Anticipation is one of many sensations approaching my second season road racing.
Throw in a little hope as well, hope that cold cold winter miles in the beautiful Peak District (& to a lesser extent the Mendips) will pay off.
Sunday will give an early indication (though a kicking from the big guys on a flat parcours is expected), apprehension is creeping in.
All images taken from our Instagram @hamiltonwheelers (its worth a look)
On my recent trip to the USA I spent a few days in NYC. Whilst there I took a whole load of photos, here are a selection of them:
Charge Bikes are a locally based company doing good things for riders across the world. Whether you want a fixed gear, cyclocross, road or mountain bike, they do something for everyone. I’ve done work with them before but these latest photos are awesome (not just in my opinion I hope). Check out everything Charge do over on their website.
I was gutted to hear this weekend from local rider Neil Smith that his beloved Tom Avon fixed gear had a disagreement with the back of a car, and is no longer in a fit state to ride. It seems Neil carried on his journey to work before realising the extent of the damage! We really liked this frame, but can’t wait to see what Neil builds up next. (Note damage to forks & top tube).
Cyclocross season is in full swing at the moment, and in the US it’s huge right now. Whilst in San Francisco I somehow got talked into riding in the first round of the Bay Area Super Prestige series, at Candlestick Park. Now this was to be my first ever cyclocross race, on a course that was 80% sand, on a singlespeed bike in a Cat B race (Cat 2/3 here in the UK). Needless to say I gave it my all, but struggled in the sand & intense heat on the weekend, and I eventually had to drop out. Watching the fast guys race & experiencing racing first hand certainly has inspired me to get off road more & do a few races over here though that’s for sure!
Walton & my steeds for the day.
Start line for the Men’s A race. These guys were fast from the off & didn’t let go.
Steve Tortorelli was one of many MASH riders in the A race.
A crash on the first corner split the group but riders held on & made up valuable time wherever they got the chance.
These braking zones were my first experience of dismounting & running in a true CX style, here Derek shows how it’s done properly.
MASH putting the pressure on the guys in front.
Such a beautiful day for a race!
This climb was without a doubt the hardest part of the course, short & steep & enough to catch even the best riders out.
Made it.
Kyle ready to refresh Ramone.
Ramone having other ideas. Proud of this photo!
First CX race done. Until next time.
Aftermath.
Today I flew from the West Coast of the United States to the South West of sunny England, whilst away I did some awesome stuff with some awesome people, a lot of which included riding bikes.
Sunday saw the final of the DFL race series held around San Francisco, the race, if you didn’t know has been going for 18 years now, and it’s free to enter if you ride in drag, if not then you pay a $5 entry fee. I took a whole bunch of photos from the race which included a number of Mash SF riders including Walton Brush who was leading the series & ended up taking the win this week & the overall.
The course was right at the side of the bay, in a park, DFL is a totally underground race series.
The Mash riders took full advantage of the chance to race in women’s clothing.
There were girls & riders on all kinds of bikes.
This sand trap was hard work & caught a lot of riders out, the more experienced riders chose the outside line.
All kinds of surfaces were raced on at this course, something for everyone.
Dylan from Mash embracing the drag race.
This rocky section was another tricky part of the course which was run by most but the odd few riders rode it out.
Even if you have a carbon cross bike with disc brakes, you can always still rock a dress.
More fun than your average cross race!
Walton & Kyle from Mash killed it, with Walton choosing to ride the rocks every time.
A whole lot of nice bikes were in attendance at the race.
The winners of the series (Men & Women) took home these incredible hand made metal backpacks!
Post-race I took in some of the local SF sights as the fog came in across the bay.
Port. More photos from my trip coming soon!
Yesterday I got up before the crack of dawn to drive up to Surrey to watch the Men’s Road Race at that Olympics, you may have heard of them. We got there early to avoid traffic & closed roads, which seemed like a good idea at first, but then we realised we’d have to wait at least 5 hours to see the race enter the Box Hill circuit. The atmosphere was great though, and throughout the hours before the race, the roads around, and the circuit itself filled up with thousands of patriots & fans from across the world.
We watched Team GB riding the front for almost all 8 laps of Box Hill, and got stupidly close to the action, perhaps a little too close at one point, with nothing but a few air particles between us, I had to dive out of the way to avoid being hit (see first photo). We watched the final KMs of the race on the big screen with hundreds of others, and you will probably know by now the result so I won’t go into that. Here are my favourite photos I took of the day.
You may have read recently that Ed’s long term love ‘Bob’ is back from it’s makeover, and you may or may not have realised that I have been in the good ol’ US of A for the last few days, hence the lack of posts from me, but influx of instagram photos. Well I’m back in the UK now, and loving the up & downs of the UK ‘summer’, I did make a couple of posts whilst away using my iPhone photos, and here are a couple more that came from my camera that haven’t yet been posted. I feel these make up for my lack of content of late. Don’t expect bikes in these photos, just some inspiring scenery.
This weekend I attended my first real downhill race, the first round of the 2012 British Downhill Series, working for SouthernDownhill.com. When I wasn’t preparing/fixing/cleaning race bikes, keeping the pits tidy or taking photos on track I wandered the pits to snap a few ‘behind the scenes’ photos of life at the biggest downhill series in the country. Here are some of those photos, exclusively on hamiltonwheelers.
Some last minute checks pre-race at the ChainReactionCycles/Nukeproof tent.
Bikes being prepped in the Steve Peat Syndicate camp, all the tools you’ll ever need are here.
Some big names were racing at the weekend, including GT Factory Racing who had Rachel Atherton & Marc Beaumont racing. Marc smashed the Elite category.
The most serious riders had turbos in the pits, GT had this sick Zaskar & a susser set up for pre race warm ups.
The schedule for race day at the BDS. It was all delayed by an hour, but you get an idea of what happens on the big day.
Tyre choices can be difficult when the weather changed like it did this weekend, rain at practice & sun on race day made the ground sticky. Cutting down spiked tyres was the choice for a lot of riders, this guy had the job of doing it for GT.
The Dirt/Norco team wins the award for best team vehicle at the event.
Wicked weekend in all, I can’t wait for the next one, it was great to be involved in the team side of things & the guys all did super well. Check out the GoPro footage from top to bottom of the track with SouthernDownhill rider Guy Gibbs who came 7th in the Expert category.