StakMountainFuel #MTB April update
This has been a busy month for us all, starting with the first race in our fresh new jerseys.
The first outing for the team was the first ever Revolution Bike Park race in Llangynog, Wales. It started off in true Welsh style… Torrential rain and mud deeper than the disc rotors, luckily our all mountain style frame protectors kept the bikes scratch free from all this mud.
Eventually the track dried out and come Sunday it was almost completely dry. With 67 seniors in the category it was shaking up to be a hotly contested race.
Despite all having crashed; Will came 50th, Ben came 46th, Alistair came 40th and the highlight of the weekend…
In the first race in the jersey I achieved 2nd position and proudly showed off the sponsors on the podium.
On to the second week in April and for Will it is the biggest challenge of the year; BUCS. For those that do not know, this is the British University Championships for Downhill. This year 368 riders attempted to qualify for the 100 places in the finals. It was held at Antur Stiniog and is regarded as one of the toughest places in the UK to ride. He flew through qualifying and came away with 35th!
When racing came around pressure was on to not disappoint, Will managed to put in a cracking run and finished with 32nd position overall, knocking 3 seconds off an already impressive time which made us all over the moon!
The next race after a weekend off for Me, Alistair and Ben was Pearce round 2 at Kinsham. The track was a super fast, dry affair that left no room for error; times were going to be tight as it was a short track.
Here is Alistair railing one of the techy corners in his race run. After a hard day’s practice involving riding the track 14 times we recovered with a large array of Mountain Fuel , burgers and the odd beer. Racing got underway on the Sunday and it was as tight as ever, with 8 seconds covering over 20 places. Ben, who was on his trail bike due to mechanicals, rode steady and arrived into a 57th place for his Pearce debut. Alistair had set his sights on achieving a position in the top half and despite crashing in his first run, the pressure didn’t overcome him and he got 34/68th, leaving him happy that he managed to finally stick a good race run in. From practising heavily with the team on Saturday I was feeling confident with the track and gave it my best in race runs. Coming across the line into first place was something I’ve never done before and I was shocked, two more people went quicker than me which set me back to third but I was still over the moon to get my first podium at a Pearce event!
