Do you know the format ? It seems to be closed today, i’ve chucked them an email.

Curious about start times as they all state 9am. But would be strange to do that of course. Practicing allowed or just a free for all and they time all runs ? Or just 1 run that counts ?

The actual results don’t much matter to us at this stage as he’s not that quick downhill…. but would just like to get more info really.

Do you know the format ?

Usually… 😀

From what I found out last night … they are planning to use the new Blue run.  I could check it out more but hadn’t bothered but that’s what iI got by SMS from another parent last night who’d spoken to Ange (Si’s wife and club president) last weekend…. :D.  (So at the moment that’s all I know)

It’s usually BEST OF TWO runs in any case.  I don’t see that changing with using a different course.

Usually they’ll get 2-3 practice runs …. but basically depends on age group as to when they start and that I think depends on numbers in each group so you can potentially get more depending what order they run the races.

They will want to get them done as early as possible as they have to shut down part of the runs for the kids races.

OK, that’s good enough for me…. We’ll be entering for sure as long as his knee is OK, which it should be.

He can try out his new FF lid 🙂

You heading over yeah ?

Ooooof, not so sure about that.

Practice is 7:45-8:45 then racing at 9am. Age cat based, 2 runs each. But we’d need to leave just after 6am to get there in time and get kitted up for 7:45 start really. Which is bordering on the wrong side of ridiculous.

Brakes are astounding on his bike now. Not really sure how or why, but when i’ve fitted them to his, they seem much better than when they were fitted to the Parkwood. Weird.

Due to his knee dislocation he’s not really given the bike a full and proper ride, so yesterday was it’s debut. 30km and 300m of elevation for him and some tough loamy terrain. It was also his first proper ride in the dark too which was a laugh.

Uphill, he was flying on some bits, struggling on others, but overall was pretty happy. Downhill he’s just an animal ! I didn’t get to see any of his descending as i was leading the route, but he was never off my wheel that’s for sure, he just lets go of the brakes and flies !
Flat, he was exactly how you’d expect a small fella to be, at 10 years old he just doesn’t have the sustained watts to push along hard on the flat, so he was a little slow on some of them bits, but he did well. Last nights ride was a proper big-boys ride. Sadly we didn’t get to finish with a nice pub meal as i was called-out from work for an issue so had to scoot home earlier than i wanted.

All in all… .brilliant…

[url=https://flic.kr/p/2beMyxA]2018-09-22_08-42-29[/url] by Steve Weeks, on Flickr

Hmm… well that was a bit of chaos..TBH.

I nearly left before the race started .. Jnr (despite being Mr Chatty) is too polite to push in so he missed getting on 3 uplifts in a row at practice.  Kids were just pushing in front of him until the uplift was full then coming back down and pushing in front again before he could get on the next one.  This wasn’t helped by him being Mr Chatty of course..nor by him being too stubborn to let me help him get the bike on the trailer so I ended up by telling him if he missed the next uplift we were going home, paid up or not.

He ended up with one practice run and we would have got more by just cycling up.

His first race run was rubbish … but counting that as a practice run he improved a lot (20 sec in 2mins) on his 2nd run and came 3rd.

Thats pretty damn good Steve!  Nice one. Send our congratulations to him.

Will pass on though he’s been getting 3rd’s for ages and his first run really was terrible… but it was more a warning about the uplift/costs.

Normally we get the all day everything £33  but £33×2 is expensive whatever way you look at it but I’ve always just tried to make the most of it… since the food/fuel etc. all adds up but then so does going to say legoland etc. and even Bedgebury XC is £12 parking or something and about the same fuel..

Add to that the need to be up and off at god-aweful ‘o’ clock  (and all that entails with kids)… we have basically always made it into a full day so we always got WAY more than someone’s 8 runs earlier in the thread . (Pretty much double that – After the last race at FoD we drove to 417 after lunch to meet friends and did more than 8 runs after lunch) We never made BPW (due to having to book so far in advance) but compared to FoD you get more runs and the kids recover faster so they go longer.    (Lots of different reasons… but one big one is the runs are designed so if you do them more slowly they are not tiring and you get a longer proportion of the time in the uplift – less of a commitment on going back up)

Anyway … it’s always been expensive but worth it getting an all day but due to the mess/confusion/ollie’s lack of getting on… I’d have to question that this last time.

I’m not sure how much was selecting the new track… but I was frustrated in equal measures with Ollie for not getting on and the uplift for someone not putting a system in place so kids got on in the order they queued after I’d paid for a day’s uplift.

It’s all a bit of a quandry at times isn’t it..  We’re trying to keep things semi-sensible at the moment, so local riding is playing a part too. We’ve got a couple/3 weeks until FoD which generally then pushes his enthusiasm levels through the roof.

No more on the side of injury anyway, after the ride he was clearly tired… but no more than that 

Anyway, today we booked MORZINE ! Well, i say ‘we’, but it was just me… .but he’s going too  lol.

So we’ve got 2-3 days of riding depending on plans/fitness/energy and then from there to Burgundy for 10 days. So we’ll hit some of the Les Gets stuff on one day and then onto some Epics on day 2 and a bit overlooking Mont Blanc. Looking forward to this already, although with things like needing tyres, lift passes etc, it’s likely to get expensive for me

Yeah, what I can say is progressive short-uplift runs really help skill development and confidence.

It’s not just the number of runs but their proximity to each other so you can take a slow roll down then go increasingly quickly and mix in a bit of harder then go back to the easier.

This is the part 417 is really good for…. the runs are designed to be progressive within themselves (especially the two new ones though I understand they are now overhauling the old blue).  You can more or less make them as easy or hard as you want.

You can basically roll the new red… but then as you go a bit faster it gets more technical (and has the alternate doubles)… it’s the same on the new blue (without the twin line part)… you just identify bits that you can hop across or jump.. then jump back on the uplift and try… identify a few more… etc. To jump a small table top you need more speed so that pushes you to rail the berm more…

Other than the booking in advance this is a reason I’ve not pushed for BPW… keeping the runs short helps Ollie recover and it’s not a very big commitment to go back up another time and you can just put in a slow blue run as both a rest and a “what can we do different next”.

This then all translates back to local stuff…. its a bit like the skills and confidence progress in a day/weekend then get cemented in on local stuff.  We rode at Tidworth a couple of weeks ago for example and got a few runs between push-ups and had a great time but it was more taking what he learned and being able to apply it.  Same goes for Surrey Hills where he’s ‘riding’ the more technical stuff … it’s not like he’s clearing the huge gaps but he can ride to them confidently taking on what it takes etc.  (or in some cases recognising the limits of his ability on the roughest stuff)

IMHO it’s a lot of money but a good investment in terms of skill/progression per £ .. (especially if you then hit Morzine)  I’d not expect Ollie to hammer BPW all day in the same way… (perhaps now ?)

All makes perfect sense yeah. 🙂

We’re debating the next big day out, i think the FoD will be a cracker as it’s loads of kids messing about mostly. Then we’ll have some food and then head out for the generic FoD trails for the rest of the day…  After that, i think BPW will get booked for us for a weekend out. We’re not looking to take things too serious overall, not thinking of much in the way of racing etc, but of course getting better techincally and as an overall rider is very much what we’d like to ee.

Fantastic day of practice and racing for the boy.

2018-10-13_03-03-02 by Steve Weeks – Flickr2BBcode LITE

Impressive the balls he has.

Finished 3rd! Good lad

Daaaaaaamn. I’m a little overcome by emotions with pics!

image by Steve Weeks – Flickr2BBcode
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Massive thanks to Taft!

2018-10-14_08-32-38 by Steve Weeks – Flickr2BBcode
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