MARIN NEWS & REVIEWS

Last weekend Dan competed in the 4th round of the UKBikePark Summer DH race series. Coming from his good performance at the English Championships at Caersws the previous week, Dan was looking forward to racing again at UKBikePark on a track that had been ‘updated’ since it had last been used for a race.

Dan:

“Practice went well: the track was odd, the top section was flat out and lots of fun, the bottom was likewise, but in between was a slightly weird flat, almost uphill section, which had been recently added, which completely ruined the flow of the track, and was a real slog to get across carrying speed. This led into some jumps, that while fine at a slow speed, when hit flat out were way too small, with very steep lips that kicked you up way too high, making hitting them at race pace dangerous and scary! Despite the track being awkward, I had fun and felt fast. Towards the end of the day I did some runs with Isaac fairly fast, and was keeping up with him fine, so I went into Sunday feeling good.

Sunday practice went well, I got 4-5 runs in, 2 of them with one of the other top youths, Ty, and I kept up with him as well. I got all my lines sorted, and on my last practice run, hit the track fast to check I could stick my lines at speed. My first run was ok, it felt slow, and I expected it to be a slow run, but it turned out to be the good enough for first place. I was surprised by this, but happy as I knew that I could go faster on my second run. My second run was good, I rode the top section well, keeping speed and pedalling lots, then dug really deep on the pedally section, and hit the bottom section fast, I took nearly 3 seconds off my first run time and kept first place.

I am very pleased with this result as I beat Isaac, something that I always aim for, and this shows that my speed is improving. I am looking forward to my next race to see if I can keep up the good results.”

This was another very good result from Dan, showing progression by for the first time being in a leading position after the first runs and then keeping that lead whilst going almost 3 seconds faster in the second runs. Also, for the first time Dan was able to wear the ZeroG hoody on the top step of the podium (for his last win the branded kit hadn’t arrived yet)!

The next race will be the 5th and final round of this UKBikePark Summer DH series on the 18/19th September.

Attached pictures:

Race run (UKBP_Rd4_Win_1.jpg)

On the top step of the podium! (UKBP_Rd4_Win_2.jpg)

Tim & Dan.

Last weekend was the English Championships, held at Caersws, Wales (yes, the organiser apologised too!). Dan has raced at this venue once before last year, but he was keen to learn the track being used for this race as it is a new one that is also to be used for the last round of the BDS National race next month that Dan will compete in.

It had rained quite hard in the days leading up to the weekend, but the forecast was for some showers during the Saturday practice, but then dry for the Sunday race day after a wet Saturday night.

Dan: “Practice went well, the track was super fun, and even after the rain, still rode well. I was finding it not too challenging, and was hitting all the lines I wanted, every run. I was picking some lines that utilised what I learned at my training day with Rowan Sorrell, and finding I was going much faster, and staying in control. By the end of Saturday I had all my lines sorted, and felt good on the track and was looking forward to racing it on Sunday. The track dried up considerably through Sunday practice, and was rutting in nicely. Through the off camber sections, the high lines were defined, and whilst slightly tricky to get on to, had good support and were much faster than the riskier lower lines. I felt faster and faster each run, letting off the brakes more and more, and felt confident of a good finish in the race.

First race run started off well, I rode the top section fast, but unfortunately caught someone up very quickly and got held up behind them, costing me at least 2-3 seconds. The rest of my run was good, and I came across the finish line in 10th place. I knew I had 2-3 seconds to easily make up in the second run, so I was confident of a top 10 finish. My second run went well, I hit all of my lines, kept my speed up and stayed off the brakes. The only slight moment was just before the finish line where my foot slipped off the pedal, but I managed to get it back on quickly and not loose any time. I took 7 seconds off my first run time, and ended up in 6th place (4th in the English Champs)

Overall I am very pleased with this result as there were a lot of fast riders there, and I placed well. Next race is UK Bike Park round 4, and I am looking for a podium.”

This is arguably Dan’s best result to date – he was very close to Isaac Anderson, his main rival who has been recently been getting some very good results, and Dan also beat other rivals, who are typically close to him, by a good margin. Dan even surprised himself by the 7 seconds that he was able to improve his first run by in his final run. Dan’s training day with Rowan has definitely helped – all through practice he was saying how he was trying new lines and techniques that he would not have tried before, and finding himself faster as a result – thanks Rowan!

Since the race was also being held as the English Championships, although Dan was 6th overall in the race (49 competitors), with one Scottish rider (Fraser McGlone) and one Welsh rider faster than him, Dan ended up being the 4th English rider, just off the podium for the English Championships. Not bad when Dan is still riding his Marin Quake ‘freeride’ frame, compared to the other faster riders on full downhill 8 to 10″ rear travel frame bikes!

Marin have just launched their Quad-DH 10″ travel frame at Crankworx in Canada, announcing production after four years of development – we will try to get a frame to upgrade Dan’s bike to be on a par with his competitors since he finds the Marin’s Quad suspension design far better than all others he has tried on demo and friends’ bikes!

I’m writing this in the car park at the UKBikePark where Dan’s practicing on the newly-modified ‘Big Grin’ track being used for the race tomorrow.

Tim & Dan.

We ride our bikes……..

Check out Yuri, Marin’s Marketing Manager hitting the Whistler Trails on the new 2011 Quake DH.

Riding with AT……………………………..

Read more at…………………………

http://www.marinbikes.com/bicycle/bike_blog/?p=1939#more-1939

http://www.marinbikes.com/bicycle/bike_blog/?p=1920#more-1920

National Championships, Ae Forest Scotland 18th July:

These were the second National Championships that Dan has competed in – last year he came 41st out of 42 riders, so any improvement on that was going to be a bonus! Going into the event Dan was seeded 12th out of 49, and we had previously ridden the track last year so he was fairly familiar with what to expect, although some changes had been made to the track in the previous weeks before the event. The weather forecast was predicting rain for race day, but with practice dry after some heavy rain in the days leading up to the race weekend.

Dan:

“After arriving on Friday to rain and course-walking to find a wet track, I was not looking forward to riding the track too much, as parts of it were very wet, the top part resembling a river in some parts, and the bottom looking slippy and challenging. The middle of the track looked good, it was like a large scale BMX track, and looked great to ride. Saturday practice went well – I picked my lines and got steadily quicker throughout the day until on my last practice run, I clipped a tree in a tight wood section, and bent my thumb around, causing considerable pain. The track had dried out lots by the end of practice and was very fun to ride, but unfortunately it rained all night, and made the track wetter than it had been all weekend. I did a practice run on Sunday, nursing my thumb which sent a jolt of pain every time I hit a large bump. 0

Qualifying went well, I came down in 14th, with a steady run, knowing I could knock a few seconds off to try and get into the top 10 for finals. My final run wasn’t appauling, but equally, it wasn’t amazing. I made some mistakes, running wide in some corners and being on the brakes more than I would of liked. I finished in 17th place, which was disappointing, I wanted to top 10, and missed out by making a few mistakes in my run.”

The rain on Sunday was continual, meaning putting the tents and gazebo away wet, and on the drive home the rain only stopped when we reached Lancaster on the M6 – the MetOffice rain radar confirmed that the south of England had had a completely dry day! With a one-run race format it is always difficult to get as close to your fastest without crashing, and with a damaged thumb causing pain, on reflection Dan felt that he was quite pleased with this result even though it was not the overall placing he knew he should be capable of – and it was much better than the previous year!

MIJ DH Round 4 – Taff Buggy, Pontypridd Wales 1st August:

After a late change to our holiday plans we were able to fit in the race day only for the MIJ race series at Taff Buggy. Many of the previous rounds had clashed with rounds of the UKBikePark series which Dan has been racing, so this opportunity to race a ‘free’ weekend was ideal to fit in.

Dan:

“After turning up on the Sunday to do the race as a one day event, I did 6 practice runs in the morning, getting my lines dialled, and the track sussed. I felt fast on the track, and was enjoying practice. The track had many jumps, which suit me, and lots of pedalling, which was not ideal, but it was all high speed, so fairly easy to keep the speed.

My first race run went okay, I felt slow, and as if it was another practice run, but came down the hill ending up in 4th, just 2 seconds off the pace, I knew that I could gain 2 seconds from a my run, and headed back to the top confident of a podium finish. My second race run felt fast, I hit all my lines and pedalled hard, but turned out to be a whole 3 seconds slower than my first, I think this may be down to pushing too hard, and loosing speed in corners and in braking. I ended up 5th, getting a podium. This result is okay, but I would of liked a top 3, as I know I can ride at that level.”

Next race for Dan is the English Championships being held at Caersws, 21/22nd August.

Dirt School DH training day – Cwmcarn, 11th August:

Dan:

“We headed up to Cwmcarn for a training day with Rowan Sorrell today (Wednesday) and it was great, I learnt a lot about setting up for different lines, and where to brake to carry as much speed as possible out of corners. We spent a lot of time on one section trying out all the different line choices and getting braking dialled. By the end of it I felt much faster through the section, and more confident that I could hit it every time. I will be carrying this through to races to help me choose lines that can save time, and making sure I hit them as fast and smooth as I can to put a good race run together. I managed to get in a play on the jumps at lunch time, so had some fun and threw some awesome whips down. After lunch we headed up the track further to look at drops and tight technical sections. I ended up doubling some rock steps, something I had looked at before but never managed to do, so I can take this into a race situation where there are consecutive drops and double them up to save speed. Unfortunately when we were riding the tight sections I was pushing hard and got a bit off-line, clipped a tree and ended up pointing down the hill, not what you want to be doing, I bailed from the bike and smashed my lower back into a tree quite hard, making the end of my day a rather painful one. The good news is as I type this, my back is feeling lots better after some rest and an ice pack, and I hope to be back on the bike in a few days!”

Back garden pump track building:

As Dan mentioned in a previous update, he has started to build a ‘pump’ track in our back garden. The deal with Mum was that she would end up with a vegetable patch if Dan did all the digging, and in return he could route a track around the outside of it! The grass had turned to mainly weeds and moss after several wet winters, so as long as he left the other end of the garden alone (deck and patio), we wouldn’t be losing any usable turf. After discussing with the local builders’ merchants, a supply of 25kg bags of ‘10mm to dust’ was decided, getting a few bags at a time to provide the top surface with the base of the track built from the clay dug up from the other parts of the vegetable patch to-be. Dan’s got the first part of the track built, as can be seen in the attached picture (back_garden_pump_track_start.jpg). More news as construction continues!

Tim & Dan.

Last weekend was the British Downhill Series Round 3 at Llangollen (Dan didn’t do round 2 at Fort William due to GCSEs), a National-level race on the same track that Dan raced the Welsh Championships on two months ago. The weather forecast was dry and hot for the whole weekend, and Dan was looking forward to racing here again, as mentioned in the last race write-up, after his experience here a year ago, which was his first National-level race on the hardest track in the UK, where he struggled to even ride all of the track without a guaranteed off-piste time-losing excursion!

“I came into the weekend really looking forward to it. The last time I had been to Llangollen I had had fun and realised that I could ride the steep stuff, and at a reasonable speed too. Practice went very well, the track was awesome, fast, loose and steep, although the uplift could have been better (1-2 hour queue for a run), but the track more than made up for this. Unfortunately, due to the track being so fun, I neglected food and proper drink, choosing instead to drink the free can of ‘Monster Energy’ being handed out by the sponsors after each run, and get back in the uplift queue as soon as possible. This turned out to be a very bad idea, as come the end of practice, I ended up with a huge headache, and not much hunger. I got a reasonable night’s sleep and woke up with the headache still there. I took some painkillers and went and did one practice run to check the track out and get my lines dialled. After this I took a 1-2 hour break and had a ‘power nap’ and relaxed before my seeding run. I took the seeding run relaxed and as a tester run to see where I placed: I got down and ended up in 14th, which I was happy with considering I had cruised down. My race run went reasonably well, I hit the top section fast and felt good, but unfortunately, in the same place where I had made a mistake in the Welsh Champs, I made another mistake, I came into a rutted chute and bounced off line, ending up having to jam the brakes and stall in the corner, then get my speed back up, loosing 1-2 seconds. Then I made another mistake two corners further down, sliding off line and stopping on the inside of a corner, loosing another 1-2 seconds.

I ended up 14th, around 4 seconds off a top 10, but I am happy knowing that I could have achieved a top 10 without any mistakes, and even more happy knowing that just a year ago, I could not even ride the track without crashing multiple times and going super slow.

Overall a good weekend which has boosted my confidence, and will inspire me to train hard. I am currently building a pump track in my garden (thanks Mum!), which will be excellent for honing my skills and getting time in on the bike!”

The one-run race format used at National level places a lot of pressure on pushing the speed as close as possible, but not beyond, the limit, and this tends to be where many riders can easily loose out. Watching several of the top professionals getting it very wrong in practice was quite re-assuring, but then you begin to realise that this is how they know where that critical limit is, so that when they come to the single race run they can get consistently closer to that limit than most.

The next race is in two weeks’ time at Ae Forest in Scotland for the National Championships. Dan has ridden this track when we visited it last year, but he’s never raced it, and some track development has been done since we were last there, so it will be interesting to see how he gets on.

Pictures attached from Llangollen: BDS 3

Tim and Dan.

“Last week we headed up to Belmont (a local riding spot) to do some practice and had a load of fun, trying new lines and sections, including a steep technical rock garden! I rode up there during the week on my hard tail, a 25 mile round trip, just to see if it was do-able and am going to make it into my new training route, leg strength from the road riding there, and skills from riding the tracks there.

This week we went to race at the UK Bike Park at their Summer round 3…”

Last weekend was the UKBikePark Summer DH Round 3 race. The last round was the Southern Championships, where Dan came 2nd in the race overall, so he was looking forward to this race. It was being held on a new track that Dan hadn’t raced on before, so with a forecast for a dry weekend, but with heavy rain having fallen on the Friday before, it was looking to be an interesting race.

Dan: “Practice went well until about half way through the day, when I was trying to get a line through a tricky off camber root section, and came in with some speed, hit the line but both my wheels washed out from under me, and I went from full speed to stopped very quickly, landing on my head and shoulder on some roots. The end result of this was a concussion and a sore shoulder – I didn’t ride the root section for the rest of the day, and practised the rest of the track instead.

Sunday didn’t start well either, I tried to hit the root section again, but did the same thing as I had done on Saturday, so decided to slow down and tripod through the section to make sure I didn’t do myself any further damage. I had my lines sorted for the rest of the track, and was feeling good about racing. My first run was not good, I felt like I was going super slow, and I was braking in stupid places and just not flowing well, I think this is down to hitting my head the day before, and just not being able to push hard. My second run went much the same, I tried to push harder, but started making mistakes, and I felt really slow, I took 2 seconds off my first run time, but was still 5 seconds off the pace, a pace that I know I can ride at, but for some reason just could not get myself to.

I finished 4th, which is not bad, but I really wanted another podium, and I know I can ride at the same pace, if not faster than the guys who were on the podium. Next race is the British Downhill Series at Llangollen which I am really looking forward to. My riding has come on so much, and I’m looking forward to seeing where I place at a National on the hardest track in the UK. I am looking for a top 10 finish.”

A difficult race for Dan – the crash on Saturday really seemed to affect his riding speed on the Sunday. I think some subconcsious self-preservation became present when he came near the root section where he had fallen. I was standing two corners before it for both race runs and his approach speed through the sections just before it seemed to be noticeably slower than he had been early on in Saturday practice, and slower than his rivals.

This is being written in the tent at Llangollen, where we’ve arrived for the British Downhill Series Round 3, on the anniversary of his first National level race at the same venue. This time the track is the same one used for the Welsh Championships a few weeks ago.

Tim & Dan.

Last weekend was the second round of the UKBikePark Summer Series, but it had also been assigned double points from British Cycling and named as the Southern Championships – with the top rider from the South/South-West Region getting the title of Southern Champion for their age category.

Over to Dan:

“Saturday went well, the track was very wet at the beginning of the day, but was drying well towards the end. The track itself was very good, it had a mixture of features, a rock garden up top, techy corners through the middle, and a flat out section at the bottom. I got all my lines dialled on Saturday and was having fun on the track and feeling good for the race.

On Sunday the track was much drier, and as a result it was riding faster. Practice was good, I was hitting the track fast, hitting all my lines, and getting loose in the rock garden and the flat out bottom section. I experimented with a few lines in the rock garden just to make sure I was on the best line, and planned to do this with other parts of the course, but unfortunately, due to a rider being stopped on a tricky off camber root section, and the marshal not giving prior warning, I came into the roots at race pace, only to see that the rider was in the way, and had to ditch into a tree to avoid serious damage to both me and him. Unfortunately this ended with my finger being pinned between a tree, and my bike, which resulted in 7-8 cuts on my finger, and a considerable amount of blood spilling down my finger. A quick trip to the medics, 3 plasters and some tape later I was ready to go again. After checking I could still grip the bars I went back to nail my line through the roots.

The first race runs came around, and I decided to take an easy run, to get a decent time and avoid damaging my finger further. I hit all my lines, kept good speed and felt good all the way down. When I got back to the top I was told I was leading the category by 1 second, which I was very pleased with, considering I had ridden conservatively. For my second run I knew I could take at least a second off my time, but was aiming to take 2 off as I knew that everyone else would up the pace and be pushing hard. I rode hard, hitting all my lines and carrying speed where I knew I was loosing it on my first run. I backed off in some places as I really didn’t want to hit my hand again and cause further damage to it. I managed to take 1.4 seconds off my time, but unfortunately someone else went slightly faster and beat me to 1st by 0.09!

Overall I am very pleased with this, I have come away from this race with the Southern Champion title, and being beaten by such a small amount of time, with an injury, is good as I know that if my finger wasn’t hurt, and I hadn’t backed off slightly in some parts, I could take the win.

Next race is round 3 at the UK Bike park on June 20; I am aiming to podium again.”

The rider who beat Dan by 9 hundredths of a second to the overall race win is from the Wales Region, so although Dan lost narrowly for the race win, he was named Southern Champion since he was the top regional rider. The field for the race was quite large, at 38 riders registered on the Sunday morning, a much bigger field than normal for the UKBikePark races due to the Southern Champion title being available.

This was another milestone race for Dan, as it was not only his first Regional Champion title, but also the first time he has experienced leading the race after the first race run, with the added pressure of having to improve for his second run (and managing to do that) and worry about how much other competitors could improve too.

Dan and Tim.

Dan’s got GCSE exams at the moment, and last weekend he took a break from revision to do some riding in the Forest of Dean, which his sister filmed (Marin blog item: http://www.marin.co.uk/wp-marin/?p=1215), but we also wanted to capture a photo for his school’s ‘Extreme Reading’ competition. The competition is run by the library at the school to encourage reading and entails having a photo taken of you reading a book in an unusual place/situation – the more ‘extreme’ the better! Last year Dan entered with a shot of him reading whilst on the bike in full race gear, but static, so this year he thought he could take it to a more extreme level by trying to get a shot of him reading whilst in the air during a jump.

He had a jump in mind, which was big enough for him to have enough air-time to get the book into a position where he could glance down at it convincingly whilst one-handing mid-jump for long enough to get the photo, and then be able to land safely with both hands back on the bars having thrown the book to the side. The jump he chose was the 30ft jump as seen in the video mentioned earlier – and it was up to me to make good use of the new flash I have for my camera to capture the right moment.

Dan’s description of how he did it: “I held the book with my thumb and forefinger, then rode down to the jump holding on with 3 fingers, then pulled a one hander, looked at the book, threw it to the side and landed ”

It’s as simple as that! It took a couple of trial runs to get my camera-work able to capture the shot at exactly the right time, but the final result was one of those just-perfect shots that I can sometimes get when things work well.

The shot of Dan has been uploaded to Pinkbike…….. (http://www.pinkbike.com/photo/5060018/?s5 ) where it has already gained 1550 view hits, and recommendations for ‘picture-of-the-day’. Dan is wearing his ZeroG race top with the arm logo showing prominently, the ZeroG stickers we had made up to go on the helmet and the large ‘Marin’ branding on the bike frame.

Dan also notes that this is quite a good way to keep up with the GCSE revision reading whilst still being able to ride the bike – or so he tells us!

Tim (Dan’s Dad)

aaagggghhhhhh, always wear a helmet.

Check out the latest from Dan Joyce………….

The last two weeks have been pretty relaxed, no races, and for most of the time, no DH riding, just some corner practice in the woods on my hardtail working on areas where I know I need to improve. I went to the Forest Of Dean on Saturday for some DH practice on the area that I had been practising earlier in the week, mainly right hand corners, and found that I had improved notably since the last time I rode the Forest Of Dean track. Whilst I was at the FOD, I made a 3 minute video with some good riding in it.

http://www.pinkbike.com/video/138474/

Another free weekend next week, then It’s Southern Champs time. The race is at the UK Bike Park where I have ridden very well this year ( 3 races, 3 podiums) and I’m aiming to get another podium at this race; which is meant to be using a new, harder variation of an old track, which should be great as I can put my practice into play and see how well I can do.

Last weekend was the Welsh Championships held at Llangollen in North Wales. Dan was looking forward to returning to the venue where, last year, he raced his first National-level race at a track that had just been finished at a brand new venue – with a pre-race reputation of being the steepest, most technically demanding track in the UK. As you may recall Dan ended up last at that race having found a section of the track beyond his technical ability at the time, meaning that he actually had to get off the bike to get round a near-vertical switchback hairpin section near the top of the track to avoid the certainty of crashing there if he tried to stay on the bike!

A new track had been cut for this year’s race, not in the trees this time, but just along the hill on an exposed section, and again the web reports and headcam videos of the track were that it still just as technical as the other track, very steep and loose, but now also with some big jumps at the bottom of the track. So it was with some apprehension that we arrived at sunset at the camping field to look at the track. We set up camp and could see quite a few people walking the track in the dark with torches, but Dan decided to get up early the next morning to walk the track before breakfast, and before the practice was due to start.

Dan was up walking the track at 5.30am (he said it was light and he’d woken up anyway!), so he had two hours on the hill before anyone else joined him – I got the sausages, beans and eggs ready, and then heard what he thought of the track before he set off for practice.

Over to Dan:

“The week leading up to the race had me nervous, yet excited to go to Llangollen, last time I went there (NPS round 2 2009) I could not ride the track from top to bottom without getting off or crashing, but since then I had put in a large amount of time training my skills for steeper terrain, and I was looking forward to seeing whether this had payed off. Saturday was a very good day, my first run was tentative, I was the 3rd man down the hill, and there were hardly any ruts or main lines to follow on the track, but I was amazed that I was feeling very confident on this exceptionally steep track, and that I was able to ride it pretty fast. I got to the bottom without crashing, and went straight back up for another run. For the rest of the day I was hitting everything faster, having lots of fun, and occasionally crashing, but nothing too serious. By the end of the day, I was loving the track and wanted to just keep riding it!

Unfortunately, it rained throughout the night, and come Sunday morning, the track was completely different. It was much slower, and huge ruts and thick clumps of mud had formed in the corners – I could still ride the track well, but staying on line, and on the track, was increasingly difficult. First race run came, and I was riding the top of the track well, I hit all my lines, stayed out of the big ruts and kept my speed up, but when I got the bottom it all went wrong, I came into a corner and for some reason my race trousers got caught on my saddle, so I had to stop and sort them out, this took multiple attempts and cost me at least 10-15 seconds, then a couple of corners later, I got spat out of a corner too early, and went through the tape. I had to push back up and get back on the track, loosing me another 10 or so seconds. After this run I was 10th, but more importantly, if around 20 seconds was taken off my time, I was 6th, and not too far off 5th. I decided to really push it second runs, to try and get a podium, but unfortunately I pushed a bit too hard. Along the top flat part of the track, I made a silly mistake and ended up sliding up the hill, I came to a standstill and had to get going again, which, due to the thick sticky mud, was not easy. Angry from this crash, I rode faster through the next corners, and was hitting all my lines until I came into the last corner before a straight, where I ended up going too wide on the entrance to the corner, and subsequently having my front wheel caught in a rut that was heading straight off the the track. I tried to get out of the rut but it didn’t work, and I ended up getting thrown off the top of a berm straight down the hill. Due to the steepness of the hill, I went about 20-30 metres before I came to a stop and could get off. I started to push back up, but noticed that the next few riders were nearing the point where I crashed, and by the time I got myself back up to the track, it would be unsafe for me to rejoin in front of them, and I would not want to hold them up as I tried to regain speed. I would have had to wait for at least 3 riders to pass before I could rejoin the track, and that means 1minute and 30seconds would have passed, and I would not be able to post a competitive time with 1m30 extra on top, so I decided to just ride down the hill back to the finish.

I ended up 15th out of an entered 25, which is not too bad considering last year I was dead last, almost 2 minutes off the pace. I am not pleased that I crashed in both my race runs, but the knowledge that I could be challenging for a top 5 on a track that I previously hated is good, as it shows my training has payed off.

My next race is the Southern champs at UKBP, where I will be aiming to podium once again.”

Mixed emotions from last weekend – I was really pleased to see Dan loving a very technical track on Saturday afternoon, and it was just a real shame that the rain changed that due to adding a much higher risk of crashing as a result of the ruts and slippery conditions on Sunday. But those very conditions caught out some very experienced racers, so it was with no shame that Dan ended up lower than he was hoping. This same track will be used again in late June for the British Downhill Series Round 3, so this weekend’s practice will be very useful in preparation for that.

The next race is 3 weeks away: the Southern Championships, held at the UKBikePark, which is also their Summer Series Round 2.

Tim (Dan’s Dad).