Help For Heroes at The Bull Track 02/09/12

Now you have to admit that we all love riding our bikes, there ain’t nothing like it. So we don’t usually need an excuse to get out on the bike, but if you ever needed one, a race at The Bull Track in aid of the charity Help For Heroes is it! If you weren’t there, I feel bad for you son, it was a blinder!

We turned up on Saturday afternoon so we could get a few extra hours testing our ‘Enduro HT’ proto, as well as keeping an eye on the guys testing out our ‘Ripper’ proto. Aaron and Riley are loving the frame at the moment, we keep trying to get some kinda feedback from them and all either of them can say is “it’s amazing, I love it.”. Ah well, I guess we got it right then? They certainly look comfortable on it.

I thought I may as well do some runs of the track on the Enduro and let the Belter have a little rest. It took me a run or two to get used to a bike that isn’t as stable as the Belter, but I was soon up to speed, hitting up the road gap and tearing up the berm at the end of the straight bits. I really started to enjoy that bike, but it was time to get the fire going for some food.

I had a go with the campfire drinking again this time… Only there wasn’t any of that ‘moonshine’ stuff Ant brought up last time, and I think it was also a bit more evenly distributed. Ant was a fair bit more wobbly than last week, that’s for sure!

I had kept Aaron’s bike in the van over night and I’ll tell you one thing, that was a damn mistake! I swear the sun was hardly up and that dude was banging on the door of my van demanding his bike! Ha ha got to love it though ay, good to see that much energy and passion for riding! I let him have his bike while I tried to steady myself with a coffee.

I pulled the Belter out of her resting place and peeled her Renthal clean grips off and set off up the hill for a practice run. After riding the Enduro on Saturday it was a refreshing surprise getting back on the old girl, soooo stable! You can get away with so much more than you can on a regular hardtail and I guess it’s just good to be reminded of that.

Ant Brown was absolutely flying in practice, I couldn’t believe how much his riding has come on. It’s always good to see your mates progressing, and when it’s on a bike you’ve made, it’s even better.

Loads of people had turned up for this race! The Bull Track didn’t know what hit it, near on 200 entries is the most a race down ‘ere in the south has pulled in for a good 10 year! This meant our usual 3 runs had to be cut down to 2 in order to fit everybody in, and there were a ken load of prizes to give out in the raffle too.

Aaron managed to take something like 6s out of his first run time, taking him from 3rd to 1st in the Ripper class. Apparently all the advice Riley gave him was “pedal more”.

It’s Riley’s first year in the juvenile class so you have to admit, he did pretty damn good getting 3rd spot, only getting beaten by a couple of guys nearly twice his size!

No ‘Ardtail class at these events, but I did get a top 10 in senior so I’m happy for that!

I was meant to be going to the WDMBA next weekend but it’s been cancelled so Aston Hill it is, see you there!

Burf