You lucky blog readers.. Today you get a break from me and you get the one and only Keeny giving you all the DH blogging action you can handle. As you will read Keeny hasn't been too well but now he is getting back on the bike there will be more stories from the man himself.
Enjoy.
Ritch@KR
As this is my first blog on here I think a bit of an intro
is in order. I'm Alastair 'Keeny' keen and can normally be found behind the
front desk at John Aktins Cycles or riding 4X for Wideopenmag.co.uk (plug!) but this
year I'm adding another feather to my cap in the form of riding DH for John
Atkins Cycles on the new team Trek Session DH bike!
I've
not had the best start to the year so far with a mixture of illness and a
recent fairly small crash leaving me with fairly major internal injuries
keeping me off the bike and forcing me to miss the inaugural British 4x last
weekend (1st national I've missed in 5 years). So despite some common sense and
doctors orders I headed down to Taff Buggy in south Wales this weekend for my
first major DH race in a 6 months and only 2nd time riding this bike but
itching to be back on 2 wheels.
After
a 6 am start to the day I arrived to a dry and overcast venue and headed
straight down the hill to check out the track. Now the course at Taff is a
bit of an odd one, it's made up of a series of pedally sections connected with
chutes and drops interspersed with jumps and berms all scattered with
rocks of varying sizes. That may not sound overly impressive and is a pain in
the lungs but makes for a really fun course.
Course
walk done and time to enter and get ready! Having got there silly early I had
plenty time hanging round so went and found a couple familiar faces Seb Frost
creator of the awesome rootsandrain.co.uk
and fellow chicken lover Jess Greaves. Much tyre debate and faffing from Seb
later we headed off for practice, a quick bit of complaining about helmet cams
from the man from BC and Seb led us off:
As
soon as I hit the first corner a winter of not having a DH bike and lack of
recent riding caught up with me, I was all over the place and wasn't even going
that fast! Rolling down, missing drops and hitting corners square on was really
messing my head up even more than my lingering injuries. If you've ever ridden DH you know it's all in your head and the smallest lack of confidence really
messes you up and it really was.
After
a very slow start to the uplift we got another 2 runs in before the end of
practice and I was feeling quicker (relatively) on the rough sections but the
tail end of a chest infection was destroying me on the sprint sections. Now
came the worse part of racing DH, the hanging around before your run! There
never seems to be as much in 4x probably because there's more shorter races and
no uplift which gives you minutes rather than hours of waiting around.
Race
run 1 came round and despite the lack of a start gate I started as I meant to
go on with a good sprint from the line, hitting the left right left right
corners down the field all was going well, at least in term of me staying on the
bike (I've got a habit of not doing this in race runs) 2:23 minutes of cautious
riding and panting later and I was over the line. I'd like to say that was a
good time but it really wasn't in anyones book!
Back
to the top and more hanging around before run 2. After either me misreading or
someone not posting the right start times I missed my start slot (1st time in
12 years racing) meaning I had to wait until the end and was last senior down.
This time I went for it a bit harder and even did the wall drop that had been
psyching me out all morning, but alas a stronger headwind and lack of
confidence left me only 3 seconds quicker. All done and dusted I came 47th out
of 49 in seniors which sounds bad (and it is) but still an improvement on this
race last year where 2 crashes in both race runs and me giving up to do whips
and manuals left me stone dead last haha.
Being
a bank holiday weekend gave me an extra day to redeem my riding and I headed
down to the Forest of Dean for some more time on a big bike. Conditions couldnt
have been more different from Taff where there was a lack of grip due to the
amount of dust now there was a major lack of visibility due to the overnight
torrential rain turning the courses into puddles and streams. As I turned up
just after lunch there happened to be a spare seat going on the regular local
uplift from the flyupdownhill guys which made life a lot easier not pushing up
in soaking kit!
Running
a set of full mud spikes meant there was plenty grip until I hit a wet root or
rock at the wrong angle which made it a much more fun day hoping and drifting
my way down the hill. Personally I think riding in these conditions is WAAY
more fun than the dry even if you can't see where you're going just because you
can get a slide on at any point and any speed so even easy sections become a
bit tricky and it's so satisfying blasting through puddles like a kid in wellies
:)
Many
runs and a lot of standing water later that was the end of the weekends riding
and even with one of my worst ever results I was soo happy to be back on a bike
and having fun!
Big
thanks to the MIJ Racing guys for putting the race on, Simon from FlyUp
for fitting me on and keeping going when I was the only person still riding,
Wideopen mag and Drift Innovations for the helmet cam and of course John Atkins
for the loan of the bike for the year as well as putting up with me only being
half awake at work tomorrow!
and yes that is my finger in the top right corner of the picture...
Keeny@JAC
Tim Fowler (