What's on in the MADMTB world this week?
Well now,
The nice gnarly pic to grab your attention has nothing to do with this post,
so you have all been duped into reading this....tough luck
On Thursay 2 Mar 7pm at Taylors pub (~7:10pm Ticknock car park) we have our usual training spin although this has been more 'spin' than 'training' recently so we need to give ourselves a boot up the behind and get serious.
Since the Rostrevor race is rumoured to have a really big long climb, it could benefit us to to do the loop which includes the fireroad that everyone hates down by the club course.
On Saturday, I'm planning some more trail work up 3 Rock.
The work will involve clearing a path to the new section we are after creating,
which is at the top left of this Map
Depending on how many turn up, we may also do some work on the lower section (near the bottom right of the image)
Tools required will mainly be saws/loppers and rakes as we'll
mainly be removing branches and clearing a path through a forest section.
I'm looking at an early start approx 9am, so text / mail me if you are coming up to arrange a meeting point (likely somewhere near the first planned section).
There is a chance I won't make it up until the afternoon so if this is the case I'll be getting someone to bark the orders until I get up there.
EDIT:
Also on Sat there is an easy spin to Cloon, meeting at Taylors at 10am click here for details. (Thanks for the reminder Martin!)
Then of course, we have the 2nd round of the K Capital Cup in Rostrevor on Sunday.
This sounds like it's going to be a tough but very exciting race for all so it will be great to see a load of MAD jerseys out again and even more on the podium!!
That's the craic for now
See ye out there!
Fergal
Labels: spins
posted by Fergal @ 12:25 p.m.
18 Comments:
At 12:56 p.m.,
Nigel said…
trailbuilding = good
At 1:55 p.m.,
Fergal said…
it sure is Nige!
just in case I can't make the morning - can you be be Sargeant Kick-Ass and set the slaves to work?
Maybe on that lower section that we had a walk through as we already have a rough-ish idea of what we're doing there.
I'm also excited about doing some Northshore bits too - we can bridge a few of the deeper gullys/dips near the end of that first section we did- it'll be real cool, though I'm not sure what the wood situation is as yet, we'll see what Steve and Oisin have - and if any one else has planks & nails & hammer can they bring them along
Thanks a lot and sorry for calling you slaves, I meant to call you my loyal minions
At 1:56 p.m.,
Ryan Sherlock said…
Mel and I spent a few hours up around there on Monday building and clearing... (there was a few branches on the WW and a few other places I cleared too)
Basically, we add some twisty turny bits about half way down the new section. It's well marked off with branches so you'll know where to go. Bacially we turned a straight into a good few turns a but of a drop (easy - XC type drop) that loops back on yourself and you end up close to where we (as in the section mel and I did) started.
I rode it all today (until I got lost in the bushes) - it's really sweet :) 5-6 people in that forest with something to mark the trail and a spade, loppers, saw etc... could make an amzing set of trails. The forest is just amazing in there - real easy to work with.
Tonights spin should be excellent - it's as dry as a bone up there!
At 2:36 p.m.,
Nigel said…
excellenté :D
At 4:26 p.m.,
Fergal said…
great stuff Ryan, yeah, we can do ourselves proud up there and make some great stuff, loads of possibilities...
At 4:34 p.m.,
Ryan Sherlock said…
There really is a lot of possibilities up there... You could easily make a couple of km of single track gently descending down through all that with lots of options for getting back your elevation...
Also, we should start naming tracks so we know which ones we are talking about... Still a bit early to name the new one, we don't know it's character yet, but we defo should be naming them...
At 9:23 p.m.,
Fergal said…
that's true, so much time gets wasted when we have to fully describe sections of trail up there so we know what each other is talking about.
We'll see what's appropriate from the terrain and then stick a name on it, we should probably do that for the rest of the trails up there too.
At 11:58 a.m.,
Ryan Sherlock said…
I'll be popping along tonight so I'll make sure the training spin is a fast training spin :)
At 3:52 p.m.,
Fergal said…
that's the spirit Ryan!
Now then slackers be warned!!
Ye are going to be in the presence of an Elite class MTBer tonight so ye better be on your savagest behaviour!!
At 4:57 p.m.,
Tom Heavey said…
does wearing a loincloth, chewing on a a large roasted chicken whilst pedalling around at a leisurely pace count?..thats about as close to savage as I can get..
At 11:55 p.m.,
Fergal said…
good spin tonight lads, Ryan lead Morgan, Tom, Nigel, Oisin and myself on an intense series of laps of "the section near the start of the transition across to the boneshaker" (really need those trail names to be decided on!!)
which had a decent fireroad climb, a muddy transition up & then a very technical and rooty section to bring us back down to the fireroad.
Ryan as expected was flying, but Oisin on his 'notably lighter' bike was really moving, think I need to shed a few ounces of my bike, actually make that kilos
Great practice on the technical section - finding that 'floating balance' position is the key - it's a skill Robin Seymour was definitely born with - the way he seems to glide over sections that most of us bounce and struggle though, the skill is up there somewhere I'm sure, hiding under a rock or in an overgrown gulley....the holy grail of mountainbiking!!
Morgan, organise a posse - we're going back up!!!
At 9:02 a.m.,
Fergal said…
the new section we went through with Ryan last night looks very good, and a lot of it was reasonably rideable, thre'll be a bit of heavy work for the exit to the path but the branch clearing within the forest should be handy enough.
It'll also be fun to join the end of the 1st DH section to the start of the 2nd DH section, just to have the option of XC vs DH.
As a loop, we could even have the XC bit as a tech climb and the DH run as the fun reward, if we bear this in mind during building, then the XC bit should remain climb-able, as opposed to the tendency to make it all a fast downhill run.
I'll be up there on Sat between 8 and 9 (I may need to leave around lunch) so will continue work on this section, I'll bring some spare saws as I've a few in the shed.
Lidl were doing decent quality spades last week so there may be a few left - I'll keep an eye out
for one, as we'll need a few to dig thru the bank where the trail exits to the path.
At 10:36 a.m.,
Ryan Sherlock said…
That was a really technical section that we were riding down in the mud and wet. Damn those roots! I know I was all over the place the first couple of times but by the end it was a lot cleaner - need more of this!
The new XC section will be great, the top section with it natural berms will be fantastic once we all know which way we are going :) Me, I would put forward making the bottom section a lot longer with up and downhill single track going over and back. Those trees are perfectly spaced for some nice windy single track and even with rain (and eventually mud when it's ridden in) I don't think there are any gradients that you couldn't climb...
At 8:53 p.m.,
Fergal said…
A great trailbuilding session today in glorious weather with a LOT of great work done on the DH section and also the XC section.
I left about midday but the lads - Oisin, Nigel, Paddy (looking very smart in his very clean MAD gear), Carsten, Cormac, Tom carried on and finished the linking of the 2 DH sections-man it's gonna be superfast, there was a dual line section in construction when I left so that's even more fun for us.
I got to chase Tom on foot and film him going down the new section - it looked great - hopefully he can get the video off his camera and onto the 'net.
Oisin turned up with a load of great timber for bridge building - looking forward to hearing (& seeing)what happened there.
Thanks again lads for turning up and getting rightly stuck-in, can't wait 'til a load of us are whoopin' and hollerin' down that section on a night ride next week!
I'm already thinking of what we can do with that huge hill we were looking at as we were carrying-up the timber....but I guess we'll finish the XC section first and then see what's next.
Now to change my jockey wheels before Rostrevor tomorrow, the teeth existing ones are worn so sharp you could cut diamonds with them.
Good luck to anyone racing tomorrow!
Fergal
At 6:56 p.m.,
Tom Heavey said…
Yeah that track will be savage, a bit of regular usage and it will be so nice, ....we ended up building no north shore sections as it turned out, we decided to keep the timber for a place that really warranted it, so for the few speed killing sect's at the top just after u cross the club course we filled in with rocks it and it works pretty well,....
some kind of markers on trees in a few spots would be good as its quite hard to know what way to go until u are almost on it, maybe a few yellow arrows just tacked on to the bark or even sprayed on, at least until the the trail is worn in...
On my way back to the car park I met Christian on his gorgeous new Canyon, I just took it for a rip on the fireroad but wow the brakes are unreal!..his knee is still troubling him but he's coming to wales anyway so u can all ogle his new steed.
I will go now and upload Fergals video from yesterday it's a hoot..
At 11:30 a.m.,
Ryan Sherlock said…
That was a great race yesterday! A beautiful day in Rostrevor seen the MAD hoards arrive.
The course was fantastic, a difficult first kilometre that climbed 100 meters brought us into some amazing fast single track eventually turning into a much shorter climb that threw us back into more fast twisty single track with exposed roots :)
We had people racing in most of the categories!
Shane and Ciaran in the U16, Inga and Judith (glad to see you back racing!) in Ladies sport, Stevie in Juniors, Nigel, Cormac, Marck, Arkadiusz and Oisin in Sports, Sean (coming along nicely!) in Experts, Fergal and Robert in Masters with me in Elite. That's some list! Well done everyone.
I have a few photos from the start of the first race here:
http://picasaweb.google.com/ryan.sherlock/2007KCapitalCupRound2
Thanks a million to Shane and the lads for helping me out in the feed zone. I really appreciate it!
At 11:31 a.m.,
Ryan Sherlock said…
Oh, and excuse me if I missed anyone on the list - add yourself in :)
At 12:05 p.m.,
Sean said…
yeah, That was sa great day's racing.
Really enjoyed the first 2.5 laps bu the second half was a bit painful
thanks again to the lads at the feedzone for the bottle changing, it's much appreciated.
Sean
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