Date of ride: May 7th and 8th, 2011; Bike used: Commencal Supreme; No. of persons: Multiple; Weather: Cloudy with rain; Ground conditions: Muddy and slick on roots, drying out after rain stopped
The second round of the Pearce Cycles Downhill Series 2011 started as the first one finished. With a deluge of rain. As I headed to meet my racing partners, Jay Shaw and Chris Lewis at Godstone on M25, the heavens opened for the first time, I’m sure, since our last race. And once we arrived at Bringewood, Mrs Pearce confirmed it hadn’t rained since the last race meeting. Still it wouldn’t be UK racing without the rain. How I pity the Moose boys who got sunburnt at the last round of the Welsh series. They’re missing out on the slippery roots, sketchy lines and muddy tyre changes.
Speaking of which, all three of us changed to mud tyres without even looking at the track, just clocking everyone else’s choice on the way through the pits. There were few mad enough to run dry tyres but the majority of riders had chosen spikes. Tyre choice was to become an integral factor in who did well this weekend. As the track dried out after the heavy deluge the night and morning before the race, the faster riders rode on dry tyres. A risky business though, as rain threatened all through the afternoon of the race and caused a few headaches for the Expert and Elite riders, when on their second runs the clouds let fall once more.
So to practice and the uplift. I’d heard that Pearce Cycles had extended the runtime of the fleet of Land Rovers until 5pm, to accommodate an over subscription to the race meeting. The normally pretty smooth operation of the previous year was struggling to cope with the increased rider numbers and we ended up spending most of the afternoon queuing for the trip back up the hill. We were managing one run an hour, not a great way to memorise the track, but thankfully the rain had eased off in the afternoon and the sun managed to find away through the Shropshire clouds.
The first runs were pretty slick but as the afternoon wore on the track dried out considerably, though I still felt comfortable running mud tyres, providing me with excellent grip through the gloop and wet rooty sections, but slowing me down on the drier bits. We had arrived to a change in a section of track, due to the original first section becoming unrideable in the wet conditions. A quick look and I was pleased we weren’t being asked to ride down it. Steep and off-camber, it bore visible scars running down the hill, marks left from unlucky riders loosing traction and sliding off track.
And so the track we would race on began with a freshly cut section. It barrelled down a steep incline, straight into a loamy left-hand turn with the loose dirt gradually developing into a catch-berm. Off the brakes over an off-camber section across a lot of roots to the first tricky right then quick left. Walking the track it looked relatively easy to maneuveur the bike into a straight line for the corner’s exit. However on the bike it was a bit trickier. The steepness of the terrain and the speed I was travelling kept forcing me to drop deep into a rut on the right hander, making the entry into the left too tight. I eventually cleared the turns by going extra slow, knowing I’d have to get right on the gas to make up for my lack of skill through this technical section.
This technical turn lulled riders, it seemed, into a false sense that they were out of the woods (sorry) but the steep gradient continued down the loamy hill, bikes picking up speed just before the next right-hander that increasingly caught riders out. A root-infested entry that looked like an octopus at an orgy ensured a wild ride into this turn, and I saw a few riders bin it here. Then the track opened up; a little bump on the hill just before a load more bigger roots assisted riders slightly, by giving them a boost over these nastily angled and slippery buggers. Honestly, some of these roots actually looked like the Pearce track builders had taken the Pledge up with them, shining and buffing the exposed root right up, ready for Grandma to come round for tea and cake on a Sunday afternoon.
If any rider could maintain speed and grip using a little rut to catch the tyres, then he’d be well set up for the straight to a triple jump, used on many a race, and I think was part of an old English National track back in the day. For those of you that aren’t familiar with the term, a triple jump is a kind of jump that has a take-off, and a landing but with a second landing in the middle for riders that cannot jump far enough to make the main landing. A normal double jump would look a bit like a curvey ‘m’ taking off from the first upstroke, over the hole in the middle and landing on the last downstroke. A triple would have an extra ‘n’ joined to the ‘m’, so forcing the rider to jump over the two holes and land on the third downstroke.
The track was so battered from the rain, not too mention the 300 plus riders tearing the guts out of it like Freddie Kruger at a Dreams bed-shop sale, that I found it tricky to set myself up for this jump, bouncing from side to side in the ruts now gorged deep into the mud just before the take-off. Other riders, it seemed, were suffering the same fate as I, and I witnessed many getting right out of shape, some ending up off the track and in the heather.
Then it was straight on the gas, sprinting across a little fire-road section that really grabbed at the tyres and slowed your progress on mud tyres. Then back into the maelstrom, down a tight left hander off the side of the fire-road, that shot back up a small incline then a chute down past a tree that threatened to collide with me on every run and a onto a surprisingly slippy rock section that set riders up for a small but ferocious drop, and caused a stupid amount of racers to come to some harm. The uplift queue buzzed with tales of crashes and over-the-bar moments on the drop, which was surprising as it wasn’t too big, just seemed to kick the rear of their bikes up and so upset the rider. The wet conditions on landing didn’t help.
The track straightened out once more and it was off the brakes and pedal, pedal over some seriously muddy and rutted lumps in the ground peppered with rocks looking like small-small islands in a sea of mud. It also seemed, those pesky track builders had dumped a load of woody snakes on the track in front of me, all of them slithering to find shelter from the open grasses. Both these features were a reminder that a fall would involve a reasonable degree of pain.
On a practice run, my front wheel had washed out on an unseen root lurking just under the muddy surface, my handlebar had etched itself deep into the Shropshire countryside, like a plough toiling over farmer’s land, and my hand still throbbed whenever I rode that section. Line choice here was a bit like playing the Generation Game; top, middle or bottom. All had advantages and disadvantages, but in the end I opted for the high line all the way through, preferring the slight grip of grass over slippery root of the middle or the more meandering rocky lower route.
Next there was a slight right-hand hip jump and into a lazy left-hand bend on which only the brave didn’t touch their brakes. Off a little stump to boost the rider onto the bermed left and it was a quick right over another little hip jump that most riders were trying not to launch too far from, and so maintaining speed. I loved this section, I loved the speed that I came round the berm, over the hip with a squash of the suspension, feeling my bike change direction in the air, straightening for the landing and pedal, pedal up to the first of two smallish tabletops. Catching the downside it was pedal, pedal again trying to catch the downside of the second table top jump. A couple more turns of the cranks and a bigger take-off looms into sight, marking the entrance back into the woods. The stepdown. So called because a rider must launch high and far off the take-off and land down a transition perhaps ten metres away, further down the hill. Viewed from the side the feature would look like a giant step, hence the name.
Over the step-down, into the trees (Photo: Jamie Watts)
Awesome to watch the top boys clear it, I was satisfied to do anything more than just roll off the top, but it took a while for me to work out what was required on this section. In my defence, I am blind as a bat.
And so in through the trees. This first section was a bit like a pump track on steroids, with little lumps and undulations dotted down the track that enabled the rider to pump up and float over sections and catch the downside of the next lump, as long as he could maintain his rhythm and flow, and so avoiding nasty roots and hidden stumps, all the while keeping a correct line and avoiding trees inches from his bar-ends.
Then it’s over the last fire-road and a pedal past trees, at times dropping your shoulder to avoid any close contact with the timber, through lefts, and rights, some tight but mostly flowing, and as the gradient steepens and you start to the sense the end of the track, with an increase in baying spectators egging you on, it was down a rutted chute and over some wooden steps, then hurtling down another, steeper chute, up and over the classic finishing tabletop and it was a final pedal, pedal, sprinting at last into the welcoming arms of the finishing line, and reality returns. Race done.
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