The journey from small guy to teenager...

[weeksy]

IMG-20250407-WA0007 by steveweeks59, on Flickr

[weeksy]

Anyway, the weekend is upon us. Cwmcarn, National DH series. This is the first biggy of the season really and without doubt the toughest race (in terms of result) that he'll have faced since starting out. We've got all the big boys playing, the Junior WC racers and the potential WC racers. 

The plus side is, he knows and likes the track. So that's a positive in there, although we've not ridden the bottom jumps, but no-one has as they've been closed for many months.

The logistics for this one are somewhat complex as it's an open visitors center, so we're parked half way round the road route, about 2/3 of the way up the hill. Which obviously makes things a little weird for heading up/down and any issues that need sorting. So as a pit-crew i'm going to need to be on my A game for the weekend, as well as him needing to be on his. 

Luckily we've got both our mechanic present for some of it and the coach there for the majority of the weekend. So i'll have support from there and he'll get advice on track-walk, warm-up, nutrition etc etc. 

The weather seems to change and we've gone from glorious to monsoon and back again this week looking at the forecast, but it won't affect the racing much, however could potentially affect the smiles and happiness depending on when it's raining lol.  It could be a long weekend of tents and cold that's for sure... extra coats and sleeping bags will be loaded up.

Due to the parking location we've stolen an Ebike for the weekend to assist with uplifts, although apparently the uplift will drop-off riders back at car-parks if needed. But for example on Sat morning we'll just head straight to the top in the morning for uplift 1, meaning we miss the queue at the bottom. We'll do the same for seeding and race run as well on Sunday. But it'll be weird as we won't get to hear any calls on tannoys for racing delays and timing changes etc... But not sure how we can do anything about that. 

We did have an offer of using pro-pits for the weekend from one of the teams, but that idea didn't quite work out for us as we've got a fair few people rocking up to help etc.

[Count Steer]

Good luck Team Weeksy.

What's the 'happy with that' target?

[weeksy]

Good luck Team Weeksy.

What's the 'happy with that' target?

P15-20 i'd say is somewhere about right. P15 will be nice.... P20 acceptable... anything better would be amazing..

As we know though with racing, pretty much anything can (within reason) of course happen and 1 mistake means P50, a couple of mistakes from others means P15... a mechanical here, or there, can affect a whole weekend instantly on a race run. That's the nature of Nationals and 1 run 1 chance to get it right. It's part of what makes it an amazing and a brutal sport, it's swings and roundabouts all weekend.

The good news is that we shouldn't go through the usual morning on Sat of
"everyone is quicker than me, can't get used to the track" as he knows the place well enough to go there and be on race-pace within 1 run. It's then just about details with Katy and himself in terms of picking up little tiny bits to make tiny gains.

[MingtheMerciless]

I won't wish you both luck, this is more applicable:

Qapla!

[weeksy]

I won't wish you both luck, this is more applicable:

Qapla!

Klingon ?

[weeksy]

So the Cwmcarn weekend is done and dusted. It was as always interesting, challenging, character building, fun and entertaining.

We arrived early on Fri and set up camp, it was glorious weather, location,
IMG_20250411_144743 by Steve Weeks, on Flickr

The elephant in the room was the uplift as we were 3/4 of the way up the hill.. However over the course of the weekend that proved to be absolutely perfect all weekend and the uplift was silky smooth, picking up and dropping off at the various carparks went way better than i ever thought. With the only downside being the push/tow section from the finish back to the security gate for uplift.
Track walks done, food cooked and plenty of beers and banter all round, everyone was in good spirits.

IMG_20250411_200144 by Steve Weeks, on Flickr

Saturday came with practice and seeding, the boy was happy enough and it'd been an interesting 16 hours on site with some very interesting chats with some people and some discussion that went well. The boy wasn't quite 'there' in his riding (yeah i know, it's a pattern at the moment) and he finished the seeding run in P14. I was absolutely pleased with it, he though was slightly disappointed. I'm still not sure how he was disappointed to be honest, but he was. The nature of the beast of being a competitive racer i guess. But there's so many full pro and World Cup racers in juniors now, it's hard to see a way to the pointy end, Billy Pugh, Felix Griffiths, Nathan Diwell Wilson and Stan Nisbet being just the first few who were racing and all will be racing WCs this season.

Up for Sunday and the day continued this was where the downside came into play with there being no real option for Mrs Weeksy to get to the bottom/top/bottom/top. It's about an hour and 10 walk, but her wonky hip can't really manage that up and down in that way. So for the morning she was basically alone as i Ebiked down on Crusts bike to the bottom to take him drinks and food etc. We had Katy the coach and Stef the mechanic over as well, but i didn't see them much due to the size of the site.
I had very little in the way of spanner work to do apart from 1 lad who rocked up and said "can you help with a puncture", he'd slashed his tyre and it was dead. The downside being he was running a 27.5 rear, but i had a spare DHF on our wheel. However his wheel was buggered so he was screwed. Well, apart from the fact he was on a Session, so he borrowed a rear wheel for the afternoon. Mrs Weeksy was looking at me like "will you ever see that wheel again"... However yeah, he found me later and returned the wheel after his race run.

Racing was delayed with crashes, then delayed again, again. So his race went off about 5.15pm. He came down with a head shake and again a look of disappointment and anger... He'd gone 2.5s quicker than seeding but it put him in P16, which again i thought was a bloody fine result, but he wasn't happy. If you'd have offered him P16 before the season he'd have taken it though. After some chats in the van, some reality checks, i think he's OK, mostly... but knows he has things he needs to work on to close the gaps. Whilst some of the gaps to Billy for example are too much to worry about at the moment, the lads up to P8 are not a million miles away and we can work on that.. i think

All in all, an excellent, long, tiring weekend. Bit cold overnight and a massive lack of sleep of course... but i've got a week and a bit of recover now until we head to Fort William .... Yup, it's not long and we're straight back to Scotland.

[weeksy]

randr-photo-15259586-5616px-by-dan-ravenhill by Steve Weeks, on Flickr

[Mr Moofo]

I worry about those glove free hands ....

[weeksy]

I worry about those glove free hands ....

funnily, he doesn't... one day he may learn... but you can't always tell people things

[weeksy]

[MingtheMerciless]

I worry about those glove free hands ....

My TU H&S Rep part of me gets all itchy when I see them glove free hands.

[Mr Moofo]

I worry about those glove free hands ....

My TU H&S Rep part of me gets all itchy when I see them glove free hands.

Not too sure what is more worrying, Weeksy the Fearless not using gl;oves, or you being a health and safety rep ....

[weeksy]

Was doing some spannering on the boys bike yesterday and had to head onto the road outside to test his Mavens. WOW, i mean really just damn WOW, they are honestly by FAR the most incredible things i've ever grabbed for a brake, it's just WHAM of power... Jeepers. I always felt the Code RSC were superb, but the Mavens... well they're just next level of amazing !

Weekend is Caersws for Saturday for him, but i think the tracks there are going to be no fun at all at my level, so i'm going to just spanner that one. We may do Sun or Mon as well somewhere, but that's completely unknown at the moment, i need to look into that i think.

Quote came in pretty respectable for the foam cutting, so i've ordered up a slightly bigger case and a (hopefully) more sturdy version which should arrive today and i can then see about getting the tools organised and shipped to Red Box Tools and turned into a fitted set.

[weeksy]

Today was Caersws for him. Conditions were a bit meh for first 2 runs but absolutely perfect from them on. He got 14 full runs and 22 total. He didn't stop for more than 2 mins to grab food. 

Sometimes I'd question that a bit but today he was quite clearly having a laugh with riding mates, so I went with it. With all the racing he's doing I worry we don't see the fun side enough, so I've been trying to encourage that for him and today was the perfect example of it. 

He still used timing from GoPro a fair bit to see how his times were compared to earlier  but that's ok as he was still enjoying it.

He slept most of the 3 hours home after an early start this morning.

Mrs Weeksy was at home doing tool box lol.

[weeksy]

So we're into what's going to be remembered as a bit of a crazy month.

Fort William
Rhyd-Y-Felin
Fort William

That's the schedule for the next 3 weekends running. It's going to be hard on him, hard on me and hard on the bike and van lol. Logistically we're pretty much sorted, we've got hotels booked for breaking up the journeys, we've got a tonne of spares, bits and tyres etc. But i think the driving and even the 'sitting' there for him followed by the intensity of racing is going to be pretty hard-core over the next few weeks.

The first FW is his first chance to try and score a UCI point. The race is part of IXS and Warner Discovery Continetal series, which is where riders get UCI points which gives them eligibility to race World Cups. We didn't get a GB jersey this year, but 2 of his closest rivals in the paddock are on the reserve list, one of the lads Seb who we've battled for last couple of years DID get one, but currently Seb has pulled away from the other lads a little bit which gave him P3 at Cwmcarn last weekend, so completely justified that he got the coveted GB jersey. I think due to a couple of Wildcard spots just being picked up by 2 lads due to their team getting entries that potentially 1 of the close rivals may jump onto a jersey, but we're still not on that list. That said, i didn't think we'd get one this year anyway and wasn't really a realistic goal. But scoring a point is sure a possible thing for him.
I'm trying to take the 'fun' rider with me this weekend, not the one who looks at others and compares himself to other riders, but when you're watching lines, watching riders, it's hard not to kinda get slightly sucked into it and see the fast lads and think "wow, they're fast" but he can hopefully just enjoy the riding instead as he IS one of the fast lads, even if he doesn't always believe it.

Thurs afternoon we get in the van and head to Scotland (again) and track-walk and practice Fri, the practice and seeding on Sat, with a last bit of practice on Sun morning before the race. It's then working out the plan to get back to school/work on Monday lol.... can't wait.

[weeksy]

[Dodgy69]

You need to buy him some expensive gloves he likes.

[weeksy]

You need to buy him some expensive gloves he likes.

Don't exist. He's got 5+ pairs of lovely gloves, all free from sponsors but he prefers without. He'll learn one day

[weeksy]

Top day with 5-6 laps for the boy, he came down happy after all of them. Very positive day for him.

Some funny moments as he (and many others) were asked to give signatures for a load of kids






They had no clue who he or anyone was, but he was laughing lots at it.

Track walk then stir fry