Fort William SDA Round 2

So last weekend we headed up to Fort William for the second round of the SDA series. On the Thursday I went and collected my new CrankBrothers mallet pedals from the 2pure.co.uk warehouse so thanks to them for providing me with them so I didn't need to borrow my mechanics pedals any longer. We left on Friday at about midday after packing the car up nicely.

We were were providing an escort vehicle for a wigwam up to Loch Tay Highland lodges which slowed down our journey time a fair bit. We arrived at Strathfillan WigWams around 4 o'clock and with not much to do for the next few hours I decided it would be a good idea on this rather wet, and slightly cold afternoon to jump off a near by waterfall, a decision that kept me pretty cold for the rest of the day.

A bit cold after jumping in.

At about half seven the next morning, after having a good nights sleep in one of strathfillan wigwams lodges, we awoke to the sound of wind and rain . For breakfast I got myself some Weetabix and then we quickly left for Fort William for Saturday practice. Fort william is not my favourite track and having only ridden it a couple of times before, it took me a good couple of runs to get to know it properly, but by the end of practice I was feeling good and was starting to enjoy the track. My Devinci Wilson was really coming into its own on this track because the low and slack angles really gave me the stability on the super high speed rock gardens.

That night we headed to a nearby bed and breakfast and after having a good meal and preparing my bike for the race we headed to bed. On another note it turned out that where we were staying happened to be where the Mondraker team stays for the world cup ever year which was pretty cool.

On Sunday morning we got up at around half seven and the weather was looking a bit better than the previous day. After a good breakfast we once again made our way to the Nevis range car park, this time for racing.

Away to get ready for practice

I got a couple of practice runs in and was feeling fairly good for my race runs. After fixing the skipping gears on my bike which were causing me a lot of problems in practice I headed up in the gondola for my first race run.

The Devinci ready for race run 1

I was having a pretty good run up until my front wheel washed out on a rock garden and I was thrown head first into a ditch at the side of the track. I pushed my brake lever right back in the process so spent the rest of my run slowly making my way down stopping off at marshal points asking for allen keys. Never the less I was not hurt and had a second run to redeem myself and put it all together, or so I thought. I got to the top quite early for my second run so that I could sit in the cafe and have time to mentally prepare myself and have a decent warm up. I did this only to be told once there that second runs were cancelled due to too many track closures. I then rather miserably made way down to the bottom in the gondola.We stuck around to see who took the win in the elites and then headed off home.

So not a great weekends racing, but I know what I need to work on and will be training hard for Glencoe BDS which is just over a week away and I plan on smashing it there.

You can see all my race photos in my Roots&Rain gallery as my photo sponsor Scott MacPherson was unable to attend this round.

Until then

Morgan

(video to come soon)