HAPPY MONDAY EVERYBODY!
Did the squad get up to any mischief over the weekend? Any riding shenanigans with mates or family? Or perhaps you raced against your arch nemesis in an epic battle for the ages? Or maybe, like us, you spent a bit of quality time soaking up the sunshine with a glass of ale in your backyard?
Whatever you did, we hope you had a ripper weekend filled with good times!
To help smooth out the rough edges between a chilled Sunday night and an abrasive Monday morning, here’s a little bit of groove courtesy of UK master producer, SBTRKT. Get the volume turned up on this one, and get set for another edition of the Monday Morning Debrief!
If you’ve been enjoying some of the 2017 Sea Otter product coverage that’s been delivered your way all the way from sunny California, then you’ll know Mr Chipps Chippendale has been darting around the expo to search out all of the hottest products and stories to be found. Thankfully he takes both hydration and aerodynamics very seriously in his quest for maximum story-per-booth efficiency.
Back over this side of the Atlantic, and Andi enjoyed a full weekend of braaaaping around both Farmer Johns MTB park and the new Cooking On Gas trail at Lady Cannings in Sheffield.
Some of the office crew a little further than others over the weekend, with Hannah notching up no less than 200km in an epic ride as part of the Dirty Reiver event up on the Scottish border. Yes, 200 whole kilometres! It was the furthest distance that Hannah has ever ridden before, so she was stoked to both finish the event, and do it without turning into a blob of jello. Bloody top job Hannah!
Meanwhile, Mark and Co. booked in a session at the indoor BMX track at the world class Manchester National Cycling Centre. The BMX is a proper track – it’s built for international level racing, with a yuuuge 8m start ramp and automated start gates and everything! If you can get together your own riding group, you can book a spot to go along for a session of sprinting and pumping around the enormous berms and sculpted tabletops. Good times!
Speaking of tabletops and berms, Rossco spent some quality Dad time on a sunny Sunday afternoon got out under the sun for a local pump track session. As luck would have it, he just so happened to bring his bike along too – how convenient!
“Well what can I say, I love my new home trails! We had family to stay for the weekend so time has been short but, that’s totally one of the features of where we now live, I can ride from my front door or garden gate onto a bridleway. Today’s ride took me up the Pennine Bridleway onto some moorland single track that I haven’t ridden for a while. 90% of my ride off road and 90 minutes to do a nice loop fits perfectly with my need to balance bike and family time. I snuck out during afternoon nap time and arrived home for tea time. I feel like I’m finding my bike legs again. It’s been a quiet winter for riding but I’m determined to make the most of my local riding when I can for the summer. I wasn’t the only one in the house to ride this weekend either. My other half rode and my eldest girl. She loved riding down the bridleway near our new house on her balance bike. She was most upset that she needed to ride/push back up again. I’ve promised we can ride all the way to town together soon for ice cream and a Daddy uplift home again!” – Katie Crompton.
“Yesterday I went to Swinley Forest and the Fox Proframe tour to try out their new full face helmet. Having enjoyed a great blast round the trails whilst wearing one, I returned it to the team tent. At this point a French gentleman in a Fox t-shirt came over to admire my bike. He patiently listened to me talking all about it, what fun it is to ride, and how I came to have it (a long story, especially if, like me, you talk too much, particularly when full of post-ride feel good endorphins). Just as one would if meeting someone for the first time at a drinks party, I eventually got round to asking him what he did – at which point he introduced himself as Redbull Rampage rider Pierre Edouard Ferry. Not surprisingly, the conversation was mainly about him after that. He is a lot more interesting than I am.” – Adele Mitchell.
“My legs are still so pasty white from winter, they kinda glowed in the sun.”
Tom Hill relished the dry and dusty conditions with a solid dose of two-wheeled #shredicine over the weekend. Getting some sweet skids in for the camera – nice!
After far too much time off the bike, Tom Nash reintroduced himself to his bike’s saddle while getting stuck into some dusty trails around his backyard in the Tweed Valley.
Closer to Singletrack Towers, Danny Wilson spent the weekend setting up some killer shots in the woods at Havoc Bike Park. Now we know where all the coloured smoke hanging over Calder Valley was coming from!
“Turns out that the MGcool Explore camera I was sent to try out isn’t so great at taking photos, so these shots from my phone are all I’ve got from today’s session in Setmurthy where I watched Matt, Paul and Tim throw themselves down stupidly steep banks, jumps and drops. Hey ho…” – James Vincent.
And lastly (and let’s be honest, leastly too), I also managed to slip in a bit of knobbly tyred activity over the weekend. After a good deal of workshop fettling, it was time for a shakedown ride on a very fresh test bike – one that you’ll be hearing a bit more about later this week…
So that about wraps it up for this edition of the Monday Morning Debrief, but before we go, here’s a video of Donald Trump playing an accordion;