Awesome mate. I’ll keep an eye out. I’ll be with the lad, Katy and a few other girls, but also @joebristol from here, he’ll be on the Sentinel, i’m on the Status.

If you fancy a chat and a burger at lunch we’ll be down about 12.30 i’d guess.

I am pretty sure I saw a “Weeks” down in the Ft. Bill youth entrants.. glad you managed to get in even with the points SNAFU. Might see you there.

Well done to the lad! (And his chauffeur / mechanic / funder).

yeah we got straight on the case at 11.00 today and were booked on all by 11.04.

Thanks matey… much appreciated 🙂

Playing on the Orbea to maximise runs after school

Randomly and I’ve no idea why, as I don’t follow her, a Katy Curd post just popped up on my Facebook, name checking weeksy jnr @weeksy

She’s an incredibly supportive person and now friend to him/us. I certainly don’t believe he’d have made anything like the progress he has done if she wasn’t involved.

Sound on!!

Loving that!

Loving that!

Me too 😀 it answers the questions that sometimes gets asked as to whether he’s still enjoying it 😀 I ask it myself/him at times just to make sure, but i think we can safely assume, yeah he’s enjoying it 🙂

I noticed yesterday one of his bolts was loose, the DH bikes and riding are hard on bikes and he’s been moaning about playing and wiggle, yesterday he showed me properly, so I set about it. I noticed with wheel out I had wiggle at the back pivot.

[url=https://flic.kr/p/2pxDE4m]Screenshot_2024-02-11-17-11-42-660_com.google.android.apps.docs[/url] by Steve Weeks, on Flickr

Bolt 2 was the culprit, it’s 15nm with a cassette tool to tighten. Anyway it’s done now, along with new pads front and rear and a brake bleed to set stiffness using the RSC adjuster.

He’s not got a massive amount of DH stuff this week, but does have a day with Katy at pontypool. Then straight back between the tape next weekend for race 2 of the season. I think we’re off to pump track today at lunch for a bit so he can mess about. I’m still a ball of snot/coughs so i’m not taking mine today 🙁

Half term this week and whilst the weather hasn’t exactly been playing ball, we’ve still been out having fun. Well, i say we, but i’m down and out with lurgy/man-flu. It’s coming up to 2 weeks now and i’ve turned from the worst tonsilitis type thing ever into a constant ball of snot and headache now, along with a tickly cough, but last night for example we were supposed to be out for Valentines, i was in bed at 8pm…. Just floored, even 2 weeks in, i’m still utterly rubbish.

Yesterday i had a day off to take him to Ponty/Tirpentwys, but no way was i riding, so i was uplift van for him, Katy and Sam Copp. They spent 4 hours getting crazy, muddy and destroying my van, until finally calling it and dragging something that resembled a bicycle back into the van 🙂

Had a long chat with another mate parent who i see often at races, turns out he’s the parent of Josh Turner which i didn’t know… fast fast lad. https://www.rootsandrain.com/rider160969/josh-turner/results/
He ended up 16th in Chatel, in the snow race, which sounds impressive until you hear that he didn’t know he was going until 3 days before the event and didn’t have any spikes. They tried to make spikes using self tappers the night before LOL… Awesome 🙂

The boy was flying again yesterday, really getting on with it well and working with Katy on specifics. It’s interesting chatting to him how Katy and Sam whilst from the same place of coaching, relay their information and thoughts in very different ways, along with analysing and observiving completely different things in his riding. So was great to get 2 different sets of feedback from them.
We’re off to Stile Cop this weekend for a small race, although only small in distance/elevation, not in field as there’s a few fast lads out in his Cat which will deffo make him work and have to be on his A game to do well here. But that’s what we want/need, to get to the next level we need to race faster lads and ride more and more with them. So Saturday he’ll be on the Orbea sticking in lap, lap, lap, lap, then a couple of push-ups on the Session at the end of the afternoon to dial it in. Then Sunday will be on the Session all day of course.
Whether it’s me or Mrs Weeksy taking him, remains to be seen. We may end up doing 1 day each just so i can rest up for the other day.

Clip from Sam Copp chasing the boy

https://www.instagram.com/reel/C3XGA5JsHoQ/?igsh=bHY1dnFocWEzMTdp

my big question of the day – why do you refer to him as “the boy” as opposed to “James”?

Dunno really, we do it at home too. No real reason, he has lots of names, mostly non-real worlds that have morphed into names over the years, again no idea why this is the case. Just who we are i guess is the only way i can answer it.

lol

I saw your lads Insta posts from Dyfi.  Seriously impressive!  I really want to do the Oakley drops, but the entry speed just doesn’t look anywhere near fast enough to me!

I hoenstly can’t even comprehend the drops. He was saying 1 of them is a slow drop, he hit that too fast on the first attempt. The second is a sender and it’s just a question of comittment, apparently… Not in my world, not ever.

A massive help though is someone in front hitting them to guide you in, on the early runs he had Nathan and Ruben from Trailrippers who live nearby and they were hitting them, he knows them well in terms of their skillsets so it was a question of “ok, if they hit them at that pace, as long as i’m following i’ll be fine”.

MTBDH is such a confidence sport, once you have it you can find leaps really quickly. That’s where he’s at right now, he’s finding confidence which if finding more and more speed and skills. I wish i had half his talent.

I wish i had half his talent

Me too, plus the confidence of youth!

https://www.instagram.com/reel/C3Xjk0jsCRA/?igsh=MXN6MjhpbmtmNW95OQ==

Preston Williams podcast

Figured I’d post in here as there isn’t much appetite for DH chat in the main forum.

I thought it was a pretty interesting chat and will be of interest for you if you’ve not already listened. Especially the bits about becoming a world cup DHer starting at Swinners!

One of the surprising takeaways for me is how he found there were more opportunities as a DHer with no reputation compared to a national champion MX rider. MX is often seen as what World Cup DH should be aspiring to be, but those mega bucks at the top don’t mean anything at a national level.

I chat to him and his dad at races, so I’ll give that a listen tomorrow. Thanks for that

Only my 2nd ever podcast i’ve watched… Really interesting stuff indeed. I’d have loved to be in the studio as there was so many questions i’d wanted to ask him that they never managed to fit in.

I admire some of his comments about sponsors and support and prefrences for who/what to use etc and why…

Race day. Stile Cop.

Some fast lads out today for sure and tonnes of crashes on the roots of despair sections.

The boy had an untidy run he tells me, mistakes in 2 sections and got caught out with sun vision. But stuck it in P3 on run 1 and 0.07 off.

That’s decent going then – fingers crossed for a cleaner 2nd run. I looked quickly and thought that was one of those old school chunky monitors with the huge back on them….the retro scoreboard not helping things!

P3 finished

Solid result. Is he happy with it 👍

Felt he had a bigger mistake than in run 1 but I expect everyone out there would say the same due to conditions. But yeah it’s a great start to the season.

Couple of bits from today, his phone is dead and has all the others on.

We finally seem to have hit on a happy place with the Session in terms of upkeep. It’s been a bit of a road this one but not a complicated one as such and not individual to us from speaking to many other session owners. They just seem a bit ‘fiddly’ at times ith various little niggles. But we’re now at the stage where when i get it back in the garage after a weekend it doesn’t wobble, wiggle or clunk any differently.
The boy was commenting on the weekend after race run that he was having issues with 4th gear on changing down. I checked the mech hanger alignment and that was spot on, checked and slightly adjusted the B screw and still wasn’t perfect so whipped the gear inner out and fitted a new one, he’s got X01 gearing so should be pretty smooth. I do blame Trek slightly though as they’ve got a bit of a tight spot at the start of the chainstay where it’s a fairly tight angle. But anyway i’ve got it pretty happy for him now.

This weekend is the 3rd race in short order and the last of races before we hit the Gravity/Nationals. There’s a couple of big hitters in this weekend, Osh Morris from GT Viris who’s just come up into youth and has beaten my lads times every time they’ve met, Finley from Commencal is present again who was 2nd behind my boy at last FoD race, Will Mosely (nephew of Tracey) is there and the Maplesden boys who are always handy.. Then adding in the usual fast FoD lads we’ve raced more than a few times of course. So he’ll need to be on fine form this weekend to find his way onto the box. But we’re as ready as we can be at the moment, so lets see what the weekend brings.

https://www.instagram.com/reel/C3p7vGvt_aS/?igsh=NXp2MjZ6bWthb2o1

Race weekend again… then a couple of weekends off racing before Nationals on the first weekend of April. So last chance to scroe some points for a little while in the overall.
The boy has uplift booked for tomorrow for race practice and will likely spend most of the day on the race-track. Weather looking a little better than it has lately but it’s still going to be slippery roots mostly. But we’ll see how he goes.

Looking forward to it 🙂

Just wanted to say i really enjoyed the videos. Your boy has some skills to be proud of. Excellent

So it was the 100% race at FoD today and a day filled with ups and downs, but arguably more downs (lying on the floor) than ups.

They’d cut a new trail within Corkscrew and the lad couldn’t get on with the bottom bit they’d cut in. Flat and off camber corners meant he spent more of practice lying on the deck than on his bike. As more bikes came and cut away the loam it exposed more and more roots.

After 6 crashes he went off for a walk alone, so I caught up with him, gave him a hug and left him for 5 minutes to compose himself. At that stage I thought the bike was going in van and we’d be home for lunch.
He sucked it up and went for race run1. He came down in 22nd place and a chuck off, I thought he’d had a crap run but apparently he’d stacked it massively too on roots. Damn.

He’d snapped the bolt that holds in his SRAM Code RSC lever so the lever was all over the place. I threw on a new front brake and checked the bike over, all ok to ride. Adjusted and set up his bite and throw on it, ready.

After lunch rest it started raining and got wetter and wetter by the time he was racing, I had to Eeb it down and get his roll off goggles quickly.
I checked the times people were hitting and times were far off run 1 times.
He looked pretty sketchy on his roots section and almost binned it and came in with an 11th place.
Using just run 2 times he was 2nd fastest in class, but could only obviously make up a certain number of places.

I guess it shows where we are that we felt 11th wasn’t awesome but it was far from terrible, after all he beat 53 other racers.
But he took it well and we went home pretty happy considering. He spent the rest of the time with mates laughing and joking and watching many people crash, it was a crash fest and comical.

I even watched my Status being stacked as a mate snapped his chainstay yesterday in practice so I brought him my bike to use.

Pics to follow

https://www.rootsandrain.com/event12337/2024-feb-25-100-mini-dh-2-forest-of-dean/results/

https://www.rootsandrain.com/photos/12454472/rider/111960

Pic preview. Camera guy caught lots of it

Some slightly interesting things from weekend.

We’ve as some may have seen, been having some ‘wiggle’ in the Trek Session. No matter what, i seem to get 2-3 days out of it before you can feel some play, somewhere.
Last time it seemed to be the lower shock mount point, so i fitted a different bushing and sent it out again.

Yesterday “my bike is making a goofy noise again”.. GRRRRR

This time i was SURE it was the same lower bolt mount. So i did some digging. What i noticed was that the spacer that sits in the frame is really loose. I measured it at 23.99mm (so 24mm then). According to the Tech Docs on the Session it’s 25mm for the frame mounts. So i chatted with my LBS and we thought a 25mm spacer would help with it… Funnily enough with the accumulation of spares in the various little boxes i happened to ahve a 25mm spacer of the M8 hole. Awesome. It was incredibly tight, so i filed about 0.1mm off it just to enable it to go in easier.
Once i’d then tightened it to 10Nm we didn’t have any play at all.
So i’m hoping we can put this one to bed again.

The Session has been somewhat work to keep it running, but part of that you can see as soon as you start stripping spacers, bearings etc, it’s just mud, wet, slop… Even though we dry it with a pet blower after every ride, the water still gets in everywhere !!!! As we’ve all noticed, there’s very very few days and rides currently where it’s been dry and 2 days most weekends of wet mud deffo takes a toll on the bike.

That just needs a quick clean now and it’ll be all good.

Then i’ve got the clean the Orbea and the Status 😀

snapped the bolt that holds in his SRAM Code RSC lever so the lever was all over the place. I threw on a new front brake and checked the bike over, all ok to ride. Adjusted and set up his bite and throw on it, ready.

Is that the tiny bolt that holds the lever blade to the lever body, goes through the small bearing that the lever rotates on, and there are two, one either side of the lever?

If so, the lower bolt can work loose and just fall out if you dont double check it every now and again. I had this happen to me and it caused a large crash.

That’s correct Julians. It’s deffo snapped as when i take the other one out, i can still see some bolt in situ. It may have worked loose, but i don’t know. Either way, i’ve bought a new blade/bolts and will sort as i can’t get to that bolt and it’s not worth the time trying to drill it out etc.

The boy got his own first real sponsor as well. (all the others have been part of Katys arranagements with sponsors) We’re currently signed up with https://oxfordmint.co.uk/

Who will provide all our cleaning products/ lubes etc for the season for him, which lets be honest, at the moment is pretty damn important LOL.

We’ve been using their stuff recently anyway and by pure chance we were chatting to their Sales Manager who was looking for someone and was aware of us, so asked us to sign for them.

So expect a little product placement on some of his Instagram and pics in the future. It’s hopefully a relationship that will grow in the coming months and years as they don’t just do cleaning/lube stuff but a whole plethora of kit, clothing, bits, helmets etc through Oxford Products so we’ll try our best to make it work for everyone.

I wouldn’t normally steal a pic, but this is only until he gets home from school and we buy a set.

[url=https://flic.kr/p/2pAm4DV]Tbog[/url] by Steve Weeks, on Flickr

Those in the know call this a T-bog. You take your hand off the bar and grab your seat in the air…

cocky bugger.

https://www.instagram.com/p/C30VLu6M0Fx/?igsh=cG81MDJiYm9pbjE4

[url=https://flic.kr/p/2pAomxk]IMG-20240226-WA0020[/url] by Steve Weeks, on Flickr