Midlands XC4: race season ends.

Warm & sunny, dry & dusty trails, what more could Sherwood Pines have delivered for the final of the 2010 Midlands Series at Sherwood Pines!

James and Nadine delivered the usual top-notch xc racing again with a Pines course full of twisty turny singletrack fun as well as some steep bursts and loose pitches thrown in for good measure.

Gridded on the front row, I got my best start of the season, leading off the line and at the joint head of the pack through the initial fire-road and singletrack sections. The group soon split before the real twisty stuff though and 4 laps of fast and furious riding in the pack ensued.

To be honest, it was my first race of the year riding in a group for the whole thing and it was ace! Being pressured by those behind as well as pushing those in front meant the pace stayed high and laps 2, 3 and 4 were all within one second of one another!

The place-swapping continued right until the line and gaining a couple more places in the last few hundred metres saw me finish in 7th after 1h37m.

A great end to the season... I'm looking forward to a few weeks of chillout rides now before winter training begins. And roll on the 2011 season!

A start to repeat in 2011!

Torq12:12... Soda action

The final race of the year for the AQR team saw 12 hours of fast and furious racing down south at the Gorrick-run Torq12:12 event last Sunday.

[As usual, huge thanks to Joolze Dymond for the superb images]

Blue skies and sunshine for all but one lap combined with the usual classic rooty, twisty Gorrick course design to make for a fantastic event from midday to midnight on Sunday.

All in all a smooth race for the team, including hats off to Iain for getting in 3 laps before his injured back & leg - which originally suggested he wouldn't be racing at all - started to tell. Massive thanks to Kate who travelled all the way from Edinburgh for her 4 laps, whilst Rich took the fastest lap of the team award with a 39m30s sprint round early on. Finally, James racked up the most at 6 laps, including an unplanned double, the 2nd lap of which started at 11.48pm! Unfortunately his legs hadn't planned for it and the team dropped to 6th place by just 2 minutes at the end. A respectable end to the year though in a tough category.

The race itself wasn't the only highlight of the weekend though, as Kate had her freshly built new Cotic Soda out to play for the first time. Complete with Hope/Stans wheels, KCNC chainset, Magura Durin forks and Bontrager finishing kit, it truly is a work of art and she was raving about it every lap - more on her thoughts as it eats up the miles!

And finally, congrats once again to Kate for her win back in early August at Scottish XC Round 5, which she took by a convincing 6 minutes!

Bristol BikeFest 2010

It seems crazy that this year's Bristol BikeFest 12hr race was a month ago now, there's been so much going on all summer. Better late than never though, here's a quick run-down of how the AQR team got on...

Bristol provided a gorgeous sunny weekend for the race and the usual fast and fun Ashton Court singletrack - with a slightly shorter lap this year. With Iain, Kirsty, Matt and myself making up the AQR mixed-4, things kicked off at 9am with the mass dash & start. Unfortunately not all went to plan from the off with Iain suffering a snapped chain and 2 punctures on his first lap! Not to be deterred we pushed on through, blasting out lap times well around 25 minutes - making for great racing and eager overtaking required!


Despite more punctures (Iain's had his annual allowance now!) we started to move up the rankings from the low teens early on. With some storming laps during the afternoon as things got even dustier, James came in from his last lap with 8 minutes to spare, completing the team's 27 laps for 7th place.

Perhaps not the position we'd hoped for after last year's podium, but a great comeback and truly enjoyable event that really put the fast and furious into xc racing!

British XC3 - AQR's newest recruit & the Margam mudfest!

Kate Collins, the AQR team's newest recruit tells all about her first National race and first podium of the year in Wales...

After an 11 hour train trek from Edinburgh to Margam Park, I was looking forward to a good night's sleep ahead of a nice dry race the next day. Saturday morning I woke to the pitter-pattering of rain on my tent and thought uh-oh, what have we here! I've only ever raced Margam in the scorching sun. I must admit, at 8 o'clock that morning it was quite difficult to leave my very cosy and warm sleeping bag. I'd packed light in order to cycle to/from the train station at each end - needless to say, I didn't have many layers of warm/water proof clothing...

But after meeting up with James, donning my new AQR kit and downing more Torq bars than I have bikes, I got more into race mode and was rearing to go. Or was I? Where was my number board?! Uh oh, it was a few mins to the start and my tent was, naturally, at the very back of the campsite... So after a quick sprint back to board up, I really was ready, this time!

I'm generally more of a tortoise than a hare when it comes to race starts. This time I was even more out the back than usual as I got tangled up with a rider who must've missed a pedal and seemed to hit the ground right when the gun went off. After the tangled standstill, the rest of the field seemed to disappear into the horizon in mere seconds. So I put the tortoise into full-on mode and passed a few girls by the end of the tarmac. I didn't know whether they were in my category or not but it helped to get my legs going.

We all got stuck behind quite a bit of traffic on the first lap, but as the laps went by the traffic thinned out. I hadn't had time for a practice lap after my trans-UK mission of the day before, so the first lap was a case of seeing how the course differed from the year before and testing out my forks. I was essentially riding rigid too as my good forks were on my good bike (long logistical story of several bikes in several countries). Needless to say, the rocks on the first muddy chute were "interesting", while I descended the second muddy, rooty chute in style using my thigh rather than my forks. Also managed to come a cropper at the end of lap one, where I crashed on the flat (into nothing?!) and went for another mud slide.

Each lap was progressively muddier than the first. I kept pushing hard on the climbs to make up for my less than glamorous descending, where the mud and off-camber trails in the first half of the lap conspired to bring out interesting moves. There was a bit of minor juggling with positions with a few girls, and I tried to keep it as smooth in the rough as my rigid forks would allow (good for skills)! Reaching the summit of the last hill on the last lap, I thought I was somewhere around 5th, so was somewhat surprised when I crossed the finish line to the announcement that I'd finished in 2nd!

All in all, a great fun race. Congrats to Emma Bradley who took the win, Stephania Magri in third and fellow AQR teammate Kirsty who was just seconds off third. Looking forward to my next challenges in the Scottish round at Fort Bill and the pairs race at Bontrager 24/12 on my new Cotic Soda (yes Ian, I am finally laying my '04 Stumpjumper to rest)!

Midlands XC2: The hills of Herefordshire!

Scorching hot sunshine, super dusty trails and big climbs... who would have thought that the 2nd round of this year's Midlands XC series (& the Midlands champs) would deliver all of these!

Returning to an old-skool venue at Mansel Lacy, James & Nadine once again delivered a great course which tested riders on the way up & down - steep descents, off-camber singletrack and a monster fireroad climb half-way through. Oh & what must have been the only mud in the UK on such a hot weekend.

Despite two stops to pump up my slowly deflating rear tyre and a slight lack of power on the climb due to recent heavy training sessions, I was pleased with my 10th place finish... roll on Margam!

Thanks to Roy Bevis for the photo - http://www.flickr.com/photos/26069260@N04/

British XC2 - racing down south

It's only 4 days since the 2nd British XC round last weekend but already feels a way away and Round 3 at Margam is approaching fast... especially with Midlands XC2 in between!

Mainly dry weather - albeit frickin' freezing on practice saturday! - combined with a course in great shape and mainly nicely bedded in after the recent Southern XC made for some fun, fast and furious racing. The singletrack varied between fresh bumpy, loamy trails which were punishing for hardtail riders to the sinuous ribbon of brown that wound its way through the acres of bluebells towards the end of the lap.


A great AQR turn out for the weekend meant a good coverage across the categories with Kirsty bringing home 4th in Masters for the team's best result. Despite a monster race-start tangle and crash (which left one poor guy with his bike in 2 bits!) leaving him dead last, Matt Prior pulled out all the stops in the Open race to finish 7th - some impressive overtaking must have gone on there! Iain was the third AQR team member of the day but unfortunately had to pull out of the Sport race due to back pain. As for myself, I finally broke into the top 20, finishing 18th in the Sport race. Maybe the recent training has started to pay off with much more consistent lap times than at Round 1.... roll on Margam.

And finally, a massive well done to Mrs-AQR, Kate Potter for her 2nd in the Elite women's race... good luck for Offenburg World Cup Kate!

Huge thanks to Joolze Dymond for the photos - http://www.joolzedymond.com/ for the full galleries.

Bikemagic.com: A Pyrenean Paradise

Just a hint to check out the front page of Bikemagic this week for the low-down on AQR, riding weeks in Luchon and their future plans for coaching. Cotic hire bikes available out in Luchon too by the way ;-)

In more normal AQR blogging news, it's the Gorrick Enduro this weekend which'll be a training race for me following a pretty long week this week... at least the sun's out!

British XC1: A Master's view

This year I've decided to go for it and challenge myself with the BMBS. Goodbye comfort blanket (the rest of the team at the 12 / 24 hour races); goodbye excuses (no time to train, I'm not sure I can do this etc etc). Just get out there and ride. Sorry, RACE!!! So, here we go... BMBS Round 1, Sherwood Pines. My first race of the 2010 season.

Solid winter training... check
Nice new Bonty tyres...check.
Bike polished and ready to go... check
Weather gods smiling... check

During the week before, I had the usual case of 'pre-race nerves'. However, when I arrived at Sherwood and caught up with the rest of the team, I began to relax and enjoy myself. A couple of warm up laps in the sunshine laid any fears I had to rest, as I found a course that played to my strengths - fast paced and action packed, with enough technical interest to keep my on my toes.

Sunday morning dawned, and I managed to keep the butterflies in my stomach at bay. For the first time in my (short) racing career, I had a proper warm up routine - which I seriously recommend. This was a great way of ensuring I was prepared not only physically, but mentally, for the race.

The Masters line up contained a few names I have raced previously, and a few more I didn't recognise. I'm relatively new to this game, so I didn't really have a race strategy as such - my aim really was to learn from the experience, with the longer term goal of a podium place by the end of the series.

The gun went, and I got a great start, leading the field for the first few hundred yards. A few people came past going into the first main section of singletrack, and I got caught up a little behind some of the blokes who started in front of us(!). With so many categories racing together it's hard to tell where your competition is, so I spent the rest of the race chasing down whoever I could see in front of me, sprinting for the singletrack, and trying to hold off anyone behind me from passing me. I had no real idea where I was placed. I concentrated on powering through the fireroad sections, whilst trying to flow through the singletrack. I was enjoying the course - particularly the dual descent section and the little chute just after the steep climb - and felt that my winter training had paid off. My fitness was good, and I'm beginning to see improvements in my basic skills.

Part way through the 3rd lap, one of the spectators said he thought I was in 4th place - this gave me a real boost and a burst of energy. I was determined not to let anyone past (whatever their category... just in case... although I did make an exception for the top 3 elite women who came through near the end of my last lap...) - but how close was I to that elusive podium place???

As it turned out... not close enough. I continued to work hard through the final lap, but 3rd place was never in my sight. I finished 4th - far better than I had expected, and I feel I have more to give. Well done to Emma Bradley for the win. But watch out girls, I'll be breathing down your necks at Round 2!!

What went well?
* Good warm up
* A great start
* Fitness and power on the fireroads
* Clearing the little log jumps (albeit not very gracefully)
* 4th place...

Where can I improve?
* Cornering... carrying speed through the singletrack
* Confidence in my ability... I can clear those tricky sections, if I get my head round it
* Technique, technique, technique...
* 4th place...

Overall, I really enjoyed the race. Thanks to James Hampshire for an interesting course, and to Ian and Kate for their excellent coaching support. BMBS Round 2... bring it on!!

Kirsty Eastwood, 19th April 2010

British XC Round 1 - Sherwood Pines - 28th March

A sunny Nottinghamshire weekend kicked the 2010 British XC series off to a cracking start last weekend, with some solid results for the AQR Team too. Top marks to Kirsty for 4th in Masters, whilst Matt rode in AQR colours for the first time and brought home 11th in Open and James started his race season with 23rd in the 69-strong Sport field.

More to follow from Kirsty soon but in the meantime, some photos from the event thanks to Joolze Dymond - http://www.joolzedymond.com/ for the full galleries from the event.

And a huge well done to Mrs AQR herself, Kate Potter (Cotic Bontrager) too for 3rd in women's elite! (Seen her in super focussed pre-race warm-up mode with her trusty Soda!)

More woodsy playtime

More fun in the woods on the Hemlock this weekend with a trip to the edge of the Peaks for some woodsy sniggletrack and rocky downhills. Blue skies and winter sunshine at last! :-)