The journey from small guy to teenager...

[weeksy]

Q2 Wots pumping? (I assume it's working the suspension to get more lift in a jump but....)

We can do 'flip chips' next week.

Pumping is essentially what you do on a swing, but on a bike. A technique of weighting, pushing the bike to increase forward momentum.

That's about the simplest way I can think of describing it.

You pump on the downslope, small or large, to 'push' yourself forward. It's a leg based thing, feet based thing, sorta.

[Count Steer]

Q2 Wots pumping? (I assume it's working the suspension to get more lift in a jump but....)

We can do 'flip chips' next week.

Pumping is essentially what you do on a swing, but on a bike. A technique of weighting, pushing the bike to increase forward momentum.

That's about the simplest way I can think of describing it.

You pump on the downslope, small or large, to 'push' yourself forward. It's a leg based thing, feet based thing, sorta.

Out of interest and for those that know not (like me ) about these things I found this.



I assume pedalling is a no-no because of clearance.

[MingtheMerciless]

Fixed it for you

No one can accuse Weeksy minimus of not trying

Sorry, in best Short Round voice "You very bad man Mr Ming"

[weeksy]

Fury collected and paid in full.

I expect we’ll be seeing it again at 100% race in Dec.

Hard day of riding at Swinley today for him, he was top to bottom the new trails by babymaker about 20 times and racing his mates on every trail.
4 tough days back to back for him. I think he needs a day off before Dyfi later this week.

[weeksy]

The boy survived the day at Dyfi. Had a minor wheel issue which is one we've had before where the spacer on the cassette that turns it from 10 speed to a 7 speed DH is able to move about a bit and sounds somewhat clunky. Last time we had it i took the cassette off and put back on, all was fine again. He had multiple spare wheels in the van, so just threw another wheel in and out he went.
Chatting to my LBS at Rotec i need to just chuck on a 1mm spacer on there. I'll get that done tomorrow when he gets home with the bike.

Other than that, he seems to have had a top day at Dyfi..

On to Windhill on Sunday for a mates day with a massive bunch of daft sods.

[weeksy]

The boy performing "follow me" duties so Mary can see her lines back..

[Flux]

They look like they're really motoring.

[weeksy]

Being daft at Windhill!

[weeksy]

The boy has decided he'd like to play at Windhill this weekend for the Root1 race.. it's a fun little place and usually i believe a cracking atmosphere at these events with lots of banter and usually lots of fast locals. So i don't think he's expecting to set the world on fire... As always, i'm probably expecting a bit more from him than he himself is.

I think he'll likely be on the Privateer 141 for the race as the course apparently suits it.... But we may take both bikes for practice to see. The Privateer at times is starting to feel a little out of it's depth for what he's asking from it in terms of suspension. He's hitting proper decent sized jumps, drops, etc and 140mm Pikes are feeling a bit like they're struggling. So we're going to get them sent off to TFTuned and get serviced along with a slightly different tune on both the forks and the shock, likely just using volume spacers i guess, just to try and give him a bit more support at the pressures he wants to run at. Whether we'll get that done before this weekend i'm not so sure, but the course isn't usually the massive jumps as you have to cater for all abilities.

[weeksy]

I kinda conned myself last night... I was sitting debating what tyres for my Trek and thought "maybe some of these new fangled Continentals"

Next thing you know, i've sourced two and collected
IMG-20231030-WA0006 by Steve Weeks, on Flickr

I transpires thery're DH and Super soft... so in reality not a hell of a lot of use to me and will both end up on the lads DH bike at some stage instead lol. That leaves him with 2 lovely brand new tyres and me still with nothing for winter.

[MingtheMerciless]

Michelin Muds. Best mud tyre by far. Says he with a Minion SS still on the back of the Curtis

[weeksy]

Michelin Muds. Best mud tyre by far. Says he with a Minion SS still on the back of the Curtis

Currently i don't even know which bike he'll be racing on this weekend, let alone what tyre will be on it

[Mr Moofo]

Ming will be along in a minute to say "Michelin Muds"

[Noggin]

Ming will be along in a minute to say "Michelin Muds"

Again??!!

[weeksy]

ARGGHHHH a very mixed emotion day today for us.

It was a Windhill race, organised by root1 who own/run the 3 places, Rogate, Tidworth and Windhill. We've only been to Windhill once and that was last weekend. We'd heard stories of the super fast locals so expectations were fairly low in terms of results.

Morning brought a very busy practice and loads of kids out, the course looked ace and in my world fairly tech, not too bad in his world. First run or two i could see he was easing himself in as he didn't know which gaps he could hit, whether the high line or low line was best etc, so he was getting dropped by a few seconds by Drew.

Race 1 we were watching mid-way down, you don't get to see much as usual, but he looked good and smooth, so we wandered down to the bottom to see where he'd got
IMG_20231105_130713 by Steve Weeks, on Flickr

He'd only gone and stuck it in 1st place on run1.. Impressed. Drew had put in 3rd. Both felt they had more to give.

Run 2 was 2 hours later and again we walked down... I was met by him looking slightly less happy. 2nd currently, a kid who must have crashed on run 1 had gone slightly quicker. He then dropped 2 more places as the kid who was 2nd moved up to first and someone else split them too. So 4th place in the end for him (we think anyway, as usual the timing screen was somewhat unusual lol)

But all in all, we were arguably thinking something closer to 10th would be about right, so 4th is awesome as far as results go and we're really happy.

The Privateer didn't miss a beat as always, just did it's job. We did debate whether the Trek would have been better, but he thinks the 141 was about right (but maybe a 161 lol). Having a beer now and relaxing after getting home and cleaning the bike and kit and then stripping out the forks and shock as they're both being collected tomorrow for a service from TFTuned.

4 weeks now until the final race of the year... bring it on

[weeksy]

Yeah official results up... 4th place.
IMG-20231106-WA0002 by Steve Weeks, on Flickr

As always, it's SO SO tight at the top... Cracking little race though and he really enjoyed it. Hopefully it gives him a little more confidence that the work he's sticking in will one day pay off and self-belief starts kicking in that he can actually ride a bike.


You won't get to see this one on INsta as he's a bit shy

IMG_20231105_120516 by Steve Weeks, on Flickr

[Dodgy69]

How many rider's does Katy sponsor. ?

[Noggin]

4th is bloody AWESOME!

[weeksy]

How many rider's does Katy sponsor. ?

Currently there's 3 riders on the team. All around the same age. It's described as a youth development squad to bring youngsters into racing.

[weeksy]

4th is bloody AWESOME!

Should've been top 2 lol.

We can all say that of course, but he feels a mistake 2/3 of the way in cost him a second, but I'll be every one of the fast lads made a mistake somewhere on their run.