First race back! - Eastridge Gravity Enduro

Its been a long road to recovery with my injury this year and with it being over the racing season forcing me to miss pretty much a full season of DH racing. I decided to race the Enduro at Eastridge mainly as a gage of fitness agents other riders and also because a lot of the stages where old downhill tracks and it would be great to see how I felt riding agents the clock again.

As this was the first Enduro I had done it was a new format for me. Basically you get the Saturday to ride the full course and practice all the stages ready for Sunday. The hard things is that you only really get time to do one run on each stage because by the time you have road all the stages and road between each one it a good three hours of riding you your pretty tired by the end of the day. I tried to take it as easy as possible on the Saturday and save as much energy as possible for the Sundays racing. I did stop and look at a few of the more technical and tricky sections so I new exactly where I was going there.

For the seeing run on Saturday afternoon I found my self very nervous as the start. I was surprised at this because it wasn’t a downhill race but I know when you hear those beeps my mind just goes in to the same mode ready to give it everything. I had a clean seeding run and finished in 14^th.  This was great start to the weekend but I knew I would have my work cut out as this was a very downhill orientated stage and the where more fitness based ones to come.

Come Sundays and my body was feeling surprisingly good. I set of for stage one feeling confident and nervous as to what was to come. I found that I really settled in to the grove of each race stage and was really enjoying myself. I soon found myself at the last stage excited to get down to the finish as this was my favorite stage. I had another clean run and managed to knock six seconds of my previous time from seeding and giving me the 3^rd fastest time of the final stage. This was a great feeling as has given me confidence in my ability to push and makeup time when it really matters and shows I’m moving in the right direction. I finished 13^th overall on the day. I am going get back on the Mondraker Summum downhill bike this week witch is really exciting as I have been longing to swing my leg over this beauty for a wile now.

Injury life

It’s been four weeks now since my crash and rough ones too! The first week was definitely the hardest, with all the pain I was going through and being in  hospital  were my biggest challenges. I found myself feeling trapped by the walls of the ward and that there was no escape. Not to mention the “food” that there serve being not quite to my acquired taste really doesn’t make you feel very at home.

The synopsis of my injury was that I had dislocated my hip. A very nasty injury to do and also pretty much unheard of in young people. I do feel very lucky that I didn’t sustain any fractures at all. I was told that if my upper body had been in a more upright position on impact it would have been a different story. The likelihood  of enduring some serious trauma to my pelvis would have been high. That would have resulted in a much longer recovery time and lots of possible long-term consequences.

After a long eight days I was able to go home. I decided that It would be best to go back to my family home in East Sussex as I would be off the bike for a while. It would be the best place to start my recovery as I would still be needing some help in the first few weeks e.g. putting on my right sock ! The other reason to go there was that we had tracked down a great hip specialist at the local hospital so I was keen to be seen by him as that would be my best chance of a speedy and successful recovery.

I was lucky enough to be able to start physio there only a few days (thank you NHS) after leaving the hospital. I was very keen as a lot of the pains I have been having over these last few weeks are more in my muscles around the joint than the joint itself. This was due to the fact they have been totally over- stretched in all the wrong directions. Along with this, I have also been having some hydrotherapy as well. It’s all based in a waist high swimming pool and the idea is that because you are half submerged, this takes your weight and enables you to do different exercises to increase joint movement and muscle strength. Unfortunately apart from when I’m in the pool I have to use crutches to give the hip joint time to heal.  I have my next appointment at the end of the week so I am really, really hoping that I will be able to get off the crutches and hopefully able to start doing more work to get my hip strong again.  Back on the bike would be fantastic. Fingers crossed!

2013 British DH series round 1 – Combe Sydenham – Race report.

Photo by Barney Samuel


Just a day after arriving home from a weeks training trip in sunny Malaga I was packing up and getting ready for the three hour drive south to Combe Sydenham in Somerset for the first round of the 2013 British DH series.

Photo by Barney Samuel

The track was similar to last year and was in good condition on Friday; dry, grippy and lots of pedaling! Rain was forecasted for the weekend so we knew it wouldn’t last long, with Schwalbe Dirty Dan’s most likely being the tyre of choice come race day. I prepped the tear offs and mud guards that evening ready to battle the rain the next day!

Photo by Dirt Mag

As expected Saturday was extremely wet and the track got really torn up, making some sections really hard to even keep moving through, let allow try and get up to race pace.

Photo by Joe Hayhow

Sunday was race day and the weather was slightly better with a few sunny spells. Due to the slow uplifts I only got one practice run in before seeding, which wasn’t ideal. We had some high winds as well that meant that the track was drying fast and would make it very gloopy and even more physical come race run. A solid run in my seeing put me 17^th.

Photo by Aspect Media

A few hours later and fueled up with Performax Sport sachet, I was back on the uplift to battle out another run on the mess of a track! Hoping to shave off a few more seconds and get near the top ten as that was my goal for the weekend. My run did not go quite as I planned! I knew that I needed to make it down clean and not to stall through the slower woods sections. I managed to take 3 seconds off my seeding time but had to many mistakes in my run for a good time and finished 22nd in the finals. I’m disappointed with how this first race went but its made me hungry to train ever harder as I know how much better the up coming tracks will suit me so cant wait for the season to get into full swing! 
Big thanks to Diego from Schwalbe UK for the pit and support all weekend. And Performax Sport, Mondraker Bikes, Quench Cycles, Crankbrothers, Evolution Tools, One Industries, Schwalbe tyres, Drift, Kore, 100%, Formula, MRP, Clif Bar, OGIO E13, Lizard Skin, The Bike Shuttle. 661, Fox, Kinesio.