Project cable cam....

During our trip we are hoping to obviously get lots of fantastic photos of the places we've been, but also to put to use the High Definition Video Camera we've got. Gareth has been in mad inventor mode for the last few months, working away down in the cellar creating a portable Cable Cam. With 100m of static cord, we should be able to create some great action footage in the bike park and during the ski season!
Here's the edited version of one of the first trials of the cable cam in action......

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nSPYLnYpK6k

Racing, Rain and OrientBeering!

Racing, Rain, and OrientBeering

Last weekend we headed to Lee Quarry, Lancashire, for the Singletrack Classic Weekender. A weekend of bike racing involving 3 different events all to be completed on one bike. Gareth had raced last year and come 3rd, having a great weekend in the process, so we were both keen to be there this year.
The weekend started with some TORRENTIAL rain on Friday evening, enough to flood the main arena and make us glad to be drinking beer, with us and 4 friends squeezed into the nice dry and warm van!
Thankfully, after an early rainstorm on Saturday, the weather improved and the course for the downhill race looked to be drying out nicely for saturday evening's race.
First event though was the Trials. A series of 5 technical challenges, with penalty points given for any failures, which would be used as a handicap in the cross-country race on sunday. These were;

• Trackstand on a raised platform for 10 seconds
• Skinny log ride across a swamp
• Log See-saw
• Hill climb
• Steps up and down

Gareth normally would have cleared these easily but unfortunately the temptation to wheelie off the seesaw and show off was too great, and he subsequently fell over and lost a point! I managed to clean 3 challenges and fail on 2, which was not as bad a score as I thought I might get!

http://www.singletrackworld.com/2011/04/shimano-singletrack-classic-weekender-the-trials/

Next up was the Downhill, which was brilliant fun! A fast, swoopy course with some sections that could potentially slow you down if you didn't pick a good line, as well as lots of fun jumpy sections. It started with a slippery, off-camber hill which saw more than a few victims sliding down sideways, then gradually got faster and faster, ending with some purpose built singletrack trail. My run was going perfectly, until I caught the person in front (we were set off at 30 second intervals) and couldn't get past on the narrow trail :( It was pretty frustrating and I was gutted at the end of it not to have got a faster time when it had gone so well at the start. Gareth started well but unfortunately had an over-the-bars incident part-way down, losing valuable seconds (he still finished faster than me though....grrrrrr!)

Saturday evening saw a new event introduced....the Polaris Orientbeering challenge! Basically you had to ride to another quarry on a newly built trail, ride the fast, fun quarry trail (whilst whooping loudly with glee on every berm :) ), stamp a control card, and then head back for your prize.....a pint of Old Speckled Hen. Needless to say, it was pretty popular and well worth the effort!

So the final event was sunday's XC. I had 7 minutes of penalties after the 2 previous events, and Gareth was starting with 3 minutes penalty. The course was great, really fun riding, and some leg-burning and lung-busting climbs. Initially the rules had said riders would do 3 laps, but when the winner finished, the race ended, so essentially if you were lapped, you only did 2 laps. I was going well, and knew there were no other women in front of me after I'd been riding at 100% from the start, for a lap and a half, when Nick Craig (super fast XC world class racer) came past me. I got a second wind of energy knowing that I would finish at the end of the lap, so promptly picked the pace up more and raced up the last hill.....only to be told the rules had changed and i had to do another lap! After several minutes of wandering around confused as I was told several different things by different marshalls, I decided to just get on and ride just in case I got overtaken whilst waiting to find out whether it was actually 2 laps or 3!
Anyway, 20 minutes later I crossed the line as the women's winner.....yay! Gareth had finished earlier in 14th place in the men's category, and promptly thrown-up on the finish line from trying so hard!

We had a brilliant weekend of riding, beer, and bbqs, and watching friends race too, and will definitely be back in a couple of years time to do it again. We didn't do too badly for prizes between the 2 of us either! (Gareth got a spot prize for being sick!)

The video link below sums up the fun and games of the weekend nicely :)
http://www.singletrackworld.com/2011/07/shimano-singletrack-classic-weekender-video/

Cragging in Sunny North Wales

Cragging in sunny North Wales

This weekend we headed across to North Wales to celebrate Simon's birthday with a couple of days of camping and climbing. The weather was great, wall to wall sunshine both days....in fact it was a bit too hot to think about climbing anything too hard!
We met up with Adam, still recovering from his 3 peaks yacht race adventure, and after a couple of beers in the pub on friday evening, decided upon the Cromlech as the venue for saturday's climbing.
Unsurprisingly, it was baking hot up on the south side of the Llanberis pass, so a couple of easy multi-pitch routes was all we got done in between lounging in the sun on the path below the crag!

Adam on the first pitch of Dives/Better Things

The mighty Dinas Cromlech



Reaching the belay

 

Saturday evening was spent at the campsite enjoying vast quantities of barbecued meat (cooking time halved thanks to Gareth's experimental use of the MSR stove to heat the portable bbqs!), lots of birthday beers, and avoiding the millions of midges that descended on us as soon as we moved out of the bbq smoke.



With a few slightly sore heads on sunday morning, a plan for the day evolved that included climbing somewhere with a short walk in, and next to a lake for a post-climb cooling swim. Clogwyn -y-wenallt seemed to fit the bill perfectly! Gareth and I climbed the 2-pitch classic "Oxine", a brilliant VS that finished up a steep wall littered with enormous surprise holds.

Jo belaying Simon on the first pitch of Bovine

Gareth reaching the belay on pitch 1 of Oxine

Steve and Gareth sunbathing below the crag

Deciding it was too hot to climb any more routes after this, we headed down for a swim in the surprisingly warm lake, followed by a huuuuuge ice-cream in Beddgelert.

All in all a great weekend spent with friends in the sun :)