Here's Neils report from the weekend.
The 3rd round of the Scottosh Downhill Association Series was at Nevis Range, Fort William this weekend and for Team MTB Ride Guide you could almost class it as a ‘home gig’. The team had all been up training in the weeks before hand with Ewan looking great on track and Alastair as always going really quickly on the course he knows so well. I’d been struggling a bit with bike set up , but had made a couple of mid-week changes so was looking forward to it too.
On Saturday the track was running really nicely with lots of grip up in the top sections and the woods were dry and fast. The wind picked up a little in the afternoon which meant the motorway jumps needed a bit for pedal power to clear them but for Fort William that’s pretty good. On the Saturday night we had a ‘Team Carbo Loading Session’ which involved a huge takeaway from the Indian restaurant which soon disappeared while sat discussing lines and experiences from practice while overlooking the loch with the mountains behind - a reminder of the more pleasant side of Fort William. On Sunday it was back to reality however with heavy rain overnight and showers forecast together with gusting winds meaning that it wasn’t going to be an easy day.
I was raring to go on my race run and was really enjoying my run – catching my 30 second man at the deer fence but after a big ‘moment’ in the woods I had a mechanical and couldn’t select a gear to pedal down the motor way – losing both feet from the pedals while approaching the Hazzard Hoofer isn’t fun either ! I managed to get down and sat in the hot seat for a while until I handed it over to Alastair which was great but that was quickly forgotten when we heard that Ewan had crashed heavily in his race run and was in the medical tent. He was very sore and gutted not to have been able to show what he can do but luckily nothing was broken - his day was over but he’ll back on top form very soon . On the second run , a crash above the woods ended my run but Alastair improved on his first run and held onto his second place.
