Forum menu
Well we're at Llangollen.
Yesterday it rained from 7am till way after midnight. But he seemed happy with bike and track. He was running Krypto x 2 but his rear was pretty dead before we started as that was just practice.
After food I was going to swap to a better Krypto for today but weirdly we're short on 29 as I've mostly been buying 27.5s lately.
Bacon and coffee sorted me out this morning and I ended up finding a brand new Argotal which I've lobbed on.
Track weirdly seems a lot less muddy than yesterday and he's loving it.
It's a proper field of riders though so going to be a tough one either way. 2 WC racers in his cat today.
Practice until 11.30 then game time
Track drying by the minute so we've gone Kryptotal for run 2.
He's sitting P7 after run 1 with Billy Pugh 7s ahead of him in P1. Not unhappy with that, but not a massive gap to P3 so got to give it the full crazy on run 2.
Well it turned out that we have no clue where he finished, but roughly 7/8/9 which is about right for where he is at the moment and a brilliant bit of testing for him and the bike. But the organisers timing system once again failed, which we said we'd never enter an event with them again a couple of years ago, but this one was more about the testing/riding than the results.
We had people come down on run 1 and crashed, got up, got back on their bikes and came down, then on race 2 had a clean run but their time was only 1s different. We had people who were all showing on the same second and lets just say the start procedure was a bit of a joke and leave it there. I love to try and support the smaller organisers, but this lot don't make it easy and it was shown by only 120 people entered, whereas if it was the same event being run by someone else they'd have 250+.
Knowing all this was possible meant that we didn't go there with any expectations or results in mind, but it was all about finding the fun again, he was hitting the big triple that not many hit, but it wasn't any faster, he just wanted to hit it because he could and it was there.. Which shows the mindset he was in all weekend and really pleased me. The final bits of form and speed, we'll work on them now, but we're happy that riding is more enjoyable again.
So a couple of days to clean and sort kit and we're off to Wales again to Revs for the final round of Nationals for this year. The season is in a bit of a wind-down really and the dark evenings and cold evenings setting in kind of escalate that feeling. So much so that for Revs i've booked a hotel for the Sat evening. It's just too damn chilly and bleak at the track of the evening. So hotel, beers, food, chilling... Excellent.
Great work!
Is the enjoyment & improvement down to going back to the smaller frame?
I find it odd that for a "National" Champs ('cos Wales is a nation after all...) the organisers either don't have a back-up timing system, or if they know their system is gash they do something about it.
I know Stile Cop and 417 races are different league, but only issues we've had at either of those is a broken cable, which get fixed pretty quickly.
Are they one of the organisers for the overall UK National series too?
The happiness 100% down to the smaller frame yes. It was honestly completely instant, from run 1 on Thurs night he was right back at home. He's done 3-4 months on the bigger one and despite going pretty quickly he just wasn't feeling 'right' in some ways. Mostly his cornering..but we didn't quite pinpoint it and think about frame size until last week or so.
Gravity WERE one of the bigger players on UK/Welshish stuff, but due to many issues they kinda lost their way and lost a lot of the events. The issues were always timing and organisation/communication. They promised new timing systems as used by world class events... just not with world class organisers 😉
I could go into all the little 'niggles' with their timing stuff, but like i say, it doesn't really matter much as the result wasn't important as far as the weekend went.
We've never had ANY issues at 417 and only had a small one once at Stile Cop, we can easily forgive something happening once... but when you're at NAtional/Jersey levels, well it has to be better really doesn't it... It just has to be.
As always the video doesn't do justice to the real life technique these guys use for the triple.
https://youtube.com/shorts/VA2YpzXL_zc?si=uEORFkI2rXofMP3l
Last Nation of 2025 this weekend at Revs. Sadly we've still never managed to get there and as he can't finish school until 3.15 we won't get to track walk on the Fri night as we'd usually like. But i'm sure he'll be golden, he's ridden enough 😀
So the bike was stripped down and all bearings checked and replaced as needed.
Idler top and bottom ideally needed a new bearing, so they're now done, they were not terrible, but then again they were not perfect. One of the jockey wheels was a bit rubbish so again, that was replaced. The rest was pretty reasonable apart from the rear tyre that was on for the test/play wheel, so i've got a new pair of 29 Kryptotal rears in DH SS arriving tomorrow and one of them will likely go on for race run. (Maybe last practice run before race).
Just need a plan for testing/riding this week and we're ready to roll.
What’s that, is it a mechanical heart before the valves are fitted?
I'd guess at the 3d printed(/additive manufactured) bits of an Atherton.
You'd be right. He gets lots of progress updates
Post school session up at Ponty last night, got 10 laps in and trying to get the boy flying again... He seemed happy apart from 1 root which took him out, but nothing hurt, apart from breaking the bike
Luckily i had 1 (or 2) in spares so was just a 5 minute job to swap the hardware over and get him straight back out for a few more laps.
Tonight will be a bit of gear indexing, a quick brake bleed, pad check etc, then fitting a new Krypto for his race/seeding wheel and then we'll be ready for the weekend i think.
Couple of awesome packages today and yesterday from the sponsors, but sadly i've been told off for posting sponsor stuff, so you'll have to be kept in the dark on that 😀 😀 😀
How did team Weeksy get on?
Apologies, as always the weekend is busy.... not always busy, but mostly busy.
We rocked up at 8am on Sat after Greggs on the way to get us going, it was straight out into practice pretty much. First time there for him/us and he was obviously a little cautious on the way down for run 1 but he came down happy which was to continue throughout the day. He seemed to be riding well and his practice times were decent, the bike was running nicely and the boy came down with "best track of the year, it's awesome"
This obviously is something we've not really seen for a fair while now but it was very much welcome to see and hear.
He's a funny creature at times and he was riding in his Freeride type jersey which apparently made him feel a bit more 'freeride' lol.. So he asked if it was OK to seed in that jersey, which of course it is so he did.
As always the level at Nationals is insanely high, there's 5 of the lads there who are current/recent World Cup racers, so there's no free passes. Anyone who's not at WCs aspires to be of course.
Seeding run was clean and nice, the time was a 2min 47 which put him in at P16 in the end. He's finished twice in P16 at Nationals so i guess that's about right. But in truth, 2-3 weeks ago on the bigger Session i don't think he'd have put it in 16th. But we ended the day happy with that, feeling he's got a little bit of speed and form back. It was then onto the Premier inn via a brewery/smokehouse and we were stuffed full of food. We very very rarely do the hotel thing but in truth after 20+ weekends in a tent, i kinda needed it... Especially with the monsoonal rain that came overnight.
Sunday brought bule skies, but with a big hill it took a little time for the sun to come over and start drying it, so the bikes were coming down muddy and some were changing to more mud-based rubber.
I'd fitted a brand new pair of Kryptotals before the race and he was loving it, so i left him on them.
Race was late in the afternoon and thanks to some muppets taking advantage of things on their Ebikes i wasn't allowed to Ebike up pre-race to give him a coat/handwarmers etc as some of us had on Sat. (i also do the jacket thing for other riders, not just mine).
Before he went out i was fixing my 3rd set of brakes for the weekend, but happily none were ours... but i like helping and had nothing to do for the time, so a bit of lunch and some brake bleeding done.
Race runs started, the track had dried plenty but as always you've then got to take advantage of that. Due to the Juniors going out late it's nearly 4 hours from your last practice until race runs so the tracks can change a lot with 250 riders and drying tracks.
A lad we know Billy had crashed in seeding and came down to set a blistering time about half way through the bunch, the Harry who's fast followed him a few riders later with a fast time.
The boy came down in P3 at the time but with 15 riders to go he could still be P18... but his time was 5s quicker than yesterdays seeding so we were more than happy... He'd put on a great time.
As riders came down he fell down the list into P10 which is where he finished. P10 is his 2nd best Nationals performance so in truth we're ecstatic with that result... Awesome job.
He ended up P8 in the 'overall' championship which was way above where he'd thought for 2025 but at times depending on who won today and top 10 riders, he could have ended up P5.... or actually P11 lol. So we'll take P8
But the great news for us is that he's enjoying riding, enjoying the bike and just really happy with everything at the moment. We'll take that all day 🙂
Great stuff.
nice end to the series!
Great result well done. I'll bet your proud of him and rightly so 🥳
Seeing some of the other riders makes me just a little more proud of him at times, we see their reactions to things not going well and them not performing well and i've just not seen that in mine, put it this way, if mine spoke to me like some of them do to their parents we'd never be going to another race.
He's had that mid-season slump and just dealt with it, moved on each time and put the time and effort in on the bike/gym/etc to make sure he'd find the answer. Now it looks like the answer was more the actual frame size than him, but he didn't know that and dealt with it really well.
So to put in a top10 at Nationals kinda topped it all off and made it all worthwhile. It's funny how much you can deal with when just a couple of results make all the difference and you just think "yeah, this is it.."
Obviously as always there's a tonne of work to do, we saw a mate Seb who's been away racing WCs this year and in seeding he put 6s into everyone... (had issues in race and was top6). So that's the level you have to reach/find... doing it is of course really really hard.
Awesome work Team Weeksy!
Now that nationals are done what's the plans for the rest of the year?
Regarding bike sizes how does the new Atherton size up against the current preferred size Session?
Awesome work Team Weeksy!
Now that nationals are done what's the plans for the rest of the year?
Regarding bike sizes how does the new Atherton size up against the current preferred size Session?
We've got Pearce this weekend and then it gets very quiet from a racing perspective, we may do a 100% at FoD but there's little else about. There's MIJ and Stile Cop but the tracks are not long enough for being much use for him. So it'll likely be Ponty/Dyfi and FoD most weekends.
The Atherton is 5mm longer reach than the Session, so right in the same ball park. We had cool chats this weekend with various people from one of the owners of Atherton, to the girl who sends us the pics of the continuing build going on... So was great.
I think we all need a few weeks/weekends off sleeping in tents/vans so there'll be the odd hotel over winter if cheap enough, but mostly it'll be a there/back in 1 day. He'll be doing some weekend coaching too with Katy/Sam now he's qualified so that'll keep him busy as he needs to clock up 100 hours of coaching to be able to get his next qualification.
We're not heading to Lake Placid for WCs and it seems pretty unlikely now that we're going to MSA, which makes all of us a little sad, but deffo makes my wallet happy which has taken a massive hammering this year. But WCs was a dream rather than a realistic goal, it just seemed within touching distance for a little while.
Well that's pretty good, i've sold the big frame for about a £20 loss on the deal... I'm more than happy with that. That can go back into the race funds for next year and we can sit patiently and wait for the Atherton to arrive now.
This weekends race is potentially going to be postponed due to high winds, as we know, high winds and trees don't really mix, so no arguments from me there.
We've got some new pedals arriving today for him so that's excellent, looking forward to trying them out 🙂
Gloves!
Gloves!
Not unless forced by the organiser. More and more and dropping the gloves to improve 'feel'
I don't necessarily agree.. but there's only so many things you can enforce. He NEVER rides without a helmet, even testing a bike for 20m and always wears armour and knees... but the gloves.. Mmmmm
More and more and dropping the gloves to improve 'feel' fashion.
FTFY 😉
Kids eh! 🙄
He's honestly convinced he rides slower in gloves than he does without them. Which i find weird as they gloves he has are honestly the most comfortable pair i've worn, i've bought several pairs myself as he gets them for free. He wears them in the cold, when he has to in races... but other than that, he does prefer without.
The no gloves thing comes in and out of fashion every so often. I think it was the likes of Blenki that started it. They’ll all be back in gloves in 12-18 months or so.
I think it was the likes of Blenki that started it.
A lot of kiwis don't wear gloves. A young NZ EDR racer in Canazei was telling me he'd just had to buy his first gloves in Italy because he was warned he might not be allowed to race without them. I think I heard Charles Murray saying he carries them just in case, but normally gets away without it.
Protection aside, it wouldn't work well for me - my hands are normally soaked with sweat and the ground is often wet so I can't dust them.
I think it was the likes of Blenki that started it.A lot of kiwis don't wear gloves. A young NZ EDR racer in Canazei was telling me he'd just had to buy his first gloves in Italy because he was warned he might not be allowed to race without them. I think I heard Charles Murray saying he carries them just in case, but normally gets away without it.
Protection aside, it wouldn't work well for me - my hands are normally soaked with sweat and the ground is often wet so I can't dust them.
The boy has his tucked in his front of his trousers every run. He was stopped at La Molina in the Euros so had to run them..
Well that escalated, maybe this should go in the BYP thread.
We drove 2.5 hours to Shropshire and got 15 mins away from the track.
*ring ring* "race cancelled...
FFS, 2.5 hours back home.... Not their fault... but i wish i'd known 2.5 hours earlier.
Awesome day at FoD today with the boy. Started with him and a racing mate chasing me round the extended Red. I think it was the fastest I’ve ever ridden it and some of his corner technique coaching is paying off, a bit. You can only teach an old dog so much
he was testing his new pedals and grips out. Pedals were superb, grips may be a bit too fat diameter for him, more testing needed
he then did some fast DH laps, again testing pedals. We’re trying a few different things over winter this year, I’ve got the DT Swiss def def hub getting built this week and a test on an e13 sidekick hub is due soon
he wants try try out things like different bar widths as well before getting the new Atherton frame
Have you tried the Ochain?
My feeling is the DT is going to be noisy and hammer itself to bits, as there is no damping/bump stop.
Ochain is incompatible with our cranks as we're running the older (22-23 ) Saints. They're not compatible with either the O-chain or Rimpact.
We have the option for a demo day at E13 with Pearce the week after next which we're likely to do.
From what i've been reading, the theory is that the wheel versions will be better at doing the job than the crank versions, but i have to admit this is way outside of my knowledge.
From chatting to my mechanic, he tells me that if the DT SWiss DEG/DF breaks it will break in a disengaged context, so if it breaks half way through a race run he'll just end up chainless essentially... Which is pretty OK for us. He also thinks the Ochain is pretty intensive in terms of upkeep and maint stuff, which the DT Swiss hub shouldn't be.
I'm pretty curious at to it all and whether he even notices anything on his Session and then on the Atherton as it may mean we end up with multiple hubs.
Final race (again) for 25 so a strip down in lunch today and check/clean/grease of all the pivot bearings, re-aligning the calipers, checking wheel bearings, cleaning chain and checking pads... I think we're all good to roll. 🙂
He also thinks the Ochain is pretty intensive in terms of upkeep and maint stuff, which the DT Swiss hub shouldn't be.
Week in the Alps, serviced before I went, 15,000ft a day for 6 days. Pulled it apart last week and its fine. Wasn't mega wet, but pressure washing bike everyday, couple of days it was a few times to keep the mud down.
Servicing is 30mins thereabouts, best done in a washing up bowl to contain any of the springs/balls. I keep spares in the eventuality of something running away. Never had any issues with the ochain.
Conversely, I don't think they will work as well as an Ochain, there doesn't appear to be anything to hold the ratchet back, so its using drag to fix it in the held back position. No one has stuck a set of power meter pedals or crankarms on to put numbers to anything
Meh, front wheel/bearing had a tiny bit of play. I was just dropping the front end off the stand and thought "meh, that's not right".
Threw in the spare wheel and there's no play, so it was obviously the front bearings. Luckily they're a 10 minute job on there and i've got a few in spares, 20307LLB. So that's done and while i was there i swapped the front tyre on the spare wheel from an Argotal to a Kryptotal.
Just need to do a spoke/tension check tomorrow and i think we're all good for weekend.
Well that's a minor one to ponder. Both the E-13 and the DT Swiss are coming in at £500 roughly built to a hub with new spokes and our own rim (brand new Reserve).
The Ochain and the Rimpact come in a chunk less than that, even with buying some SRAM cranks, especially as i can sell our Saints (new and used set)
So it all needs a little bit of winter thinking, especially as he already went fast on the Atherton without it. Not sure, not sure at all.
Pretty sure newer cranks would cost less?
Yeah that's what me and LBS are now looking into, both Truvativ Decendant and Hope options. You can get the SRAM X0 carbons for £150, but having snapped a set of those and a mate snapping his just last week, i'm wary of them.
Obviously you've got £250 on top of the crank prices to get the Ochain/Rimpact of course... but nothing in this game is cheap.
I'm getting more and more tempted to do the E-13 day next weekend, but not sure how much it'll tell us on the Session rather than the Atherton anyway.
The good news is, he already went fast as heck on the Atherton even without any of these options, so it's not exactly likely to be life changing.
For me, one of the biggest goals of the Ochain/Rimpact is to make the bike quiet, as quiet bike = fast bike. Having the drivetrain/hub clattering about is a distraction.
I'm not sure the lad cares in truth about that... but admittedly we've not tried a bike with one yet. We have the option over winter of stealing a mates Hope/O-chain setup for the weekend to do some testing.
I had an interesting chat with a paddock-dad-mate last night as his boy runs the Atherton as part of the Dev team. Interestingly his teammate Charlie was FTD at Revs and is in Youth, beating even the full Elites.... Wowsers... So i was asking about what damping system they're running and the answer is, nothing. They're just running the stock MRP chainguide but nothing else.
So maybe the answer is, don't worry about it and just ride more over winter 😀 😀 which is already the plan of course, getting as much time on the bikes as possible.
Your final comment is the most sensible
Ochain is just a placebo - at the end of the day it's weight in the right place and doesn't really cost anything but money and maintenance and, if you're a believer or have a mechanic for that stuff you might as well run one. It's just FOMO. There's no downsides unless you're on a Shimano programme and now can't . . .
You can get just a quiet a bike with a £25 bit of stick on rubber (VHS).
Your final comment is the most sensible
Yes but that's of course a given. There'll be a tonne of riding over winter as always with a smattering of coaching (both giving coaching and getting coaching) as well as days and weekends away. The only downside of all of this of course is that it'll all be on the Session rather than the new bike until it arrives. But he'll (and me and the van) be sticking in a bucket load of riding time and getting out on the tech to hit harder and faster 🙂
None of the 'thoughts' affect that massively in terms of what he can or can't do for winter training