Douglas F Shearer

BMBS 2011 Round 2 - Dalby Forest

I’m a big fan of the course at Dalby. If they made the descents actually technical rather than just scary-looking and bumpy, I’d be even more keen. Again the course followed the World Cup course, but with some shortening near the beginning of the lap, and missing out the pointless BMX track near the end. I believe it is going to get this way for the World Cup in May, in order to come under the UCI 6 km course length limit (Dalby just makes this, being 5.9 km).

I was in the third row for the start, after my poor performance at Sherwood Pines a few weeks before. The rider directly in front of me missed his pedal, and stopped dead, so the entire field went past on the line. With some elbows out I managed to get back into the top 30.

Down the first little descent a cheeky inside line saw me overtake Nick Evans (see Sherwood Pines post). Up the first climb I took another couple of riders, then took about 7-8 riders on the grassy section back past the feed zone. There’s a 8ft high steep rocky slab you ride up early on in the race, if you hit it with speed off the forestry road you get some air at the top. Some numpty cut up a group of riders in front of me, then failed to make it over the top, so it was a case of running up this for me due to the knot of riders. The climb out of Worry Gill (the first time) saw me make a few more places on the super-steep climb, then a surge at the top of the Medusa’s Drop climb saw me take another few riders.

I settled down after this, though my second lap was the fastest just because there was no-one in the way. I cleaned the rocky steps out of Worry Gill (on the second time, going back to the arena) only on the third lap, every other time people running got in the way. Seriously, if you can’t ride it, take the chicken route. Your technical inferiority should not put me off when there are alternatives available.

A few little battles later on in the race saw me on my own for the last lap, and I can in 8th, around 5 minutes down on the winner. Super happy with this result, definitely a sign that things are back on track. A lot of it is the course, it’s so easy to get my head in gear when the course is challenging and I know there is more than just pure horsepower at play.

This was the second (third if you include the Pentlands Trailquest) outing for my 2011 race bike, the Rocky Mountain Element RSL. On this course it was the business (Geoff Kabush won the senior race on a very similarily specced one), light and well-behaved enough for the climbs, and able to swallow up anything on the descents and flat sections. I’ll have a full post on this soon.

Full results courtesy of TimeLaps.

BMBS XC 2009 Round 2 - Dalby Forest

The second round of the BMBS was held at Dalby Forest, a venue that shall host the first round of the 2010 World Cup. After my top 10 result at the first round, I was hoping to have a similarly good result. Dalby forest is an off place to get to, the last quarter of the journey takes half the time, due to a combination of rural roads and a massively long forest drive to finish.

The course was a good one, steep climbs, with similarly steep descents. Much was made of the steep drop at Worry Gill, with queues of people watching as I rode down it without even looking. Some people even went home on the Saturday, so unsettled by the course were they.

A fast start was required to make sure that there wasn’t many riders holding me up in the singletrack. This didn’t all go to plan, as starting from the right side of the front row, with a long left hander right of the start line, meant I got into the first section in about tenth. Patience was the key at this point, as I slowly worked through the riders over the first few sections. This wasn’t enough though, as several hesitant riders allowed the first few riders to get away while i was stuck behind. This is nicely evidenced on Vimeo starting at 9:54. The top three can also be seen running away in this video as several riders wuss out on the drop in front of me.

Going into the last lap I heard the announcer say I was in 5th, so I put the hammer down for the last lap. About 3/4 of the way round I could see the rider in fourth place ahead of me. I caught and passed him on the last steep climb, he was unable to respond to the pace I was setting. So I finished in fourth place, definitely an improvement on the last round.

Results can be seen over at Timelaps.