Douglas F Shearer

SXC Round 1 - Laggan

Sunday saw the first round of the SXC Series at Laggan. A great course, consisting of a big climb and a stunning rocky descent, and the sun making an appearance, led to happy faces all round.

Iain Nimmo (Stirling Bike Club Wheels of Callander) won the masters (>30yo) race by only 36 seconds, with Greig Walker (Edinburgh Road Club) coming in second. Prasad Prasad (C21 Multisport) suffered a mechanical, and was unable to finish the masters race. Kenny Kently (Team Velo Ecosse) continued his domination of the veteran (>40yo) series from last year, with a convincing lead of several minutes.

For the second season I was competing in the Expert/Elite category (The fast boys). After my not so stunning performance at the BUSAs, I wasn’t really expecting too much from this race. The short course meant that we had been given six laps, meaning a race time of around two hours.

I started well, sitting in the second group for the first lap. I dropped the group on the second lap, with Calum Thomas (Pedal Power RT) joining me on the third lap. By the fourth lap Calum had made the jump to the wheel of Chris Murley (Sandy Wallace Cycles) up ahead. By the time I caught Chris going into the final lap, Calumn had made his moves and was now up ahead on his own. A last lap effort prevented Euan Pope (Rockhard Mountain Bike Club) and his teammate Barry Crumlish from catching me.

I finished in sixth place, something I am pretty happy about. The race was won by Ross Creber (Evans RT), with Any Barlow (The Bike Chain) in second, and James Fraser-Moodie (Pedal Power RT) in third.

Thanks to the organisers and all the supporters at the race, especially Iain and Janet Nimmo who made me laugh going into my last lap. Oh, and not frgetting my mum for the lift.

Full results are available in PDF format". The Next round is at Fort William, so should be another good race.

Pic courtesy SXC website.

BUSA photos

I’ve made a makeshift version of my gallery app for my BUSA pictures. The gallery is offline for a short while, it’ll be back soon.

Update

Snotrag@Descentworld had a (very) short report up for the XC Champs…

The 2006 BUSA ‘’hiking with un wieldy objects’’ race went off really successfully…

Describes it pretty well I thought!

Short BUSA Report

Could it be any colder? Two nights of camping in the sub-zero conditions were enough for me, I went to a Travel Lodge for the saturday night!

The XC Champs race was super tough, I was so knackered by the 4th lap. I was 16th, Geoff was 17th, and Gavin was 19th. We did win the team silver prize though! :o)

In the XC Sport race neither Adam or Tim finished (we think). Tim managed to bin it on the final jumps and bend his bars to the point that they were almost unrideable!

In the DH our very own legend, Adam Stanyer, lived up to expectations and cleared the road gap on his final race run. I was so busy shouting I forgot to take a picture, oops! He finished 7th overall, very nicely done mate!

Will have more proper results up for Edinburgh folks in a bit, and some pics too :-D

Directions From Edinburgh -> Eastridge BUSAs

Made up some directions for folks to use, as well as grabbing some maps etc. Available as a PDF (Better for printing).

More Shiny Bits

With the British University Sports Association (BUSA) mountainbike champs this weekend, it was time to break out a shiny new drivetrain for it. I got one of these beauties, a SRAM PG990 cassette. Not only does the red alloy ring carrier make it weigh less than an XTR, it is also super bling. Even more bling when my hub is clean (It is now!).

I was hoping to have a new RaceFace handlebar and stem for this weekend, but the handlebar has been delayed at the supplier, so looks like it’ll be the old stuff for the weekend. Should be good :o)