A supremely skillful singletracker – and it’s owner!

I rode the Red Bull as part of Team Trailblazers MTB, a club that runs out of the Psychlosport shop in Harrogate. The rest of the team was Pete Short who owns the shop, runs the club and rides a Be-One Ti hardtail, Chris Dening on a Be-One Weblite and PJ on a steel Trek. We all ride at least twice a week, come rain, snow, hail or shine and reckoned we should have a go at the Red Bull this year. This is how it went.

Friday night.
5pm. Sitting in traffic on the M6. Plan was to be at Sandwell by now, but not to worry.
6:30pm. Finally make it and find PJ and Chris. Will worry about settting up camp later, as we set out on a lap. It doesn’t go too well but at least I know where the sudden sharp climbs are and can work out which obstacles need a bit of caution. The course is fast, dry, and very bumpy in places, but with plenty of rooty, swoopy singletrack. I think I’ll enjoy it.
8pm Pete arrives to complete the team. Once the marquee is up, we head off to registration and get some pasta. Plans to stick to a couple of beers go haywire as we discover a source of free beer. Swines!
10pm Out with the TV and DVD player for a showing of Charlie’s Angels and another beer. Ooops.

Saturday
9 am. Excellent night’s sleep but I’m slightly dehydrated. I grab some tea and cornflakes then Pete and I head down to the USE tent to hire suspension posts. Rory fits me up for an XCR Alien hopefully that will sort out the worst of the bumps and save my back from untold grief. After a real breakfast, Pete and Chris go out for a recce lap, just as well as Pete discovers he has a skipping transmission. Meanwhile Jennifer, a friend of mine and a Birmingham native, turns up with fresh bread, newspapers, pan scrubs and all the other stuff we forgot. We pass the morning with a bit of fettling, some idle chat, PJ’s excellent barbeque and a read of the paper. Pete finds his transmission gremlins in a worn middle ring, a quick swap at 1:30 and everything is working fine again. Just as well, he’s our first man out and the only runner amongst us.
2pm Jennifer and I wander down to watch the start, Chris sorts out base-camp and PJ is chief bike holder. The gun goes off and everyone starts running.
4:10pm. I head down to the start with Jennifer, she heads off and I wait for Chris to come in. I don’t have long to be nervous as Chris does about a 44. I’m off. My nerves get to me at first and the first field is hard work though the suspension post has taken a real edge off the bumps. My head comes together on the descent and things start flowing nicely on the first singletrack. Riding the first steep bank without any trouble and passing a train of people on the climb to the farm is good for my confidence. The lap flies past in a blur of swoopy singletrack, railing descents, spinning up climbs, and soon Iím back at the campsite. The steep hill takes me unawares but I jump off and run up it, and swoosh down the other side. I feel good and cross the line in 48-something. We have a clean hand-over and Pete is off again.
5pm. I’m buzzing after lap one. Back at the tents I eat and faff with fitting my lighting bracket and then eat some more as Chris sets off to wait for PJ to come in. I’m out for my second lap about 7:30. I’ve eaten too soon before going out and my stomach feels a mess, but apart from that it’s a good lap. By the time I come back across the motorway I’m pretty much on my own apart from a guy on a Carerra who I am closing on slowly. I reckon I can pass him and up my work-rate, catching him at the bottom of the steep climb. I run it again, and get on his tail through the trees and pass him on the grassy down alongside the tents. I hear him on my tail alongside the tennis courts and he gets a cleaner line through the tarmac hairpin and passes me. I put the power down and get alongside him as the course starts to sweep left, but I’m going far too fast for the line I’m on and the barriers start coming towards me. I fight my desire to brake and lean forward, weight the outside pedal and feel the closeness of the rail. I wait for the ground to hit me but somehow it doesnít and I make it over the line in one piece. I’ve lost that little race but Iím in still in one piece to give the baton to Pete. I ride back to the campsite feeling very stupid risking so much for a few seconds and a bit of pride.
9pm PJ, the next man out, will be riding into the night so we go onto a double lap strategy. I take time to eat well, rest, shower and visit the massage tent for some leg and back salvation. Hopefully it will be just the ticket.

Sunday
12:30 My first night lap feels awesome. We’ve not been out after dark for a few months but on the first bit of singletrack I instantly recapture the buzz of riding at night. What the masseur did to me hurt at the time, but it worked a treat. I loved every second of the singletrack, and the lap was over far too soon. I crossed the line in about 53 minutes with the empty hope that someone would relieve me, but knew I was on my own. Had I gone too hard? The first field dragged slightly and my legs and head felt heavy but I knew I had to finish the lap anyway. Maybe one lap was enough after all. I was hit by a wave of tiredness as I approached the first bridge over the motorway. My back was agony and I wanted to eat. I didn’t have any food and I couldn’t stretch my back out properly on the bike, so stopped and arched against the parapet, watching the traffic below fly by. Back on the bike, I felt a lot better – my legs still ached but my back was a lot happier. I actually enjoyed the singletrack stretches but the end of the lap was a long time coming. The changeover to Pete came as a huge relief. I knew I’d done a slow lap but hoped it was under an hour (it was a 59:12, my worst by a fair margin) and I sauntered back to the campsite, looking forward to a shower and some sleep.
5am. PJ woke me after his single lap. It felt bitterly cold and horribly early as I struggled out of bed. Getting breakfast into me wasn’t easy. I managed to check my bike over, but quite what I’d have been capable of doing had there been a problem I don’t know. Even working out when I should set off was a problem – neither of us knew when PJ got had back, it was either ten to- or ten past six. If it was ten past, I had 15 minutes to get down there. If not, Chris was probably riding round the campsite as we spoke. I chucked some water into my Camelbak and set off for the start. I must have been hanging my bike up as Chris came across the line; he had long enough to realise I wasnít waiting but in the end we spotted each other. Despite the shaky start, lap five went well. The dawn had brought a dew so the ground felt a little softer and smoother but the grass and roots were now slightly greasy. I rode up the campsite climb for the first time all weekend and wondered why I hadn’t tried it before. We were well over half-way, going well and I knew we could finish from here. I worked through some calculations in my head and reckoned we were on for a 26 lap finish, 27 at most. My next lap should be my last so I ate, showered, got thoroughly massaged and slept in the shade of the marquee tent. The course was starting to get damaged and the washboard bumps on the braking runs were now huge and very hard work. Lap six was a 52 minute lap, a couple of minutes off my best, but that had been put in 16 hours and 50 miles earlier. When I got back to the tents I realised it was about 11 o’clock. That meant there were three hours to go. And that meant I was going out to do another lap. More pasta, more bananas, more Neurofen, a little more sleep, some tonic water, a few plays of Colin Macrae Rally passed the time.
13.14 I was off on my last lap. Anything less than a 46 would make me really unpopular, but that was pretty un likely so I just went for it, chasing people down through the singletrack sections and working hard to get a clear run through the rooty singletrack before the motorway bridge. Granny ring up to the hairpin and down through the trees and past the tents as fast as I dared. The place was buzzing as I crossed the line.
2:07:22 We had done it in 28 laps, seven each. We had finished and that was all that really mattered.

Epilogue
I wrote most of the diary when I was pretending to work on the Monday after the RB. In the end we finished 77th in the Sport category. The weather had been kind and no-one had any on-the-track mechanical problems or serious crashes. At the end of the day, we were just four regular riders but we’d still tamed the Red Bull.

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