The journey from small guy to teenager...

[Count Steer]

Cheers, I may have asked about gears before but I was pondering...the 4 speed 'Sturmey Archer' style gears unit on the Bickerton is smaller and lighter than the old 3 speed units. Given the vulnerability of the drive train and gears I wondered if a similar system (epicyclic?) could give, say, 7 gears and still be a reasonable size, weight. It'd be pretty bullet proof.

Lots of downsides though, can't vary ratios other than by changing the crank or external gear on the hub and can't just swap out a rear wheel unless the spare also has the geared hub.

As I say, just idle musings.

[weeksy]

There's new guys coming onto the scene like Zerode
https://www.pinkbike.com/news/zerode-bi ... -bike.html





Running a Pinion internal gearbox. But they've not really taken off yet. Not sure why as it's a concept that makes sense. But like motorbikes, moving away from the 'norm' takes time and a lot of people simply won't.

[weeksy]

To anyone asking "what's it like there"

Screenshot_2024-04-12-21-57-27-445_com.instagram.android by Steve Weeks, on Flickr

[Count Steer]

Looks tough. Even the trees have bandages.

[Dodgy69]

I like the idea of belt drive.

[weeksy]

Well, that's Rheola done for the 2nd weekend and once again it was character building... in massive ways, both for me, him and in truth, most people

Fri started lovely, the weather was decent and we spent a couple of hours playing at Pontypool, just a bit of a warm up really, no reason other than "why not" and he was loving the bike.
Well, mostly... it had developed a creak.... which was then my job later on Friday to diagnose... That got interesting. I was stripping the bike down while he was out with Katy Curd on the track walk. I stripped pivots, linkages, everything, still got the noise.... WTF..
As i was putting the bike in the van, completely unweighted it creaked as i stopped... I ended up diagnosing it as a caliper bolt/caliper that was creaking.. Bit of a clean on the rear caliper/bolts and it was golden. The boy checked and confirmed. Awesome.

Sat brought... wet... rainy wet, again..
The bikes were coming back with their usual patina
IMG_20240413_130940 by Steve Weeks, on Flickr

IMG_20240413_125559 by Steve Weeks, on Flickr

But the boy was happy and seemed to be going well

The bike though, well that had developed a bit of play.. lol... yeah i know.. i know. We're talking minimal things here but i do like/try and have it 100% each start of the day so back at the AirBNB and i've stripped the back end down again and replaced the pivot bearings which i think got damaged in the Friday repairs... but it still wasn't 100%. So i thought it was the upper shock bearing, i removed shock and fitted a spare shock we have which is brand new. Perfect... Shock back out and top bushing replaced in the shock and off we went for Indian and a relax.

It's hard to put into terms how much it takes out of both riders and crew at times, it's full on for both sets, the rider because they're doing all the work and the crew for standing round for 7hours, the pressure, intensity, etc... it's just pretty tough. We were both in bed and asleep fairly handy. (Well he was asleep, i struggled with sleep for some reason, maybe because it was the first National? Dunno).

Sunday brought dry and cold... well, dry in the sky but just as wet on the track. It was absolutey carnage all day, bikes, humans, everyhwere.. delay after delay, run after run of reds... getting flow wasn't happening. More delays, more ambulances... etc. Reports in the pits of rider XYZ having done this and that, broken this, broken that.... Jeeez.

Seeding/Qualifying was massively delayed, like 2.5 hours ish. He then didn't come down at his allocated time... Oh... As a parent when the clock hits about 5 mins, your heart sinks a little.. You know how good/bad your rider is and you have a time in mind that even if they had a small slip off, they'd still come down by... He ended up coming in after 7 mins something.. But he was down and apart from looking a bit muddy, was OK.
IMG-20240414-WA0002 by Steve Weeks, on Flickr

IMG-20240414-WA0004 by Steve Weeks, on Flickr

He'd come off in the same spot countless others had done and waited for a gap so he didn't mess anyone up (mistake to do that really i guess) and came down. On the positives, he wasn't hurt and on Split 1 he was 19th, with Split 2 showing as 13th..

The bike was cleaned, then cleaned again, then again, lol.... new kit fitted and more and more delays, more and more ambulances.

Timing showed he'd finished 51st in Seeding which is good and bad as it means he gets to come down early in terms of riders...


But sadly that's where he finished... more and more delays meant the racing ended up being cancelled without anyone completing a run in any Cat. Results were taken from seeding times. So 51st.. bah. He'd been at the top of the hill for nearly 2 hours and eventually came down, but he was happy, he'd made a new friend up there chatting and had had a laugh
To put into perspective, his class started Sat morning with 72 riders... with 52 completing seeding..

From what i can see on the results, 110 riders were DNF or DNS for seeding... I mean WHAT !!!!! That's bonkers.

https://www.rootsandrain.com/event12569 ... a/results/

The day then went even more bonkers as the Transit wouldn't start at the lights on the boot had been left on all day... But 30 mins later we got the bugger started lol... eventually rolling home late on Sunday evening.

It was... a weekend of... character building.

[Count Steer]

I've been watching the timings and saw that practice went well, then the seeding time was a bit Waited for the results....nothing. Sounds a bit of a battlefield/war of attrition.

[weeksy]

We'll take a lot away from it still, his riding was on point, his speed was superb and his attitude all weekend was fantastic. He's in bed sleeping rather than on his way to an early A&E trip... so, you know what, it's far from bad.

I've got a few things that need doing on the bike, starting with cleaning but the list then grows to
1. Replace chainstay bearings x 2
2. Replace mech hanger
3. Replace gear outer and inner (through frame arggghhhh)
4. Sort brakes, lever return is laggy
5. New pads front and rear
6. New chain

I think off the top of my head that may be the lot.. but i'm sure more will come to me. However, i'm going to farm most of it out to Rotec... I just don't have the energy to replace it all this week lol. The gear inner/outer is a sodding fiddly job and i just can't be bothered with that right now.

[Count Steer]

We'll take a lot away from it still, his riding was on point, his speed was superb and his attitude all weekend was fantastic. He's in bed sleeping rather than on his way to an early A&E trip... so, you know what, it's far from bad.

Yup. Still standing/in one piece and got that second split time to feel good about.

Onward and, err, upwards then downwards...at speed.

[weeksy]

We'll take a lot away from it still, his riding was on point, his speed was superb and his attitude all weekend was fantastic. He's in bed sleeping rather than on his way to an early A&E trip... so, you know what, it's far from bad.

Yup. Still standing/in one piece and got that second split time to feel good about.

Onward and, err, upwards then downwards...at speed.

Looking at the results he was 10th on split 2...

Of course that doesn't mean he'd have been 10th in race... he may have fallen off lol. But it shows he was at a decent pace

[weeksy]

euros2 by Steve Weeks, on Flickr

[Taff]

well done to you guys for getting what you did out of the weekend, it sounds like he's not getting rattled to much by crashing which is frickin amazing


from the organisers perspective tho, it sounds like an absolute shitshow to be running a national level race where the race doesn't actually happen but on the flip side, wtf can they do in wales when the weather is it's doing what it does. I'm pretty sure that they won't want to be repeating that again.

where next?

[weeksy]

Rhyd-y-felin (the one near Bala) on 11/12 May for first round of the Pearce series. We've obviously got other riding before that. But that's the next race.

[weeksy]

Full promo mode. He got 2 new pairs of Crank brothers shoes this week

Although, white!!

IMG-20240415-WA0004 by Steve Weeks, on Flickr

[Count Steer]

Full promo mode. He got 2 new pairs of Crank brothers shoes this week

Although, white!!

IMG-20240415-WA0004 by Steve Weeks, on Flickr

White? Not for long.

[weeksy]

Oh man.... i can't put into words just how much his fitness has improved.

We went out for a Z2 ride, i'm not actually sure i got him into Z2 though even when flat out for me !! Bloody insane !!!

[weeksy]

After the weekend I dropped the bike at Rotec to get some TLC. None of the jobs were outside of my skillset but I trust him massively and he does an ace job.
The main reason I dropped it off was 'time' and faff. The gear outer is a pain to route on the chainstay.

So the list was as follows..

1. Mech hanger fitting/replacing (bent in final practice)
2. Chainstay bearings (greased in Fri afternoon but we're past best)
3. SRAM RSC bit sticky on lever and RSC adjuster (been like that a while, needs rebuilding)
4. Gear outer replace, route internally at main triangle (squished by fork)
5. Reroute rear brake internally (to protect)
6. New 11sp chain. (4 months old, time to replace)

The shock and forks are off for rebuild and service soon, so want the bike 100% for Fort William in May.

IMG-20240418-WA0000 by Steve Weeks, on Flickr

IMG-20240418-WA0002 by Steve Weeks, on Flickr

He found a few other things too
IMG-20240418-WA0003 by Steve Weeks, on Flickr

[weeksy]

As we're all invested in this i thought we'd post the pics.

This is the test for the kit he's got coming. Mrs Weeksy thinks the bottom blue may be a bit light, but the boy seems happy with it in photos, he's at school so he's not seen the full version just yet IRL.
I think it's going to look super pro

IMG_20240419_090019 by Steve Weeks, on Flickr

IMG_20240419_090046 by Steve Weeks, on Flickr

[weeksy]

So where are we up to then this year

results by Steve Weeks, on Flickr

That's how things stand currently. Obviously the last race at Rheola was something of a disaster, but we can't change that now.

So next up we've got some coaching/uplift stuff and an uplift day at Rhyd Y felin.
then back into racing.
11/12 May for Rhyd Y Felin Pearce series
25/26 May Fort William National DH

Fort William is going to be a bit nuts, he's got a French exam for GCSEs on the Friday, in the ideal world we'd like to get there early for a track walk, but that's not happening as it's going to be 10pm or later by the time we arrive, so we may have to rock up early on the Sat morning and get one in hopefully. The good news is, we're not leaving straight after the race, we're staying until the Monday morning and cruising gently back .. Although that's a relative term as it's a bloody long drive.
Plans are still going well and the riding is going well. We're heading off to FoD tonight with Katy for some coaching, then uplift at the weekend and then Dyfi for some final getting up to speed on the 6th May. So hopefully we'll both be as ready as possible for things.

[weeksy]

Cornering at speed practice for the crew