Today was the practice day for the downhill championship race. The organisers chose the 'Devils Dyke' track, which starts with a drop then a road gap landing on the rock garden. After a dodgy landing on my first run, and after chatting with other riders I decided to just roll the gap instead and get a better line through the rock garden.The rest of the course is made up of off-camber straights and tight, steep, rooty corners. In fact the track is pretty much the polar opposite of the tracks I excel on. The track ends with some switch backs that have you pedaling uphill.
I had a few good runs and a few not so good runs. A lot of the time a wheel would slip off the track or I'd have to put a foot down to stop me going over the bars.
Quite early on I had a crash which was strangely relieving. I tried to slam my bike into one of the final berms but just ended up slamming myself onto the ground. After lunch I had another crash after messing up my line into a corner and riding straight into a tree. Neither me nor the bike broke so I wasn't too fussed.
The guys at UK Bike Park were running an excellent uplift service with their old army trucks and trailers so a huge thanks goes out to them.
When the uplift finished the sun went down and the temperature dropped. It was incredibly cold but that didn't affect the festival atmosphere of the weekend, with various students getting up to mischief.
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