Weeksy08 the ongoing racing trials and tribulations of a crazy teen

In that case, great picture!

Did exactly the same thing in his race run, so will be somewhere near last.

Showed a great attitude though after the race

“Stacked it in roots, same place, don’t care though, went soooo fast after that to the bottom ?? ”

That’s more important than the result sometimes

Agreed. Main thing is he got back up and finished.

It’s all experience at that level

Excellent service by SRAM via blazing bikes, got a new set of X01 cranks in the post today. Of course you could argue they should never have failed.

They’ve gone straight into eBay to fund a new set of Saints.

The boy is racing Rogate world championships this weekend (hey, it’s not my name lol)

Not sure yet if I’m taking him or mrs Weeksy as I’m down with man flu.

Well Sunday was a bit of a day as usual. Rogate events can be a bit weird as they’re really short at times, but then again yesterday you had 3 World Cup riders racing, along with 3 out of the fastest 4 in National Enduro racers in Youth along with people like Lucas Craik (Ethans brother) and Luca Thurlow (WC Racer), it’s a ‘locals place’ and the MB Cyclery kids are devstatingly quick. It’s a weird sandy terrain which can be hard to get used to the grip levels etc.
Morning practice is timed and the boy came in with 5th in practice with the main contingent ahead of him being the MB Cyclery locals as we’d expect. Most of them are expecting to go to World Cups in Enduro next year and as i say, they’re just fassssssssst. He’s raced a few of them at various events before and both have been super quick..
The biggest problem we had though was with the Privateer 141 and it’s sizing. I love this thing as a bike, he’s had it 2 years now and we’ve done 1 headset change and 1 bearing, other than that, it’s not been touched. But in the last 6 months it hasn’t actually done much at all in the way of riding. Mostly because it’s a P2 size (Medium) and that’s quite simply just too small for him, so he’s clambering all over the bike and perched in the wrong position.
Before his race run i had one of his mates Ed coming over to chat, their freehub was making VERY weird noises, so i stripped the hub in the back of the van but couldn’t diagnose it so ended up throwing our spare wheel in his bike for race runs… Which would have been OK, if it wasn’t for the fact he’s running full 27.5 whoops. So he ended up racing on a reverse mullet with a 29er on the rear. But he got down both run and set times, so all good. Day saved 🙂

Both runs for the lad went mostly OK, i was watching from various places and was glad i’d not done what i’d thought about and entered it… I’m not sure i was getting down 1 section at all… let alone with me still attached to the bike !! He made a mistake gapping a root on run 2 which slowed his time, but ended up (we think) with P6 which isn’t bad, isn’t amazing, but the guys who were quicker were the guys we’d expect to be quicker and are far from slow lads.
In hindsight i wonder if he’d have been quicker on the more familiar and suited Session, but i offered him it the night before to put in the van and he said no. So he got what we took.

It was good to catch up with mates though, even though i really wasn’t on form as i’ve been struggling with the man-flu currently and mostly just felt sorry for myself all day. It won me a few sympathy votes though 😀

Is the large Privateer not the obvious thing? Or are they no longer part of the team package?

Rampage line they’ve built at the local.

Nutter boy was the guinea pig

Just nuts – particularly as he was the test dummy!

Someone has to be *smileys*

His mate hit it later and was a squeaky bum moment

Well sadly the boy has finally killed his Bontrager DH rim, considering the impacts, crashes, cases and landings, it’s done bloody well. But it’s flat spotted in quite a big area and can’t be tweaked out. So we’re looking and debating a new rim.
https://www.swinnertoncycles.co.uk/bontrager-rim-line-dh-30-tlr-29-mtb-rim-p91253/s250510?utm_source=google&utm_medium=cpc&utm_term=bontrager-rim-line-dh-30-tlr-29-quot-quot-mtb-rim-black-anthracite-colour-black-anthracite-holes-32-574681&utm_campaign=product%2Blisting%2Bads&cid=GBP&glCurrency=GBP&glCountry=GB&gad_source=1&gclid=Cj0KCQjwmt24BhDPARIsAJFYKk1dB3udXgGmGDjjpJN3hGTNZrigKbCd9LWD_BPEsrLS3BJ0J94oweEaAgCmEALw_wcB

In truth i think we’re likely to buy the same one, this has lasted us 18 months now and 30+ races with weekend after weekend of abuse so makes sense to go with the same again. He has of course got a Hope Pro5 Fortus30 as a spare wheel along with a 27.5 Nukeproof for mullet stuff, so we’re doing OK, it’s mostly just this one that needs replacing.

We spent all day on Sat with a new media guy creating content for Insta/YT/Sponsors and seeing the quality we’re really really happy with his work. I’ll post up the video that was made later on today, but if i upload it to YT now i’ll get strung up by the boy 🙂

As always, winter here is bringing a LOT of complexities, especially with moving up to Juniors next year and the potential for more EU/somewhere racing for him, but for now it’s business as usual and after a few days off we’re heading up to Dyfi next week for a few days so his mate can test his new Session out for 2025 and get used to it. It’ll then be seeing what the weather does a couple of weeks later and possibly heading up to fort William, but that needs some research.

DT EX471, pretty bombproof, good enough for Gwin to ride it without a tyre and it held up fine.

@weeksy I think the Nevis gondola uplift finishes 31st October,  but have also seen a post saying it’s operating all year……

Thanks mate. If it can’t happen that’s ok it’s no biggy. Was just because Mrs Weeksy is away in Nov so was thinking what we’d do

I’m a serial rim-killer (overly optimistic about my ability to gap rocky stuff) and went through 4 in as many months at the start of the year. After a recommendation from a BPW coach I swapped to a DT FR541. It’s done nearly 6 months now and is somehow still straight(ish) despite my eye for gaps not getting any better!

Thanks all, i ended up going for a Bontrager Line DH 30 which is the stock rim, the reason being that this one really did brilliantly and the price wasn’t too bad. It stood up to a lot of abuse over the last 18 months for sure.

I also ordered a set of Hope Tech4 V4 to try. I get them for decent money off my LBS mate so worst case scenario he doesn’t like them and i’ll just sell them on. (Or fit them to my Orbea).

Went over past his gap from the other day.

It’s a monster!

Just waiting for the Tech4 V4s to arrive at Rotec and they’ll be getting configured to the right length in his workshop.

Plan currently is to leave the Code RSC on for the first couple of runs at Dyfi this Thurs, then at lunch swap to the Tech4 V4 and using the power of timing see which is faster (and which set he prefers). As much as i like the idea of the Hopes from a lot of different reasons, they’ve got to give a bit ‘more’ in some way really otherwise there’s not a lot of point swapping.

Chatting with Rotec he’s often astounded how little problems we seem to have with the RSCs as he gets plenty of Codes in the workshop with issues, but ours have honestly been golden. We’ve not had any fade/issues, we’ve had a service kit once. If i’m being really picky the pivot bolt has come loose 3 times in the last few years but not for a fair few months now, however it’s literally a 10s check every few weeks to make sure it’s OK.

But if we can get even 1s per race from a set of more powerful brakes, that’s a game changer over winter.

Morning at Rotec.bike for me getting this done

He’s just had 2 days riding Dyfi and was flying

https://www.instagram.com/reel/DB0pHf8uHTd/?igsh=MW1tbXA2eTJmMHRmcw==

Literally.

I still wonder if we can get a little more by having better brakes, not much, but tiny bits matter

The Hope Tech4 will be tested tomorrow at Stile Cop race and he can decide if they stay or if he goes with CodeRSC. I don’t mind which he chooses to be honest. In some ways I’d prefer the Codes as I know everything about them in terms of bleed, setup, foibles etc. but if the Hopes help then I will keep them on it.

Get a care package from an STWer too ??

Hopes are very nice.

We’ll be up Stile Cop tomorrow too.

Yeah saw you guys on the list. We’ll catch up tomorrow mate. I’ll buy you a crap coffee ?

Awesome – will never turn down a crap coffee lol

Missed you today sorry.

Last run of practice the boy caught a root in the back on the root section, spat him into the berm and has probably broken his wrist. We’ll know more tomorrow after x-ray but it’s looking pretty likely.

Not quite the result we wanted from the day but we’ll be back soon

Oh no that’s not good. Keeping our fingers crossed for him

To top it all off he hated the Hopes, so now I’ve got to sell a set of Tech4V4 that have done 300m lol.

He doesn’t like the way they braked in terms of nothing, nothing, nothing, wham.

I expect with enough time and effort we could dual then how he likes, but in truth he simply wouldn’t entertain the idea. As soon as we fitted the RSC back on he was happy.

Expensive lesson lol.

Were they even bedded in at 300m

Hope his wrist is ok, bad injury for a teenage lad that ?

Were they even bedded in at 300m

I doubt it, but I ain’t changing his mind.

Not sure on break as local A&E doesn’t x-ray all weekend

Are the brakes internally routed also?

Can do them either. We deliberately left them outside as I suspected he’d want to go back to the RSC. But over winter we’re trying different little things, tyres, brakes, mullet, pedals, obviously that’s gone out of the window but I can’t resolve that lol

On Thurs and Fri he did 16 timed runs at Dyfi, with 8 on 29/29 and 8 on mullet.

Interestingly there was 0.5s difference between both setups on one track and 0.2s on another. I thought Race Track would be a bigger gap in favour of 29/29 and I thought El Hippo would be a mullet track

He doesn’t like the way they braked in terms of nothing, nothing, nothing, wham.

this seems to be the polar opposite of what most people (fans and detractors alike) say about Hopes.

but the most important thing is a setup he’s comfortable and happy with. Sounds like that’s the sram.

fingers crossed for the wrist – what kind of a+e doesn’t do X-rays on the weekend? I would have thought that sporting misadventures were a high cause of walk-ins with possible broken bones, possibly matched only by fri/sat night drunken idiocy.

what kind of a+e doesn’t do X-rays on the weekend?

I think it’s more because it’s a minor injury place, we could have gone to Reading and sat there for 5 hours, but local place we can book appointment in morning, then be in and out. He’s not in masses of pain but it needs checking to be sure.

this seems to be the polar opposite of what most people (fans and detractors alike) say about Hopes.

I’m not going to argue, I’ve read the same but as you say, if he likes to RSC then that’s what he gets. With the Galfer green pads they’re pretty sweet and we know them really well etc.

Yeah, very odd indeed that they’re not doing an x ray on a weekend. Hopefully that’s a good sign that they don’t think it’s broken, and/or on the worst scale of a break. Fingers crossed for him.

@weeksy that sucks – healing vibes to the lad.

We didn’t race today, she wasn’t feeling it this morning as she was concerned about those roots after doing a couple of runs yesterday. She’s off to Florida in a few weeks and didn’t want risk it.

It’s so greasy up there at the moment – would be better if it was properly wet.

Having broken lots of bones, the wrist was by far and away the most painful. Hope it’s not as serious as feared. Fact he isn’t in masses of pain is promising.

Bad news on the wrist….

Thanks all for the thoughts and words.

There’s a silver lining in the fact I now get the Session for BPW on the 16th lol.

Well the Hopes are sold and boxed up, so that’s done and dusted until we try a new set of ‘something’ next  lol. Just waiting for an appointment for this morning and we’ll see where we go from there.

The boy had a chat with Katy last night and that seems to have cheered him up, she’s a really positive influence on him and helps in more ways than she thinks 🙂

Bike will be stripped down today and Forks and Shock will be sent off to Ruth and the crew at TFTuned for servicing. It’ll also get a full once-over and maybe a slightly longer gear outer as i cut that a smidgen short lol.