Team Aston Hill's Season Kicks Off

The season proper kicked off this past weekend with three of our team; Josh, Ellen, and Meghan, at Round 1 of the BDS at Nant Gwrtheyrn Wales, while Joe stayed local for Round 1 of the Gravity Project Honey series at Rogate.

Nant Gwrtheyrn is found on the northern coast of North West Wales. In other words it’s a long drive. The track is steep, rocky, and technical and combined with rain it was muddy and slippery. Conditions did improve over the weekend but Saturday practice was tough for the team with some big crashes. The end of the track had to be diverted to a fire road as the mud was so deep.

Josh, Meghan, Ellen, and Joe describe their race weekend below.

Josh
I really enjoyed the first round of the BDS on the weekend. Practice was good although the track was getting harder throughout the day with big holes and ruts appearing after every run. I managed to get up to speed and felt comfortable on the track pretty quickly on Saturday.
Sunday practice was a bit of a disaster with crashes in both runs which knocked my confidence a bit for racing. Unfortunately I crashed in my seeding run on the first corner which meant I had to follow the rider behind me. I felt pretty nervous for my race run as I knew I needed to get down. I was one of the first to go and had probably the best run I had all weekend, getting loose and even catching up and overtaking the rider in front. I came down in 1st with quite a big lead on a 2.30.4, resulting in me sitting in the hot seat for a while. In the end I ended up 14th which I am happy with in my first race in junior and knowing I was only less than a second off top ten. Time to keep training and push on to the next one.


Meghan
I loved the track – thought it was a great technical steep track which had big rock gardens and drops in it, ending with a big pedal to the finish. On Saturday's I didn't get the practice that I wanted. My first practice run went well, absolutely loved it and got a nice run in. It came to my second practice run where I had a big over the bars, I still carried on riding and got the rest of the run clean. It then came to my third practice run where the track had changed a lot, making all of the lines I was taking change massively, it wasn't long into this run before I caught my pedal on the top of a roll off on a corner and quickly face planted landing directly on both my hands, I got back up and carried on struggling to hold on and ended up going over the bars again, I got back up and finished the run and decided to take a break. I chose to do a 4th practice run with one swollen hand struggling to hold on and bruised and cut knuckles on the other. I managed to get down ok.

On Sunday morning I started my practice runs getting down both safely apart from sliding out once, seeing how much the track had changed I had to quickly change lines ready for seeding. When it came time for seeding I hadn't yet put together a solid run, let alone a full one. I managed a full run with a few foot dabs and it being messy putting me into 5th place. It then came to race runs and I felt ready to push hard. I pushed too hard and ended up crashing in the first corner washing out before heading down further and hitting a tree head first and having to let two other riders pass before being able to get back on the track. In the end it was still only 50 seconds slower than my seeding time. This put me in last place and the weekend was a massive learning curve for me, not the result I wanted but after a hard weekend of riding and being in a lot of pain I am happy I finished, and I am now feeling ready for BDS round 2 in fort William.

Ellen
Practice day was chaotic – wet conditions turned the bottom half of the track into slop by lunchtime, but the riding was super fun. There were a lot of crashes for everyone – almost everyone in my category didn't get a clean run for the whole of Saturday which was an indicator of how challenging the track was in these conditions.

On race day, the track was pretty beat and the lines continued to get more difficult; fortunately my first clean run of the whole event was a good one and I seeded in 4th with a sketchy run. My race run was decent, sketchy in parts and I crashed at the top but still made it down in 4th and really enjoyed it.





Joe was at a local race in Rogate as part of the Gravity Project Honey series as he could not make the BDS, he used the race to get some more testing on his new Orange 324 and also to show off the team's new ION kit and shoes


Rogate is a mix of sand and loam and the Gravity project team had made a superb track with the limited size of the hill. A new loam technical section was cut in, this drew the crowds as many a rider was caught out and ended up eating dirt. It traversed across the main line track with more off-camber loam and ended up at the end of the familiar main line jump finish. Fast track and times were going to be tight.

Joe
This race was to used to carry out more testing on the new bike and Vee Tires that had been sent to me. As it was deep sand and loam I lowered the tyre pressures to gain maximum grip. These tyres still roll so fast even with low psi.

After a few practice runs it was time to race. The vet’s category may be full of older riders but it’s one of the most competitive categories in MTB. My first race run went pretty perfect and at one point I hit my lines so perfect I didn’t know what to do as it had not happened in practice. There were a few unnecessary brake dabs but I crossed the line in an unexpected 3rd place.

My second run I was trying to stay chill and calm just like the first but nerves did start to creep in as the beeps started to count down.
Another excellent run and this time nearly a second quicker to secure 3rd and a podium.


So it was a good start to the season for the team, winter training with FirecrestMTB has paid divends. Next up is Round 1 of the Pearce Series at Kinsham.
Many thanks to all our sponsors who have made it possible for the team to race this season with the awesome kit and components they supply.

Photo Credits : The Hills are Alive, Big Mac Photography, Dave Price
Follow the team on Facebook,Instagram and Twitter

---

MENTIONS: @TeamAstonHill / @BellBikeHelmets / @IONbike / @ride100percent / @MarzocchiMTB / @orangebikes / @Mudhugger / @TheHillsAreAlive /

---

Posted In:
Stories Reader Stories