5 seasons and counting

It's really interesting to look back over old pictures of the Ti Ala Carte from the last 5 seasons of racing. It tells a story of changing fashions in XC racing as well as improvements in kit. The bike started out as a 2x9 (XTR and TA rings) with DT XRC100 forks, carbon risers and Hope brakes and most notably 26" wheels (Stans on King). Over the years the brakes got changed for XTR, the bars were dropped and swapped for flats, the forks swapped for Fox (that actually worked) and the XTR changed to 1x10, originally with an MRP guide but now with one of those narrow wide rings. Oh, and it's now got 650b wheels in it (carbon rims on King) - it's almost like the frame was designed with them in mind; either that or the fax Salsa sent to Lynskey got a bit blurry and stretched which explains the very looooong chainstays that give the bike the room to run the larger wheels. The carbon rims are a real game changer - acceleration is so much more direct. I do wonder where the technology will go now - I'm not sold on Di2 on a mountain bike - too expensive when you trash a rear mech. As it is, it's perfect!

This weekend's outing was the National XC Series at Sherwood Pines. Now, in previous years this event has been known for super-fast swoopy trails, flat out fire road sprints and, in my case, riding for 2hrs 2" behind another rider in a massive group praying one of us (let's be honest here - usually Pybus) doesn't clip a tree and bring us all down.

This year things were a bit different. The lap was only 3 miles and most of it was Singletrack. The majority of this was very slow, very narrow and not exactly to my taste. There's something about being quite tall that makes me feel I can't thread the bike through the trees as well as other riders, but it's probably more to do with ability than height if I'm honest... After a couple of practice laps if was pretty fed up and went to ride a lap of the red trail to cheer myself up. This worked well - it was all the best swoopy bits I remembered from Sherwood courses of old. It turned out this was the problem through - we heard there were so many restrictions on where our lap could go so the rest of the forest (including the red loop) could remain open over the weekend. Fair enough, but it really hit the enjoyment factor. Most of the riders who go to these races must spend £150 or so for a weekend away by the time you've covered entries, fuel, food and accommodation. Courses that are quite so lacklustre don't exactly inspire me to keep forking out for the series. The forestry have a lot to answer for!!

The actual race was quite fun - but only because it was so close. Following a bad crash on Tuesday I was nursing some wounds and so decided not to get to involved at the start of the race. This turned out not to be too costly, as within a lap I was riding with the people I usually end up with. I managed to hang onto the smooth riding Lee Gratton and Giles Drake amongst others. A little slip from Giles (I think?) spilt the group up and we were happily spinning round in the mid-30s or thereabouts I think. There were so many riders so close together, a 30 sec improvement may have led to 10 places gained. I had a bad middle part of the race and really suffered in the slow, twisty, fiddly trails that just do my head in. It's just not mountain biking and sadly when I get fed up I also slow down. Eventually the elastic snapped and I got dropped. I kept on going and managed to catch and pass a couple of other riders towards the end of the race, finishing 36th ish I think. I was really pleased to be only 10 mins down on the winner, especially after I absolutely bombed at Margam. It was reassuring that I'm not totally fat and slow yet.

A special mention has to go to Isaac Pucci for an epic performance, he finished 6th having led out the race on lap 7 of 8. It's great to see him finally getting the results his ability deserves. Thanks as usual to John for the bottles and general encouragement and Ben for being a top chap and booking the Travelodges early so they're super-cheap!

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