it before a collision 😀
Ouch moment, several people failing on the duck swipe.
God your mad moment the tandem pair on the downhill respect!
Pictures soon!

Yep, another cracking weekend of weekendering!! Top laughs, great riding and ace people.

Great to see the top boys in DH (vets class too!) showing how fast the course could be ridden who were then the same blokes encouraging the skinny lycra crowd in the race to be first to puke in the xc… :o)

Massive thanks to the STW folks and the efforts they put in to organising it, and the marshalls, rangers and mountain rescue guys for a cracking weekend.

It was ace. Gutted (personally) the XC was about half the length it needed to be (personally) in order for me to get anything out of the 6 minutes I lost on Saturday, but then that’s mainly my fault I guess for Saturday 🙂 What a lovely atmosphere. Good people, happy vibes. Wish I’d done a 2nd downhill run but was just happy to be alive after 1st run. My first downhill ever and beaten by 0.7 seconds by Craigy… Grrr.

Cracking weekend. I forgot about the guy who threw his bike at the lad 😉
Really really enjoyed it, and it was dry and dusty all weekend, in fact there was more rain last year than this year !

Roll on next year… I WILL DO better 😉

My pics from Saturday here – I was too busy riding it on Sunday but have some podium pics I’ll upload later

http://www.flickr.com/photos/minnellium/archives/date-posted/2012/07/14/

My pics!

Great weekend… Absolutely brilliant!

Missed ya DBWW!

I missed you too Rich 🙁

Saw the bus leaving during the award ceremony. Looking good 😉

Davey, are you Si’s m8 from Singletraction?

Stayed for the ceremony just parked up for a quick getaway!

My photo’s are here.[/url]

Great weekend!

Simon, yep our paths have crossed !

Best bit, doing ok in the dh.
Worst bit, someone ghosting his bike at my little lad.
2nd worst bit, xc being 2 laps too long ;), and how fit you xc lads are!
Good do.

really enjoyed it, apart from the ups and downs to the car park :(. Best bit? Matt (i think) shouting “come on 209” when i finally cleared that little short steep climb on the `xc race, when i really wanted to bin it after lap 1. Worst bit, hitting a tree on my 2nd dh lap and losing 20 seconds on my first run…. with matt going “what happened 209” at me…

@Stevio: I can honestly say I can’t remember a single tree anywhere on the course, so very well done. 😕

Worst bit, someone ghosting his bike at my little lad.

Worst is that its SO been done before at the same spot last year.(except without lad in the path of bike) 🙂

thanks, minnellium, it was there, HONEST!!! 🙄 top of the 2nd half – out of the quarry, round the hairpin, and the fence pushed you round a corner, and there was this tree – i walked back up Sunday morning and saw that several people had given it a beating…

My pics (podium only – I was racing!) from Sunday here http://www.flickr.com/photos/minnellium/archives/date-posted/2012/07/16/

@stevio ahhhh yess….. There was an adverse camber along that bit – enjoyed looking at the skid marks before the trees !

The short version:-
First time I’ve done it.
Great format
Surprisingly low key.
Had fun!

The long version:-
Trials – Annoying frankly. The climb was a bugger. Got within about 4 feet of the top ofit, which I was reasonably happy about. Did anybody actually clear it? Properly annoyed to fall off the skinny. I’m pretty good at them, but left it fairly late to do it, and without any prompting the back wheel went awol on the join near the end. Ho hum. Entering into the spirit of the thing and trying the 2 optional obstacles cost me 2 minutes I didn’t need to be cost. Again, ho hum.

DH – fun course, flowed nicely, could have been (a lot) harder. Time penalties were pretty severe – maybe they should have been awarded as a % of the winners time? Also second runs shgould have been seeded based on first run performance (although I understand the faff that would have generated). I caught my 30 second man on both runs on the singletrack near the bottom where there was nowhere to overtake – maybe only a second or 2 in it, but that does make a difference when it’s down to beating your mates!

XC – Loved/hated it. Brutal course. Suited me really well, even though I wanted to die after the second lap. Good fitness AND good bike handling played an equal part. I made best use of the latter! (thanks for all the riders who moved out my way!)Did alright overall I think…

Other stuff – after all the PR on STW, I’m surprised how lowkey it all was – I was expected it to be heaving, not just a couple of ’00 riders, spread out. Surprisingly few overnighters too. Made a complete arse of myself on the pumptrack! Well organised, and competently marshalled – needed more heckling! Good atmosphere for the competitive side – not too serious, but definitely a race, not a cruise. The only downer was the food available. Sure a bacon roll is nice for breakfast, but I really don’t want to subsist on greaseburgers and chips the rest of the time! Jackets spuds or pasta would have been fine.

Overall though, great event, and I might well be back next year! Thank you all at STW!

Heckler, terrible duck punner and GRAFTER

Anyone got a photo of rider 162 who won the WWGHD? prize (ideally running over the finish line with his bike)? Want to do a write up.

Very enjoyable weekend despite being there on my own, found some interesting people to talk to an had a great laugh. Was pleased with 3rd place, the trials was a bit easy (but that’s coming from a trials rider), the dh was excellent fun but very sketchy in a few places (glad to still be in one peice!). I gave the XC my best shot setting off first and not seeing anyone for the first lap and a half, only to be reeled in by the top XC boys. Just managed to hang on to 4th place overall and 3rd place in Senior class. Aching very much today, it’s going slowly!

Andy

I think 7 people did the hill climb. Including a bloke who basically bunny hopped up the very last steep bit as far as I could see from the bottom. Well impressive.

For me the downhill was the limit of my capabilities – glad to have got a time at all as I offed on my second run. But the XC was an ace course – only ever done laps on 24 hour race courses before so this was much more fun (although actually I am better at grinding out climbs at a reasonable pace than anything else it’s nice to find something hard and still do it). V pleased with being on the podium 😀

Really enjoyed it a lot.
I think all of the individual events were pitched at pretty much exactly the right level – DH long/ rad enough to let skillzz shine through, trials just challenging enough – I reckon I could get the hill climb with a few more practice runs, and the XC the right mix of fitness and a bit of skill involved.
Not sure how I did, but was pretty happy with my performance other than getting stuck behind someone not far into my DH run.

My video from day one now here as well as my own little write up

https://bitly.com/PYevAM

Nice little vid that minnellium.

Duck fishing looked fun.

Ace that minn. Perfect elevenses viewing.

Brilliant weekend, thanks to all at STW, great to have Jonnie and Ollie (on the Humu) along too, even if he did kick my arse on the DH with a 2.15 on the second run 😯 😉

Has anyone got a picture of him sat in the duck pond 😀

Lightly sandblasted, but had great fun watching/marshalling.

Some totally unedited (and possibly out of focus) photos here[/url]; none of the DH, but a few ducks and some of the bit of XC I was marshalling.

I need to practise my heckling for next year, though…

Thanks Stealthcat, a few good ones of myself and the lads cheers 😀

a few good ones

…and a perfectly timed one of me making a right t!t of myself…

Thanks. A. Lot. 😕 (I’ll have my revenge later!)

I’d call that fair revenge for a few things in the past, myself…

And I did at least refrain from posting the image on here!

awesome tune choice minnellium . . . .

. . video ain’t bad either . . .

When will the results be up so i can see how badly i did? Had to go early once i realised that yet again Nick Craig has just (just)beaten me *cough*

John Hopkinson beat Nick overall after a storming XC race (and only a minute head start on Nick) – they’ll put all the results up this week some time I guess.

We’re wrangling the results at the moment and hope to have them up in a searchable form (for mate-comparisons) in the next couple of days.

Meanwhile there’ll be a quick report and a few choice pics on the main site in an hour or so.

Thanks to all who came. And a cheery wave to everyone who didn’t enter because you thought it might rain… 🙂

Thanks to everyone organising and marshalling the weekend. And the Shimano/Madison guy’s for sorting my dodgy shifting out for the XC race! I was on my own for the weekend, but found plenty of people to chat to.

One of my best shot’s from the weekend:
[/url]
Singletrack Weekender 169 dh1[/url] by nathangabbott[/url], on Flickr

Nice shot!
Story and loads of pics (and a couple of videos) here:
http://singletrackworld.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/what-a-weekender/%5B/url%5D