Most of this downhill race thing is pretty new to us but at least the venue for the fourth and final round of the Pearce Cycles Summer Series was familiar. Bringewood was the scene of several cross country NPS and National Championships races a few years ago and the camping field brought back bad memories of a painful uphill final sprint finish.

This time though there were tractors and trucks to carry us to the top which made the whole thing a lot more pleasant. The course starts off from the very top of the hill with a super fast swoop into the woods, over stumps, roots and corners before heading out into the open. This is where it gets really interesting with a super-slippy rock garden along the edge of a steep hillside which had a lot of riders plunging off the edge into all manner of brambles, small trees and spiky stuff and they paid for their mistakes with shredded arms.

A fast section of singletrack leads into some crazy dusty stuff in the trees, very hard to ride fast with ankle deep powder and tight corners but a lot of fun and the ground didn’t hurt in the slightest when I crashed a couple of times in practice (although the tree was a different matter). The final section was still in the trees, very fast and hard to hold on with hefty braking bumps doing their best to rattle hands off bars before a steep chute, a large jump and the finish. Race format is two runs with best time to count for final positions, this is good as it means you have two shots at glory and keeps the day interesting.

Being in the Hardtail category I was one of the first off, it’s a bit of a chipper category to be in (kind of like having an excuse for not going as fast as people on proper bikes) so they set us off early before the serious racing starts. I tried to keep it steady on the first run but still had a dumb semi-crash at the top which saw me grinding to a frustrating stop and spending the next few corners trying to regain my concentration. Still I was reasonably pleased with the time and I knew I could go quicker but so could the others, especially first run leader Will Swinden of nocycling.com. On the way up for the second run I gave myself a headache thinking about it so had to sit down for a while. It must have worked because I felt nicely in control and managed to knock 10 seconds off to take the win, it was nerve-wracking waiting for the other riders but luckily for me Swinden crashed twice and was a couple of seconds down.

Just behind us hardtails came the juveniles, youths and so on, some of those small people are extremely fast, they must barely be heavy enough to compress the suspension but still manage to set some of the fastest times of the day. Veterans and Masters go next and aren’t nearly as quick, their old bones being too creaky to keep up with the young ‘uns… wait a minute I should be in Masters and my bones aren’t creaking yet??!? Maybe they just need to try harder to keep up with the riders less than half their age. Our fellow-Sheffield-based Gravity Slaves team had a mix of riders across these categories with Joe Bowman turning in a good time of 2:29 to take 7th in Juniors, Malco 15th in Seniors and team boss Phil needing to go quicker, 22nd in Masters. Some excuses about an unlucky 2nd run I think! Maybe his new bike will help, I think the 13lb Yeti frame is a bit much to lug around on anything less than a world cup course.

After the old duffers all the womens categories go off and there were some quick times posted. Maybe the larger than normal womens field kept it more competitive, Bec managed a good enough first run for 2nd in masters women and was consistent going just 1s slower on the second run. And that was on her Flow hardtail with short forks against the competition on proper downhill bikes. Aimee Dix was fastest woman of the day with an impressive 2:48 and Veteran woman Sue Mahoney would have put most of the Veteran men to shame with a 2:58.

The last to go are Elite and Expert men, they were awesome to watch floating over the bumpy lower section barely touching the ground, well except for Adam Morgan who had such a devastating crash in the trees that I didn’t think he’d get up again. His shoe even popped off and I had to dig around in the trees to find it. He was OK though and still placed 4th with a good first run time. Scott Beaumont just about managed to record the fastest time of the day to win Elite but only by 0.015s, that’s way less time than it takes to blink.

Full results are at the Pearce cycles site here.

We’ve only done 2 of these downhill races now and I think we’ve been a bit spoiled, the Pearce organisation is virtually immaculate and I think any other race would look amateurish in comparison. Good price, fast uplifts on custom-made trailers that keep your bike mint and good competition, what more could you ask for? I think we’ll be back for next year and maybe I’ll even get a proper bike, no excuses.

The photos: