A combination of awesome downhill skills, raw power and some NoTubes rims saw our team rider Dan winning the Ae Forest Avalanche Enduro last weekend. A full report will be up soon, but for now just enjoy the Euro music from the prize presentation…

Avalanche trophy

The Avalanche Enduro was held in Kielder forest on the 25/26th May, it was a good event with decent weather and better than expected trails.

Saturday we checked out the event stages ridding them all twice, there was a mix of loamy bits but mostly trail center stuff which was sandstone based so sandy with lots of loose rocks. The stages were around 4 mins long and most required a fair amount of pedaling to keep the speed up. Stage 4/7 was used on Saturday afternoon as a prologue to seed riders for Sunday, this was probably the flattest stage so was a real suffer-fest but I got down it in a time better than it felt. This result did however mean an early start time on Sunday of 8:40 to head up the hill, the time allowances to get between stages were quite relaxed giving plenty of time at the start of the day and getting tighter as the event progressed, if you had a problem then things started to get interesting.

My first stage was the most fun in practice with sweet dry loamy bends as well as dark greasy woods sections but come Sunday morning it occurred about 2 coffees too early in my day and I minced my way down with lots of little mistakes.

> read more…

just in Dan Darwood reports on the first round of the SDA:-

Scottish Downhill Association

I went racin’ this weekend. It was the first round of the SDA up past Aberdeen at Pitfichie… a long way from anywhere
and once I had some beers I was putting the tent up (badly) at 1:00 on Saturday morning. The course had no uplift but
the push up wasn’t too bad for a 3 minute run, it was dry and dusty and I got a wee bit of sun burn yesterday (doh!)
even though there was a frost overnight.

The top was flattish through the heather with loads of granite bedrock slabs, it then went into the woods where it was
all full of embedded rocks to hit and a couple of sweet bermed corners before a flattish traverse (again with more
embedded rocks) and the final berms and jumps to the finish. Initial practice was hard work but after some lunch I
adjusted my tyre pressures, tried a few different shock settings and put clips on, this plus some additional confidence
meant I finished the day happy that I knew the course and wasn’t riding too much like a numpty.

My first run was a 2:49 and put me in 5th in the Masters, I had made a mistake in the rocks put was pretty pleased. For the second run I managed to hit all my lines reasonably clean but was tired and didn’t pedal as much as the first time down (I had used too much energy in practice and pushing up) but I managed to take a second off my time which was my goal. A few other folks went faster and I got bumped down to 6th, 10 sec off the category winner. I was still in the top third and was pleased with the result, I can see where improvement can be made if I want to work on stuff (bigger forks would have been nice too). Overall it was a very good weekend, top weather, a course in great condition, good folks and a very mellow atmosphere.

Results:
http://www.sda-races.com/sda/viewrace.asp?RaceID=1562

Some shonky photos from a dangerous midnight liaison, not as dangerous as the night club where I got a nose bleed and 2 black eyes. For those not in the know (as I wasn’t) a bike derby is where you ride round and knock people off until someone’s left riding. Sounds OK in concept but on concrete with lots of drunk single speeders even the local yoof just watched from the sidelines while this years bike porn was discarded to make way for the latest sparkley thing next year.