Rider Updates
May 5 2006
in horendous conditions, due to solid rain for 3 days before the event, although the sun came out on race day, i braved up to the elements, (mud, river crossings, shale climbs and descents, ruts, rocks) to top the expert lites class aboard my crf 250X by 7 seconds from 2nd place.
a very fun days riding, that won't be forgotten!!
Apr 26 2006
after a couple of podiums at the start of the season , i took my first win. on a sunny day in the military ranges in the welsh hills, i felt good and was on the pace!!, with three special tests a lap and four laps to do of 27 miles each, it was going to be a long day!!, right at the start of the first test the coure went through 2 extremely deep bomb holes filled with water, luckily for me i was the 5th person to start the test so didn't get caught up with other riders that were stuck. this would be a problem though later in the race. after putting in 3 fast laps, i was starting to get tired by the time we got to the last lap, this was when backmarkers came into play!! starting the 1st test of the last lap i felt quite good until i came round the bend to the bomb holes and saw about 8 riders stuck in the mud and water at the bottom, i managed to weave round them though and still put in a fast time. i won the expert lites class and came 4th overall, which was a massive achievement considering there were 154 riders in it, half of them being on 450's i took the win by a 46 second lead from 2nd place, i'll certainly be coming back next year!!
Feb 28 2006
with the frost just melting as we started off the first national of the season, i was looking forward to the new season, but after 2 laps of the 3 the gruelling course was getting to everyone!! and with a stupidly tight time to complete the last lap it was really hard just to keep the bike up!! let alone ride fast, and on the final test i had a horiffic crash dropping the front wheel into one of the whoops, i went over the bars hard!! smashed the handguard off and bruised a few ribs and later found at the end my little finger was the size of cucumber(which i found later to be broken)finishing 4 minutes past the deadline i picked up a few penalty points which wasn't good but finally finished in 32nd position which was pretty good out of the 104 competitors in the lites class, 59 of them failed to finish, that's a measure of how hard it was!!