Many thanks to all those who supported us at Bike Radar Live, we had a great time in the sun with our customers and managed to demo a huge number of bikes.
Our very own Mountain Bike legend, Paul Lazenby competing in the Dirt Crit and had an entertaining “ding dong” battle with famed MTB Journalist Guy Kestevan.
More shots of a 2011 suspension bike in the testing phase.
Read more @ http://www.southdownshosting.co.uk/smtbsite/2010/06/marin-rift-zone-2011-prototype/
Buy a current copy of Cycle Active to read about the Marin San Anselmo Alfine……
http://www.bikeradar.com/gear/category/bikes/mountain/product/san-quentin-10-36423
“Single-handed proof that you can buy a do-everything fun bike on a budget” – Bike Radar.
“Marin obviously know how to give a bike an instant feel-good factor. Full 710mm width bars with a superb shape are clamped into a diminutive 45mm stem. Lock-on grips as standard are a quality touch and show Marin really do listen to riders about spec”. – Bike Radar
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.
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