BMBS round 4, Crow Hill

Still on crutches after May's knee surgery, I made my way to the New Forest for round 4 of the 2009 BMBS race series. Here's the resulting video.

2009 British Mountain Bike race series round 4 from Eldrik on Vimeo.

BMBS round 3, Margam Park

Another BMBS race, another day spent hobbling around on crutches, which is a shame as I wasn't physically able to get to the most interesting sections of the course to take any footage.

2009 British Mountain Bike race series round 3 from Eldrik on Vimeo.

So it turns out that the fairly innocent football tackle a few weeks ago ripped a surprisingly large section of cartilage from the bottom of my thigh bone, at the outside of the knee.

I underwent surgery on it at the same hospital where I had my fractured scaphoid in my wrist operated upon, and am now recovering on crutches, icing and elevating the knee etc. The Chelsea and Westminster hospital really is an excellent advert for the National Health Service.

The good news is that the section ripped off could have been in a worse place, and that hopefully I can cycle again at some point. The bad news is that if new cartilage grows, it will only be 50% as good as the old section, and the risk of arthritis is much higher. I can't do impact sports from now on either, so no more football or tennis, sadly.

Despite the crutches, I made it up to Dalby for round 2 of the British Mountain Bike race series. The new course, built as part of a bid to host a UCI World Cup race in 2010, was a big change from many NPS courses of the past, and reminded me a lot of Fort William with the mini rock gardens and boardwalk sections. It was a proper technical XC course, and caught a few riders out who had not pre-ridden it!

2009 British Mountain Bike race series round 2 from Eldrik on Vimeo.

As I feared, I won't be able to race Mountain Mayhem, nor probably SITS, but should still be at both races with my team to take photos and video and sample the atmosphere, which is some consolation.

Injured again and video

So after a mere month or two of riding after last year's broken scaphoid, in which I established my fitness was shot to pieces, I'm now injured again, courtesy of football last week. One kick to the inside of my knee, on a leg with all my weight on it, and the knee swelled up like a balloon.

I couldn't walk on it, nor bend it, and even a combined X ray, CT scan and A&E check-up couldn't definitely establish what's wrong, although they suspect I've broken some bone off somewhere which is now floating around. I've now got a brace on it plus crutches, and had an MRI scan last night, but I don't find out the results for 2 weeks yet.

I suspect surgey may be needed, and hence am seriously doubtful I will be able to race Mountain Mayhem, which is a real shame, but I'm trying to be hopeful regarding an 100% recovery, however long it takes.

Anyway, on a more positive note, after various camcorder problems before the event, I made it to round 1 of the British Mountain Bike race series at Sherwood Pines in early April. I need to work on my camera skills, and on my video editing technique, but the initial outcome seems an improvement on last year's digital camera/Windows Movie Maker/YouTube approach. The video's up as below:


2009 British Mountain Bike race series round 1 from Eldrik on Vimeo.

Knee permitting, I'm looking forward to round 2's racing, and hope to produce some better video again from that weekend.

It's round 2 of the UCI MTB World Cup this weekend, but there are very few British riders taking part, which initially seemed a shame. Having looked into it in a bit more detail, however, it seems that the focus on chasing UCI points (to ensure we qualify some places at the 2012 Olympics) will be at 'easier' UCI C1 and C2 ranked events in the UK and Europe, not at World Cups. Sharon Laws, Annie Last and Lily Matthews have been clocking up the miles in recent weeks, and the focus for 2009 seems to be on these 3 riders getting the UCI points needed, at least as far as our Elite Women go. There's still a huge gap to close up to even get 1 place for 2012 for the Elite Women, so let's hope Sharon, Annie, Lily and everyone else race well....

A long time away from biking

Another few months have passed so here's a quick update.

I hope at some point to cover 2008 in a bit more detail, including Mountain Mayhem, Sleepless In The Saddle, more of the 2008 NPS XC series and other topics, but for now I'm trying to look forwards and enjoy after an injury hit 2008.

I was in Shropshire for round 4 of the 2008 NPS at Eastridge, taking photos etc. as usual for http://www.xcracer.com and was riding the race course to find some good viewing spots. The local conditions were amongst the most mixed I've seen for an XC event, with rocks, roots and mud all together for a change, plus a number of fallen trees which had been incorporated into the lap.

To cut a long story short, I ran out of a combination of riding skill, front wheel grip and arm strength over one of the fallen trees/logs and went over the handlebars, winding myself badly and banging my wrist. I was in no fit state to continue riding the course so walked the remainder, taking a few photos en route, and went to get checked out by the Extreme Medics doctors, who diagnosed a sprained wrist and bruised ribs.

Still in a bit of pain 10 days later, I went to A&E to get the wrist looked at in more detail, and it turned out I had actually fractured the scaphoid bone in my left (dominant) hand. That destroyed my plans to race Dusk 'til Dawn, and also meant surgery to insert a titanium pin into the bone to improve the chances of successful healing.

24 weeks after I broke it,the bone has healed but I'm still undergoing physiotherapy to strengthen the wrist, and am still not allowed to ride, which is incredibly frustrating. Still, in the hope I make a full recovery, I'm already thinking of Mountain Mayhem and SITS, plus may race at Wild Boar 24 too.

In the meantime, I've been experimenting a little with video hosting sites, and have decided that Vimeo is a better option than YouTube, as although it doesn't get the same number of hits, the resulting video quality is far higher and less grainy.

I re-used my original footage from the 2007 NPS events at Margam and Sherwood Pines to produce some videos for the 2009 British Mountain Bike XC series, and uploaded them to Vimeo. I think they work quite well. See more at http://www.britishxc.com

Finally, another update

Well, it's been a few months and quite a bit has happened since I last posted, but more of that in other posts.

Before that, I eventually managed to upload my footage from Fort William this year, or at least the women's XC anyway.



It's a real shame that the UCI have dropped XC from Fort William for next year, apparently because the lap time was 'too long'. I'll not be working up there as a marshall next year as a result, having been there from 2005-2008, but may make trip to Houffalize or Offenburg instead, I hope.

Gary Fisher Superfly 29er review and general updates

First of all, apologies to anyone out there reading this for my lack of updates. I'd like to say I've been spending time doing something worthwhile but I've been merely busy.

Anyway, now that's out of the way, I'm writing this with a new slight injury to my right knee which I tweaked while running around a few weeks ago. I went to see a new physiotherapist today, and there's good news and bad news. The good news is that I can still race at Mountain Mayhem in 3 weeks' time, which is a huge relief. The bad news is my body core stability is not great, and as I knew already, my hamstrings, hip flexors etc. are generally pretty tight. My Illio-Tibial Band is also tight, which is what's pulling on my right knee, so I've got various exercises and a large inflatable ball to work on. It's good to know that it can be fixed though :)

In preparation for Mayhem, injured or not, I finally bought the Hope Vision Single LED light I've been after for ages. I've only been out using it once, but I'm really happy so far. It's cable-free, takes 4 AA batteries, only weighs around 240g wih batteries, and produces more light than my old 10W halogen system. Well, at least I think so. Once I've taken some comparison photos, I'll upload them here.

A few weeks ago, I made the journey up to Drumlanrig in south west Scotland for round 2 of the 2008 British National Points Series. I don't drive, so was reliant upon public transport, couldn't take the bike for various reasons, and there were rail engineering works, but it all worked out perfectly. I even managed to get a local bus from Dumfries to Thornhill and then walked the 4 miles or so to Drumlanrig Castle itself. £43.50 in total for a return journey from south west London to Scotland seems good value.

While I was there, covering the racing for the XCRacer website, the kind guys at Trek lent me a 2008 Gary Fisher Superfly carbon 29er to try, which meant I could ride the course. I must admit, I wasn't a great fan of 29ers at this point, although I had never ridden one, as I don't like them from an aesthetic point of view. Nevertheless, I tried my best to be open-minded once on board the £2500 machine, which came with X0 trigger shifters and rear mech, Avid Juicy Ultimate brakes, carbon Bontrager cranks, 32mm stanchion Fox forks and wide flat bars but no bar ends. The Superfly has the Genesis 2.0 geometry, which means a shorter top tube combined with a fork which is further offset away from the headtube, to keep the overall bike long enough. The 19" Fisher frame I tried still felt far less stretched out than my 18.5" Inbred.

Over the regular rocks and roots of the Drumlanrig course, the large wheels rolled really well. Medium and fast corners were a revelation, as a combination of the stiff forks (compared to my 30mm Marzocchis) and the large level of grip afforded by the contact area of the tyres meant the bike could be really cranked over and it would stick beautifully to whatever line you chose. Downhill, the wide bars, high grip levels and short top tube made it easy to attack and left a big grin on my face.

The downside of the short top tube, wide bars and no bar ends was uphill however. The bike felt really sluggish as soon as the terrain went up, and even a stiff carbon frame and low overall weight didn't seem to help. Every climb left me wanting to be back on my (probably heavier) 26" wheeled Inbred. The other issue was slow speed cornering, where turning the Superfly felt like trying to turn a supertanker, it was such hard work. The long stem fitted (necessary with the short top tube) combined with the size of the wheels meant every tight bend became hard work. I'm not sure how Fisher could rectify this, as a shorter stem would leave the overall riding position even less stretched out than at present. I suppose narrower bars and bar ends could make some difference for climbing perhaps.

Overall, I'm much more of a convert to 29ers than I was before riding the Superfly, but I certainly won't be buying one soon, and Fisher maybe have some work to do so that the bike climbs as well as it descends.