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I think that’s great news for your lad… what’s it like for you to be made redundant so early on? It might make him very critical of your skills!!
Truthfully, horrific lol. But it's something I may need to get used to.
He's done a pair of Saints cranks today. Snappes off a spline. Luckily we carry spare new cranks so they've gone on. I just handed the box to mechanic lol. Bizarre.
He's in p10 after seeding with a couple of fast lads getting a rerun due to crashes. But he's happy with his run. The wind picked up about half way through the Cat and made it trickier for the back half of group. But overall, we're finished happy.
At least I think it's still 'we' 🤔🤔🤣🤣
Thank you. We're all ready for bed at 9pm,.
Good luck today. I know you love it but try and enjoy the downtime and time off the spanner’s, chance for you to watch elsewhere on the track compared to normal perhaps?
How’s the weather looking? I’m in Devon and it’s scorching down here.
Weather is great, we're sitting drinking coffee and cakes
He's 3 runs in and had a new gear inner and outer last night. Seems happy with the track and riding
Morning done and he's chilling now until race. Last run was 2s quicker than yesterday seeding run, so that is good. He's been trying and hitting some new lines.
Race time 4.15 roughly
Excuse me for crying, but he only bloody finished 2nd
That’s amazing, congrats to you both!
Awesome! Congratulations!
Great result!
Epic!
Brilliant!
Well done both of you congratulations!!
Well done both.
Must be the new guy on the tools!?
Well done both of you . Top result and well deserved.🍺🍺🍺
That's bloody awesome mate 👏
Well done 👍
That Is Absolutely Fantastic, looks like he's made a bit of a jump in levels.
A great result on a long journey (not talking about the drive to FW).
I can see a few tricky decisions in the weeksy family's future...
Even some prize money! Hope you got a driver’s cut 🤣
great result well done
Fantastic. Congratulations, you both must be over the moon.
What a result! congratulations
Thanks all, I can't reply to each in turn, so just thank you to all.
We're just into a Travelodge now after leaving very very late due to podiums, but what a reason to be running late.
Amazing amazing day, more so because at the start of the day we'd have accepted our year goal of inside top 15. That was it for Nationals. So to hit P2 is just utterly ridiculous and makes it so so much sweeter than we could imagine. The boy rode an absolute dream run, even though we had some pre race complications I'll write more about tomorrow, which again, just made it even better.
Jeepers.
Congratulations to both of you. That's a stellar result and shows why someone was taking an interest.
Where do i even begin with this one.. It was as you've gathered from my mobile phone posts somewhat of a weekend... I need a lie down but sadly i've got to strip his bike down and get the forks and shock off to TFTuned tomorrow for servicing (thanks lots guys) so no rest for the wicked. But before i start that and working out what to do with the bike we'll get a 5 mins typing session and a quick report.
Fri and Sat went smooth as silk.. really easy days, apart from the incident with the cranks which was quickly taken care of by the crew at Sterlands. Their mechcanics went straight from Fort Wiliam to the World Cup in Poland, so are clearly top drawer mechanics.
Sunday practice went great for him and he'd gone from a 5.09 in seeding down to a 5.07 with a couple of lines he had seen/found/watched. His goal was a 5.05 which if all went perfectly would see him somewhere around top 10 and smashing his goal for the season. But it was a big ask (so i thought).
This is where it all went crazy as 45 mins before race start time i took his bike off the workstand and the front was completely flat. Nothing... Nada... oh for the love of all that's insane in racing... The mechanics were up the hill with their riders who were due down shortly, so i was back on the spanners. We didn't want to risk just pumping it up as we've seen that happen with it going down in the queue (and saw yesterday too).
So it was over to the van and grabbed the rear wheel... Oh.... Argotal on there. FFS.
"we have time to swap to a Kryptotal please ?" says the boy..
"lets find out".
So an F1 stylee pit-stop and a used Krypto and the rotor went onto the wheel and we prayed to the race gods that it would stay inflated. I then grabbed the tyre off the flat wheel, whipped the tyre off, checked the tape and valve, re-seated that and inflated it.. Then grabbed all the wheels and shot up on the gondola with him (with a pump too and tools)
It wasn't an issue in timing as some poor kid ended up stacking it and needed an air-ambulance. However that also gave us time to see if the tyre stayed up etc.. Happily it was golden and with 15 riders in front of him i grabbed his hoodie and headphones and jumped in the gondola again, hopefully to watch him coming down...
But a red flag kicked in and i was at the bottom before he'd set off.
As they're going in slowest to fastest, techincally speaking when the rider comes down next they should go P1, but that's rarely the case and unlike to be for him as Fletcher had a chain issue in seeding and was down 4 riders before him.
As expected, Fletch came down with a blistering time and went P1, but then we were waiting for the boy, Tyler was in front of him and taking longer than expected (we later found he had a slow puncture) and just after Tyler the boy popped into sight behind him. The fast lads were skipping the box drop as it gave more speed into the cliff face that follows and the boy was ON IT. He then looked like he was going to do what Tahnnee did one time and stack it into the side fence... but it was OK, he came over the line in P1 !!! Whoop.
So he's on the hot seat but we're expecting that to last 30s... Then the next, the next, the next all came down but no-one was ahead of him and suddenly you're thinking "hold on a second, if these all beat him he's still 5th and on the bloody podium at a National !!!
The next few come down and STILL no-one has knocked him off but next is Finn Holling on the Zerode, he's insanely fast... but Finn doesn't come down at all. So now he's sitting at a worst of P4... Next up is Billy, who again is stupid fast but Billy goes P2 behind the boy.. ! WTF is going on here.
Ok so it's Tom Westgate, World Cup junior racer.... He goes P4... !!! Holy hell, there's only Josh left on the hill and he's still sitting in P1....
We know Joshy and his dad pretty well, whilst the boys are not mates i chat to his dad a lot as we're always at the bottom together...
Josh comes down and takes the win, fair play lad... bloody impressive. But the boy is sitting in P2 in a Fort William Junior National...
There's a few re-runs which had the heart in the mouth, but he ended P2.
His goal was a 5.05 and he put in a run of 4.55... 14s quicker than his seeding which he thought was nailed...
I'm actually fighting back the tears just writing this, the emotional build up over this last few days, weeks, years, it's just really really hard. We've all put in an insane amount since he was finishing 5th from last at a 417 race and now he's just podiumed at the top-tier of British racing in juniors..
We have had an incredible amount of help from people on here, people away from here and people we maybe had no right to get help from lol... but they've all done tonnes to help make him fast in their own way and each and every one is appreciated by us.
I'm going to do the van now before i turn into a blubbering mess... this is the bloke who does not do emotions... not ever, not a little bit..
Beautiful write up. Well done weeksys
Awesome thats a result to be proud of on a big course! Hopefully he kicks on from here and gives him the boost of confidence to realise he is pretty damn quick.
But more than anything what a awesome dad’n’lad combo you guys are and as a dad to you g kids you are a pretty good inspiration
That's great stuff. Well done.
I can see a few tricky decisions in the weeksy family's future...
Well as a start point the weekend has just cost me £3000 as i'm now never ever ever allowed to sell this Session frame LOL. On pain of death will this be sold. His ideal is that it ends up mounted on the wall of his house... whether his wife/whoever would allow that, only the future can say... but i can't really argue with him considering what him and it have been through and done together, especially with this weekend of course.
As for the other tricky decisions, well that's a whole kettle of insanity right there, but obviously as i've said previously with some things, there's very little i can put on here, at the end of the 2024 and into 2025 we had our hearts set on something which was honeslty a bit life-changing for him, but at the last minute it fell through and he was totally gutted about it all (as was I) but thats the nature of the sport and the industry at the moment there's ups and downs, good and bad, and this one came bad in the end. There was another option which we didn't feel was quite the right timing, but looking back in hindsight, may well have been the correct timing after all.... but we learn from this and we keep plodding on. It's complicated but in the very very best kind of way i guess.
We've got some major bike decisions that we're weighing up, but that's also potentially been put on hold. It's been suggested the Session is too small for him, but how can i possibly argue that point now after the way he's going... he loves the Session and unless something pretty dramatic happens in the coming months, it'll be staying as the race bike for this year.
He spent a lot of time this weekend on the Zerode, but only playing in the paddock, it's the latest generation G3 version with Smart Shift and lets just say, it felt superb and both of us are pretty taken with it, but it's a massive chunk of change to find (especially now i'm not part-funding it with the Session lol) and that's needing a fair bit of discussion before we take a leap... They're nice though, really nice.
This weekend we're at Dyfi for the day and testing an A200 and an S200 with a potential discussion on one of those as well.
But, we can't jump on any of these discussions currently of course lol.
The only thing I don't like about the Atherton is it's mullet only.
The Zerode is an interesting choice, just over £7k for the full build inc tax isn't too bad.
So is the Zerode. So are the majority of DH bikes currently.
He runs full 29 on his Session
This is just 1 of 4 major issues on this rear from weekend. I think my mechanic at Rotec could potentially save it, but I'm not sure it's worth it.
I'm pretty sure it was straight before the weekend, but clearly 11 runs of Fort William is about it's limit lol. It survived the race run, but how many of those were present before the race I'm not sure. I did the spoke tension just before his last run, but I must admit I wasn't much looking at the rim. If it stayed up, it was good enough.
Glad we're away from here for a few months now, I need a new wallet!
Wow. I wish both my kids (and my) rear rims were less dented than that!
But I get it needs to be reliable.
Wow. I wish both my kids (and my) rear rims were less dented than that!
But I get it needs to be reliable.
LOL i'll get the opinion of my LBS mate on it as to whether we can save it and use or whether it gets replaced. I'm far from a wheel expert so i'll leave that to him this week when i go see him for a new NDS crank arm i'm collecting. Certainly for FW it needs to be about as good as it can, this weekend again was a complete wheel-fest for people with rims everywhere and wheels being rebuilt constantly.
We're back at FW again for National Champs in July, so we've got a bit of time for any decisions to be made on this sort of stuff.
The boy just found a funny pic from the podium
https://www.rootsandrain.com/photos/15559659
The 3 lads in red are part of Jack Readings Gravity School squad and there's a bit of friendly rivalry between them lot and us (the 4th lad is away at Poland so wasn't at FW), i get on well with the parents and we share some banter and laughs. When the champagne came out at the weekend there was clearly only ever going to be 1 person who got soaked by them 😀 😀
So we're onto this weekend. Lets just say this week has been somewhat bonkers, but as always i'm afraid there's a lot of it i can't get into... but it's been very very interesting for sure.
We're sitting watching Socials with a lot of interest this weekend as it's Poland WCDH and a lot of his close rivals are playing (although arguably they're quicker than him, but he's chasing them). So can't wait to see how some of them get on in the coming months with their GB jerseys.
We're heading up to Dyfi for bike Demos, A200 and S200. If i end up coming out of there without a £7000 bill i'll be quite impressed lol. Nah, seriously though, at the moment we're not buying or ordering anything, but we're both very curious as to what the weekend will bring with them and the back-to-back tests against the Session.
He's been out a couple of times this week, only at the local which isn't hugely tough for him, but IMO it really does mean he can work on the details, precision, line choices, technique in a way that he can't do at other places as he's concentrating too much. I can't see any way that more bike time and more riding won't help him, so i'm all over the idea when he wants to go. It also helps that he's been giving me some tips over there in terms of riding, lines and body position.
First job for today is to get his forks and shock installed when they come back from TFTuned after being serviced. I'll also be running the Session this weekend at Dyfi, but with his settings and my pressures to work with, i don't generally fiddle with the bouncers much so i'll just set the pressures and go.
Once that's done i'll get the Halo wheel (on the Bontrager hub) installed to see how that does at Dyfi and whether the hype is justified. The DT Swiss EX511 is completely dead so is getting rebuilt onto a new rim, but we'll see how this Halo does on Sat before we decide what rim ends up on the wheel.
I've been looking forward (and partly dreading) yesterday for a while now as it was Dyfi on the Atherton Bikes demo rides for the boy.
Apart from the fact it's 4 hours door to door,you've then got the potential expense of a new £7500 bike LOL.
Anyway, we got there and were met by Horatio, a top lad and really easy to chat to.
The days format ended up being
4 laps on the S200 (alu version)
4 laps on the A200 (carbon)
4 laps on the Trek Session.
The boy liked the S200 when bouncing on it with discussions of how it felt playful and fun (but we knew this in advance really). After his rides, not a lot changed in terms of him liking it "it's ace at fat whips" which i believe is a compliment.
He then knocked out fast laps of Racetrack with mostly (due to traffic) full top to bottoms on it.
Moving onto the A200 i was met with "Oh this feels awesome".. eeeeeek, £7500 bouncing around my brain lol. After 3-4 laps on that nothing had changed and he felt it was both faster and more stable than the S200. He deffo preferred this carbon version it seems.
But the order of the day was not about buying a cool bike, it was about buying the fastest bike too, so he grabbed some food and then set out on the Session, his old friend. The suspension was serviced this week by TFTuned and it had a new Halo rear installed we were trying out (it had done 3 runs with me riding it in the morning and was fine). So the bike was sweetly running and ready.
As you'd expect, the old comfy slippers didn't let him down at all and stuck in fast or in his world "that was rapid" laps.
It was the a fairly lengthy discsussion with Horatio, me and the boy as to which, why and how long.. The chat deffo veered towards us ordering an A200 in the not too dim and distant future, there's a LONG wait which poses somewhat of a complication because at the moment due to other discussions i simply have no clue what 2026 is going to bring. We're in a very incredible position of having 'options' at the moment which brings not only a lot of good things, but massive complications to any decisions we make on bikes too. I can't really be in a position where i spend £7500 on a bike that in 2 months time we don't actually want/need. So i'm pretty torn as to a few aspects of our plans now.
It was then back in the van for the 4 hours home and an hour of GoPro analysis with some fancy timing apps.
The tale of the tape
P1. Trek Session
P2. Atherton A200 + 1.4s
P3. Atherton S200 + 3.8s
Now that really is interesting as the A200 was running Fox 40s which he's never used before, along with Hayes Dominions which isn't a brake he's ever used (but felt great actually) and finally a Coil DHX2 which isn't his preference as he likes Air on the back (or maybe not now lol). So is 1.4s in the same ball park... Well yeah, it's right up there, but it's still a smidgen slower. I need to have a chat with a few people who 'know stuff' in terms of riders jumping on new bikes and the expectations from there.
Does that mean we're buying an Atherton... Not today, although Mrs Weeksy is happy that if we're going Atherton then we have approval, but we've got a few other tests lined up (sadly not at Dyfi for comparison) on other bikes/options, before we even consider pressing the button on one.
We (me and wife) want him to demo/hire an R3 Session at BPW for the day, but he's really not feeling the bigger Session depsite the fact it is arguably going to fit a bit better and is a 'known' options, i think he sees it a bit as "same thing different day" and isn't wanting to jump on the plan.
As for me, i spent the morning on his Session and the afternoon on my Gen6 Fuel... Bizarrely, i much preferred the Fuel, even at Dyfi.. which really surprised me. Whilst the Session absorbed the bumps in places a lot better, my weight was sitting more in the right place on the Fuel, i felt too far back on the Session. Once i'd got back on the Fuel i felt right at home and didn't want to get back on Session..
Interesting. Would have been good to have had a few more on the A200 after the Session.
Aren't you a bit big for his Session?
Interesting. Would have been good to have had a few more on the A200 after the Session.
Aren't you a bit big for his Session?
I hear you but he was 11 runs in or so and it was 4pm and last uplift. I'm sure they'd let us do another day on it though.
Give or take 1cm me and him are the same height. He's arguably the 1cm bigger now. So if I'm too big, obviously so is he. But that's where all this stemmed from, the thought from a few people that the Session is too small.
But I think a DH bike is quite specific in terms of riding position, maybe. I loved his at BPW, but at Dyfi, a bit less.
Interestingly, the Session at 465mm was only 5mm shorter than the Athertons. They both came in size 7 which is 470mm reach. But obviously you can buy them in any 10mm increments. However they don't have a 480mm demo bike. But we could try one which is owned by a staff member lol.