Mine and Steve's bikes - ready to race!

The morning started off very cold. I looked around and I was the only person in shorts and t-shirt, so I nipped over to the car and put on my waterproof Gore-Tex jacket that I had recently bought (which proved to function very well throught the day – I was very impressed with it).

Then the day warmed up quite a bit, to the point where Steve stopped to take his jacket off – only to put it back on again 5 minutes later when it started to rain! The weather kept changing between hot, cold, wind, rain and hail! The hail really hurt as we cycled though it and it hit us like a million ball bearings on our arms, legs, face and head (through the bike helmet).

It was also my first true test of my new bike – and it performed really well. Steve was envious of my rear suspension at one particularly bumpy section of track The only downside to the whole day is that I got 2 punctures – one in each wheel… Firstly I got a puncture in the front tyre (a small thorn), so I replaced the inner-tube and started to pump it up, only to find that the top of the valve had somehow broken off! So I borrowed an inner-tube from Steve and got under-way again. Then 40 minutes later I got a puncture in my rear tyre! As we didn’t have any more inner-tubes left, I repaired it with a puncture repair kit.

Because of the 2 punctures, my poor navigation (missed a road to a checkpoint so we went back for it) and also because Steve injured himself playing football the Tuesday before we ended up 17th out of 23 (quite respectable given the circumstances). If we didn’t have the punctures I think we could easily have been 8th.

Despite the small issues, we had a great day – lots of fun. The location was really nice too as it was in the New Forest and there were a lot of wild ponies all over the place – and they weren’t phased by us nutters on bikes whizzing past them in the wind and hail!

Then the next day, I headed off to Spain for a weeks rock climbing holiday!

What I like most about Tamworth is seeing advanced riders perform there – doing forward flips, clever things on rails and the quarter pipe.

I got pretty far up the quarter pipe last night, but I think I need some tuition on what to do once I get to the top. I don’t know the technique for doing a 180 and coming down face first, so I just reverse down it!

It was good seeing some of the usual SCUK’ers there (although there weren’t very many!) and meeting a couple of SCUK’ers who I have seen and/or chatted to over the Internet, but not met in person before.

I don’t think I’ll bother with a hotel again as with a heavy right foot I got there in around 40-45 mins With a slight mix-up over transportation Martin missed his lift to the campsite, so I offered to help out. We ended up going to the wrong place initially (entered incorrect postcode into TomTom – doh!) then we found the campsite; so my 15 minute drive back to my hotel ended up being a 1 hour drive (so I could have been home sooner!), oh well At least the hotel (Travelodge) was comfortable.

One of the highlights of the night for me was a mini-competition where all the riders had to start at the top of the slope from a sitting position, then 3, 2, 1… we had to get up and make our way down the slop as fast as we could to a box of goodies at the bottom. Somehow I chose a good line, got to the bottom, unclipped my board and grabbed a baseball cap from the box

Most people will be camping in a field, but I have opted to stay in a nearby hotel. Then on Sunday I might pop over to Birmingham town centre to look around the shops (shame to go all that way and just head straight home)

It should be good fun. I hope my next post isn’t from the Birmingham hospital! Do they have WiFi???