Dirt Brechfa

The 2012 Enduro calenders 1st event was the frostbite 40 enduro at Brechfa Trail centre in Camarthenshire.The weather was on with sunny windy conditions and with a 200 strong field it was good to see so many partaking.Stage one was a three or four ish minute dh blast with some tight slippy switchbacks and table tops,stage two was a real bitch starting with a steady big ring climb dropping away for 1 km then into a staircase climb every time you went around the right switchback you would get a howling head wind,eventually over the top you had plenty of fun with the tight switchbacks all in all about 6 minutes and i bust my ass on this one to take the stage win knowing this would be a decisive stage.i knew Ryan Bevis would be on a light hardtail and he’s good on the climbs so all was on the table for the third and last stage which was a rolling single track climb,i pumped the tyres up on the 29er and locked out the rear and got to work,i kept it rolling like you can on the spider and buried myself to only lose 3 seconds to Ryan which gave me the win by 11 seconds.This was a great event and i think the first race in the uk with the stage format to be won on a 29er great for Bad Ass Bikes and Intense.Thanks to Simon Ford from Extra uk the Intense importers for the lend of the bike.

smart arse box wit the intense spider 29

Well this year was a bit of a shock for all of us here at BAD ASS hq in the fact non of us actually could belive we could wrap up the series at the 661 Enduro’s which has had a great affect on business and what we’ve been selling.This has meant selling more of the no nonsense dual ply tyres but in smaller sizes,plenty of people have been seeking our advice when replacing forks with people shunning the 32mm 150 forks and going more for the 35 or 36mm 160′s and less worries about air sprung with coil taking top spot.Enduro racing world wide has gone bloody mental this year and at 39 i didn’t think i was going to be at the top of this new style of racing in the UK” but hey”i never rule out a win and last winter my preparation was bang on,as the old saying goes”medals are won in the winter and picked up in the spring”.The 160mm Enduro bike has come of age, these bikes are the ultimate balance between all round usability and out and out descending perfection.I not only enjoy descending a whole lot on my Tracer but climbing is also not just bareable but really enjoyable so let’s look at it we have my rig coil sprung both ends with dual ply dh tyres at 31.5 lbs exactly.     
The mendip hills have ridden well this year i don’t think i have felt that anywhere we have raced this year has been any more technically testing than my local Mendip ride,well not until i went to Fina’le ligure which was some event,me and Dave G from Stendec Racing went over and had 3 day’s dropping the most mental trails at the bone dry rocky italian beach resort,i smashed a back wheel up in the first hour and spent the rest of that evening building up a new one.It was a good oportunity for me to test myself against the worlds best but it wasn’t to be when my chain jammed behind my cassette so game over.We now have four months of winter to contend with or embrace so get the lights out and don’t be a gaylord about it just ride the bike.

Box

Check out Dirt Magazine’s coverage of the 661 Gravity Enduro final.

clicky clicky…

Dusty dry at The Six Six one In Shropshire at the weekend.The trails at the old school venue of Eastridge are steeped in mountain bike race history but have been quiet of late until now with the Gravity enduro round 4.Local knowledge was in full force with Neil (The Don)Donahue taking top spot 11 seconds infront of myself ,the rest of
the Shropshire locals were out in full force with the likes of Rich cunningham and Alex langley also making a good account of themselves.The trails were a work of art in my opinion and all five were a test of your technical ability to say the least, i had a rough start on stage one with not being able to clip in due to a stone lodged in my pedal but i slowly clawed myself back up to parr.Only on round and i’m still in the hot seat so Bring on Afan next month.
Box.

Box mid-course at Ae Forrest. Rd1 of the 2011 Gravity Enduro Series.

With the weather looking to be very bad myself Dave Garland of Stendec Racing and Matt Hending arrived on the Friday to find sunshine and light wind’s. Knowing what was to come on the weather front we decided to go and get a lap of the 30km loop. The Ae Forest trails are very open and exposed and when we rattled down a couple of them I was saying to Dave and Matt that I wasn’t hopeful of my chances as the stages felt a little short but actually when you rode them fast they soon felt pretty tough with the flatter start’s really taking it out of the legs.

Saturday’s weather was still holding out well and after another 30k practice loop completed I was starting to feel a little more at ease with the more tech trails like the Shredder which has a series of two wheel drift berms and lots of flat out doubles at the top, table tops in the lower section which you want to hit flat out but your internal ABS makes you sensibly brake check, I say that but Pagey seemed to have the whole thing lit top to bottom as I suspect Crawford and Donny the same.

Saturday afternoon came and now time for your seeding run. This was run on the Ae DH track. Now the rain came and I havn’t done a DH race since Rheola 2008, so I was waiting to have my ass well and truly skinned. So much so that I had £20 on Donny to take the no.1 spot and seeing Nige Page swapping to spikes I was thinking a bit negative like. My run went ok I hit the two doubles in the middle flat out and was off the brakes a lot, should have put the spike on but that was back at bad ass HQ, so ‘Minion I up land lord’ I’m coming through. I sat in the hot seat for a good while surprised but hearing Crawford got held up having to pass about 20 women in the woods, come the end of it I was seeded fourth and pretty happy. Then Pagey’s complete humiliation of the field was announced the fact was he’d done it by over ten seconds and worse still by the time we’d got back to our motor the scouse bastard had nicked our van stereo.

Race day on Sunday and this race is wide open, I look over at Aiden bishop and he’s looking on it, Pagey’s got the corner speed but I check out the flat pedals and ain’t sure this ones his but Martin Astley, Donny, and of course Crawford are all in with a good shout on this one.

Stage 1 is the shredder and I had it lit top to bottom with the rain absolutely pissing down and visibility poor, I felt happy not to have mullered myself and the bike. Halfway down one of my spokes snapped with a loud ping but the wheel was ok and the tyre was just missing the frame so happy day’s on with next stage.

Stage 2 was a pedally affair with some horrendous course cuts in and a shitty mud shoot which I over shot and quickly dismounted the bike and ran up the bank and back on, Amazingly I still won the stage with a few seconds to spare.

Stage 3 was a flattish top section moving into an open series of table tops and very rocky berms finishing at a river this one was around four minutes and at the river I slung the bike in and cleaned it out followed by Jon lawlor and Pager. This was a smart move as the transitional stage lasted a good while and with a nice clean chain and disc’s it made a difference.

Stage 4 was similar to the last with the start and berms lower down, it required you to not check the brakes on some fast gritty corners as that would mess up your speed and the berms had to be done off the brakes too but I managed to keep the bastard rolling.

As if by magic there was another river… (Well probably the same bloody one but a bit further down) and in went the bikes again with Lawlor almost losing his to the peat stained current and on we trudged all the time being pissed on from the heavens and a cold wind, I looked over at Nige and said “now I know what it must have felt like in Vietnam but instead of m16’s we’ve got bikes” he agreed but I don’t think he knew what the hell I was on about really and he didn’t care, All he knew that the next stage was about 1 hour away I had run out of water and started to knick his and his ankle was starting to play up. All of our brakes were playing up this was turning into a race of who’s bike goggles and body can make it not just who’s the fastest. We then walk past Aiden bishop trying to mend his broken mech but was forced then to run it single speed. We make it to the fifth and final stage everyone is glad but cold completely soaked and now all of us are faced with the full dh track with wet goggles or glasses, everyone is trying hard to dry them some say they aren’t bothering with them but I wear contacts so my steamed up glasses have to do. The track was different to the seeding track and I, like many others, never rode it in practice but boy I wish I freekin’ did because that root section was pretty rough I couldn’t see a line I just picked my way through it best I could and laid off the brakes as much as possible.

As soon as I finished I rode over to the river threw the bike and myself in and had a wash. Looking back on the day it was a well organised event, Steve Parr(organiser) can go away happy with the job he did and everyone seemed knackered and satisfied they had their money’s worth. It seems I had one of the only time cock ups of the day which calculated me 1 min 1 sec slower on the Shredder but hey it all came out in the wash just like the 4 pounds of shit in the bottom of my washing machine. The result was great for me, I felt the bike set up was good and it brought it home to me how important it is not to go too light on tyre choice and that even on such a pedally  course a well set up coil sprung bike is still a good choice.

We have had 4″ of snow but the road is still passable Nathan rode in from weston if he didn’t i told hm i would kill his whole family and burn down their family home.Daniel Spaniel drove in but he can’t wait to see hartcliffe in his rear view mirror.Get out here for a ride or a walk it’s beautiful.  

I have never ridden such obscenely good singletrack downhill in my whole life,Me and Dave garland from Stendec Racing went over to see Roberto from Argentina bike who is the leading authority on the local trails and may i say the best host a man could ask for.Roberto runs a test centre for some of the worlds best Dh riders and it’s plain to see why after you drop the first descent,full commitment is the order of the day with very intense rock sections often resulting in a hard bottom turn sumping all the travel in your fork and shock.
I can’t believe more people don’t go to this place i rode some of the most indepth sections you are likely to experience and it’s easy to get too only one hour from nice airport.info about how and where to follow sorry no pics yet but head cam will follow soon or type in mountain bike San romollo into google or you tube.

Yep sunday opening is comming to an end as of the fisrt week of august.I need to get a life and reintroduce my self to my two young children as they seem to have forgot what i look like.i don’t update this page as much as i should with the bad ass bikes face book page taking the lime light so please feel free to join the group.