* Fortunately this was 16 minutes riding in the beautiful Whinlatter forest, for the first ATBA downhill competition to be held in England on a proper mountain.
Starting at the beginning though - Lessons learned from 'Dave 2011': a) travelling the night before and sleeping in the car or b) travelling there on the morning of the comp itself is not the best way to do things. With this in mind, Phill and I left Derby at 2.30pm on the Friday and headed north with my eldest son in the back seat. If I was going to have fun in the Lakes, the least I could do is drop him off at Granny and Granddads on the way to take the pressure off the missus back home. With him sorted, we could speed up the A6, through Stockport and get round Manchester before joining up with the M6 motorway. Best laid plans and all that.
Unfortunately, all the tourists seemed to have a similar idea with the consequences of this being that we hit Manchester bang on 5pm and resulting in our average speed dropping considerably. Perhaps I should have gone via Stoke on Trent... Hey ho, onwards and upwards to where the hills get hillier!
Arrived at the campsite at 7.30 and paid just £6.50 instead of the usual £7.50 by quoting 'mountainboarding' thanks to the tough negotiations made previously by Chris 6th Degree - nice one Chris!
Despite changeable and contrasting weather reports, the day was dry, the air clear and the local scenery fantastic. Plenty of riders had arrived earlier and there was loads of room for everyone plus everyone else due to arrive much later that evening.
With high efficiency we get the tent erected and make the decision to hit the pub rather than eat either Phills or my food rations. Probably a very good idea - Phill had a good stock of breakfast food and I had the usual rubbish - tinned rice pudding and baked beans. To my credit, I had remembered a tin opener and a spoon this time!
Going for an evening ride was considered and rejected - it was going to get dark soon; probably get far colder and we could conserve our energy for the next day. Besides, I wasn't entirely sure where the designated track was and given my current personal circumstances with small children back home, I wasn't going to pass on an opportunity to hit the pub.
4 pints later and we're back at the campsite. It's cold, but as it's a clear night, the night sky is amazing. Reports come in that Mark S has been pulled over by the police. Later on that night he arrives with Jenna in his bright, yellow van. "How fast were you going, then?", "65" moans Mark.
More is drunk. People mill around for a couple of hours looking at the various boards on display. Campfires are lit and the mood is good for a good ride in the morning.
Night-time. Frog-me*, its cold. (* - with a 2 year old in the house, self-censorship is almost automatic now. We have a lot of frogs, sheep and carp on a daily basis).
Next morning and everyone's up bright and early ready to roll! Perhaps everyone else was ready, I was cold and couldn't sleep. Also wondered why the free-roaming chickens seemed so interested in Eddie's tent?? This became evident much later during packing the tents when Eddie and his late night pavement pizza emerged as a result of dodgy food the night before. Unlucky one, Eddie :-(
After a fantastic slap-up breakfast cooked by Phill in the boot of my car (the flame kept going out when it was exposed), we were good to go and had the luxury of being able to follow the snake of cars heading up to the Whinlatter Visitor Centre. We headed out of the carpark and immediately turned left, exactly the opposite way to the way I would have guessed. Probably a good job I didn't try and find it the night before!
Was only a couple of miles or so to the Visitor Centre with it's £6.50 all day parking. I thought it might have been a bit cheaper up north... Hey ho, it's all supporting the local forestry commission and all that. Instructions come through: 10am we can start to register with riders meeting at 10.30.
From the visitor centre it was a nice, slightly downward slope into the woods so might as well get on and ride, approximately 300 metres. At this point, the track split in two with a path to the left going slightly uphill, and a path to the right going steeply down. Not wishing to climb back up if it's the wrong way, we all sit down and wait for further instructions. (not that we're lazy or anything....)
Registration took place with a slight hint of rain in the air and two biros. Everyone signs the disclaimer and promises not to sue anyone and we're given the choice of taking the van up to the top or walking the route. Having only watched the track on-line walking seemed like a good idea.
Heading up, the rain seemed to stop and the track looked the same as in the video, just a bit steeper. Walking with Travis, the only person nearby who had ridden the track previously, he kept repeating that the track was "much steeper" than he had remembered.
The track, a combination of firetrack, gravel path and soft woodland path of just over a mile in length turned out to be not closed off to the public as initially though, but was littered with warnings at every junction to keep the walkers and bikers over to the far side.
Further instructions were given at the top of the hill. Don't hit the walkers or the bikers, fastest time wins. Fair enough! Then it started snowing. Only at the top though, it was almost sunbathing weather at the bottom.
With everyone in one spot it was impressive to see the range of toys brought out to play with various options on what would be most effective. Boards included MBSs, noSnos, Trampas, rebranded MBSs, nompas. Brakes included MBS V5s, ABS, noSno and cable disk brakes, and of course crazy brakeless riders, and tyres included 8 inch, 9 inch, 10 inch and 12 inch as well as the odd large front, small rear wheel combos.
Following a practice run, general discussion seemed to concur that the track was pretty straight forward with not too much to worry about. In a nutshell, a long-ish straight, a reasonably tight left-hander followed by a reasonably sweeping right-hander followed by shorter straight section passing over another track before dropping sharply down a stoney gully. Through the woods with a tight left hander to finish with a large digger on the outside edge of the corner, just to focus the mind a bit.
3 more runs over the course of the day and that was me happy. With decent weather conditions, the track was running well and generally times were able to improve as the day went on. A quick riders meeting voted to chop off the last 10 metres of the track as it was quite boggy and a big advantage to those on larger tyres. This made a lot of sense and was implemented immediately.
The uplift worked well hauling all 30 riders plus boards plus marshals up in one go. This would have been perfect if a) I hadn't of felt travel sick after the first go and ended up walking each of the subsequent times and b) if Ben hadn't of ridden into the van during the practice run when the van had to stop suddenly. I'd forgotten just how travel sick I'd used to be when I used to be a passenger before I could drive and was fine until someone towards the back said 'imagine if someone was sick, and that caused everyone else to be sick'. Lets just say that my helmet came very close to becoming a little stinkier that day.
After a very satisfying days riding, it was a much faster drive back down to the Midlands in little under 3 1/2 hours. What a difference not driving through Manchester on a Friday rush hour makes!
So, big cheers to Roger for all the organising for making all of this a reality and for going smoothly on the day, to the marshals for keeping the bikers and walkers out of the way, to the timekeepers who provided us with regular updates on our progress and to everyone else who made it a great weekend!
With great efficiency, the full results were published a day or so later and can be found in full here:
http://atbauk.wordpress.com/2012/04/14/downhill-series-round-1-results/
Congratulations to JC on an astonishingly quick time on 9" tyres and no brakes.
More media can be found below with an excellent write up from Freeride NW here:
http://freeridenw.blogspot.co.uk/2012/04/atba-downhill-series-1-write-up.html
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