The journey from small guy to teenager...

[weeksy]

Was a funny day. One of the kids in his class also has a Fury. 80 min before his race run he noticed main pivot bearings play. I had 2 of the 6003s with me, their mechanic hadn’t done an idler setup and the GT is a funny system of crazy. We swapped them in 60 mins

I then got back to find our rear was flat as he’d hit a rock again. I had to get on the Gondola with track pump and £25 lighter as it wasn’t fully holding pressure, we were losing 2psi every 10 mins. I sent him into the queue with 25psi in. 3 more than his usual.

Happily both mine and other GT kid made it down

[weeksy]

[weeksy]

2023-05-08_07-10-53 by Steve Weeks, on Flickr

[Flux]

Cracking pic

[weeksy]

Well, we’re finally back home… 10 hour drive today and i’m a bit tired… It’s remarkable just how tiring this weekends are on the body, mostly you’re just walking up and down the hill i guess.. but it just drains you a bit. Throw in 20+ hours of driving this weekend and you can imagine, i’m a bit dead

Made a few mistakes this weekend though which irritated me a little… but i made a lot more good decisions which pleased me.

Noticed i’d fitted the idler pulley wheel on the wrong orientation a few months ago. It’s got a flanged side and a flatter side, the flatter side being on the outside edge if running Shimano, the fat side being there if running SRAM… why this is the case i don’t actually know lol. But what it meant was that the chainring was slightly offset on alignment to the inside, which meant on the really rough track he was dropping the chain off the top of the pulley wheel. Now i’ve flipped that i’m hoping he has no more issues.
Kinda lost focus when we had the tyre issues…. Note, this was 30s before heading out for his race uplift. I make sure i check pressures before every run he does.. Just in case. When i grabbed the wheel on this one it was pancake flat… I then went to swap it all about with wheel 3, which would have meant then swapping cassettes, or changing the gearing tension completely as they are pretty different. What i should have done was to swap for wheel 2 which was on the purple bike, which has the same 7sp setup along with a brand new tyre on it. But in the end we made what turned out to be the right decision on tyre/wheel and he ran the cushcore wheel and i went up to check pressures. Funnily, now he’s done a run on it it’s sealed fully and staying up nicely LOL. But we didn’t know that at the time.
Lastly i noticed i can be an impatient and intollerant bugger at times.. “just leave me to it ” and this can be spannering, setting up the gazebo or even “what do you want for breakfast”.. I get a little over-focused and miss some things. It’s not a massive shock to me, but Mrs Weeksy was there for the whole weekend this time and i neglected her a bit i feel… I’ll be out getting some flowers tomorrow i think

Other than that, the weekend was full of positives. The lad was working on different aspects of his riding and as well as trying to learn the track and different terrain type, was working on his riding style. I think if he wasn’t coming into his race run hurting he could have found another 5s off his time, which would’ve given him 2-3 places. The epic thing is that he was a LOT closer to the front runners than previous big races(Rheola Gravity and NAtional).. Roots and Rain shows percentage times from race winner in class and he closed the gap massively to the front bunch. Obviously getting the next part is incredibly tough and lets face it, maybe impossible LOL. But it shows he’s getting it together and improving still, which is the main target.

[crust]

That picture is soo James. Having fun riding his bike, launching big jumps and giving it large off them.

What an excellent adventure for the Weeks family, James riding on the big stage with the sports top riders, the lad's come a long way.

Well done to you and Ceri for all the work getting him there

[weeksy]

So we're now straight in for Bala (Rhyd-y-Felin) and a Pearce race on the 20th/21st. Not long and a few jobs need sorting on the bike.

Due to timescales and things i'm going to outsource a few of the jobs to my local friendly LBS at Rotec

Jobs list.
1. New pads and a full caliper service/bleed on the Tech3/V4s (Rotec)
2. Sort dink in the rear rim on rear race wheel (Rotec)
3. Sort 2x dink in the front race wheel (Rotec)
4. Lowers service/oil/clean on the Boxxers (Rotec)
5. Bearing check and replacement on Blue race bike
6. New chain on the blue race bike
7. Reconfigure gearing on purple spare bike to 10sp setup
8. Reconfigure alignment of idler on purple spare bike
9. Tyre swap on spare wheel rear (torn sidewall)
10. Gear cable replacement on blue race bike.

As you can see that's just the race bikes. I've currently got the RM Slayer in pieces and needing a new rear mech fitted/installed due to it being very sticky. I took it apart to service it last week but screwed up the P-spring which i'm now waiting for, but i've got a new mech on it's way from Bird.
The Privateer 141 needs 'something' fixing/cleaning/sorting as it's got a bit of a creak on it, i checked all the pivot bearings the other day but haven't quite found it yet.

After the Pearce race the Fox X2 will head off to TFTuned for a service/refresh as it'll have been on the bike for about 50 hours by then.

Admittedly it's not like it's a full weeks work, but i can only do in the evenings/weekends so it does take a bit of time i must say.

[weeksy]

Minor bummer that not only did he dink his brand new rim, but he's destroyed a new tyre as well lol. Sheesh. He's ripped 2 knobbles off the tyre and down to the canvas.
We've still got some in spares but mostly they're DH22 which he's not gelled with at all due to their very slow rolling. He doesn't seem to be able to cross that line between grip and speed.
Going to have to go in search of some new rear rubber.

[weeksy]

Rocky! Just a bit

2023-05-09_09-03-49 by Steve Weeks, on Flickr

2023-05-09_09-03-41 by Steve Weeks, on Flickr

2023-05-09_09-02-31 by Steve Weeks, on Flickr

2023-05-09_09-02-22 by Steve Weeks, on Flickr

2023-05-09_09-06-03 by Steve Weeks, on Flickr

[Flux]

Love the one on the rocks through the trees.

[weeksy]

Love the one on the rocks through the trees.

Thank you... There's about 1000 pics him and @Welsh Muffin bought... these were a bit of a selection. I think they kinda show just what the place was like...Although it still looks like something i could possibly consider riding in pics... the reality is somewhat different

[Dodgy69]

2023-05-08_07-10-53 by Steve Weeks, on Flickr

This pic is worth a frame I reckon, superb.

[weeksy]

2023-05-08_07-10-53 by Steve Weeks, on Flickr

This pic is worth a frame I reckon, superb.

Aye, you may well be right boss.

[Mr Moofo]

Wonderful pics there
Fuckin’ A , James

[Alan PBTD]

Amazing Pictures - looks like u all had a brill time.

Big shout to Ceri for putting up with u two. When I was away racing with Bev in the early days, Helen used to come but then declined as ''all we spoke about was fu*kin motorbikes all weekend'' and she was bored sh*tless.

Changed her tune when the WSB hospitality tickets floated about tho' ! But that was cool as we were away quite a lot...

See any mozzies up there ?

Let me know next time - a pal has a place in Inverness u could stay at.

ATB

[Bigyin]

Very, very cool and good to watch James as he has grown up over the years and gone from wobbling around the paddock on a little pushbike to this..... saw Ceri's posts and photos on FB and impressed by what i saw

Well done to James and may he keep growing in both himself and his ability

[weeksy]

Big shout to Ceri for putting up with u two. When I was away racing with Bev in the early days, Helen used to come but then declined as ''all we spoke about was fu*kin motorbikes all weekend'' and she was bored sh*tless.

LOL i think that's not just only on race weekends. It's all day every day...But i'm hoping she wouldn't change it for a big pot of gold.

[Crosshair]

Maybe her biggest gift to you in return was that affair she had with a hot mountain biker dude all those years ago
(Those skills have come from somewhere right!)

Those pics are proper awesome, well done to you both for such a great performance up there

[weeksy]

It's been an interesting week, with a bit less pressure this week which has been nice. He's been out with Katy of course and out on his own a bit, then out with me at Surrey Hills yesterday with a load of mates. Seeing the difference in fitness, climbing, effort ... Wow... it's most impressive just how quickly it's improving.

I've not yet collected the race bike from Rotec though, that'll get done in the next few days. Yesterday though he was commenting about the tyres on the 141 potentially being a little draggy. So swapped the 'soft' Magic Mary and the MaxxGrip DHRII for something a little better rolling. I've thrown an Assegai on the front in MaxxTerra and on the back an Aggressor.

Just had an Email this morning from DMR who are sending him some more grips as he's quite harsh on grips and running the soft compound he gets through them quickly.

Upcoming weekend is Pearce race at Rhyd-Y-Felin, you get a LOT of the fast kids there, along with kids who've ridden it many many times, he's been there before so arguably knows it better than most places we've gone to. We've got a few plans lined up in terms of tyre testing as we'll have the coach there too so we can do some timing with phones etc. I'm curious to see if he can notice any difference in tyre combos and if they actually make him faster or slower, if anything at all. It's something we need to work on as the racing is so tight that often even 2-3 seconds on a trail can make several places difference in results.

Most importantly though is that he's still wanting to ride... pretty much most days he'll get up and want to head out. It's not always viable though as he's hitting the gym too and coaching, but the desire to go out and play is still there

[Mr Moofo]

^ remember, he is going to discover girls at some stage
Make sure you still have some hobbies