The journey from small guy to teenager...

[Noggin]

I'm afraid we're leaving Thurs as we have a race to get to in north Wales on Fri. We're getting home 10pm Thurs and out the door Fri morning. I've then got to strip and rebuild his bike for Sat morning practice with new bearing etc

Well damn my timing is utterly shit !! Sorry - I really will come and meet up sometime when you come over !!!

[weeksy]

Full strip down and rebuild today, forks, shock, linkages etc all apart, headset out and cleaned. 



Rear tyre dead so that's been replaced as well 

Set up and chilling at Llangollen now. Sunny, dry, warm.

Beer chilling in cold box. The world is ok 

[weeksy]

Well the weekend went, sort of OK i guess. Although as always it's relative.

We didn't have much in terms of maint/work on the bike after the rebuild on the Friday, so that was good, although an impromptu moment with some suspension oil and the lid falling off on Sunday did mean a change of pads, bleed and clean of the brakes just before his race run which added a little pressure as i then had to bed in his pads in the blazing sun before his race run.

Weird format for the weekend meant he seeded on Sunday just before lunch. He was feeling OK with the world but in truth he's having a few issues at the moment holding/getting cornering speed, so he wasn't exactly flowing with confidence. He went 8s quicker than his best practice but that gave him P17 in seeding.
It's easy to be disappointed in P17 but the reality is, there's incredibly fast full on pro racers in there he's playing with, World Cup racers, the best of the National paddock, if you think back to Jan, then inside the Top20 was the year goal.

Race run the track was more and more blown out as his Cat goes out almost last, so the holes grew and grew. He made a mistake on one long right hander which ran him off the track and cost him 2-3s but he put in a time basically the same as his seeding and that put him in P16 for the weekends race.
I can't see he was happy with that, i'd be lying if i did.... but it's not a complete disaster that's for sure. We had a few deep and meaningfuls on the way home and he's deffo feeling the pressure at the moment, little things like the National Jersey possibilities, the overall ranking points and just the day to day pressure to perform.
I think there's potentially a bit of burn-out after 2 weeks of full on competition at the Euros and then day in day out in Morzine, maybe we should have chilled a little more... Throw in the 22 hours of driving over a 45 hour period and it's all stacking up on him (and me if truth be told)

So we have a little bit of a chill time this week i think, along with the weekend at the Malverns with DMR.
https://malvernsclassic.com/

DMR have entered him in some races, but nothing that's 'serious' in the usual way, so i'm hoping the weekend with give him some unwind time and relaxing time. Before we then head off to the next race the weekend after.

As always, i'm pretty fried from another load of driving (3000 miles in 3 weeks, but mostly compressed in 5 days of that lol) and then sleeping in a field and sorting bikes/racer... So i've got a bit of a chilled one this week. Although i do need to strip his bike and get new bearings all round in there to get it 100% as well as hopefully getting his forks and shock off to TF Tuned to get them serviced. Then i need to sort my bike after the Morzine dust/dirt/work.

We'll get there though, a few evenings spent we'll be golden

[weeksy]

Date with a bearing press kit and some cleaning products today
IMG_20250818_105341 by steveweeks59, on Flickr

IMG_20250818_110909 by steveweeks59, on Flickr

IMG_20250818_112700 by steveweeks59, on Flickr

[weeksy]

Next up was to whip the forks and shock out and they're off to TFTuned later today.

IMG_20250818_165637 by steveweeks59, on Flickr

Hopefully after that we're back to being good to roll.

The weekend though i don't think we'll need it, it's Malverns Classic with DMR as our hosts, the boy is doing everything from the lake ride to 4X and Dual Slalom, as well as the DH of course. We've never been to Malverns before but DMR asked us to go, so heck, why not, it's a weekend out
It's not like we're not used to sleeping in a field or two.
I'm looking forward to and using it as a bit of a weekend to relax and chill, maybe a beer/pizza.
I was planning on doing the Enduro race, but while we were away i missed the entry so i'm not sure what i'll do about that now.

[weeksy]

If you still fancy submitting, here's a link that may now work

https://ourmedia.jotform.com/251942470488970

[weeksy]

Awesome job by the lovely people at TFTuned who snuck his shock/fork in at super short notice and got it serviced and back to me.

So we're all good with new frame bearings, freshly serviced bouncers and a new rear Reserve rim going on today. 

This weekend is only Malverns, so we 100% don't NEED the DH bike for it, but he loves riding the DH way way more than anything else, so it wouldn't shock me if he's riding it even on the easiest DH course on the planet lol.

I'm hoping he can get some time to work on a few bits in his riding that he's struggling with at the moment, it's a pretty important time in his riding right now and i'd love it to all come together as it did a few months back, but for some reason he's not quite 100% with a few bits of it.

[weeksy]

Weekend at Malverns.

Race day yesterday in the Dual Slalom and for some reason it was the National Champs, the boy ended up coming away with the jersey

IMG-20250822-WA0000 by steveweeks59, on Flickr

[Count Steer]

Yay!

[weeksy]

Well that was insane!

It was the Lake Ride, which is run by Malverns for all the pros. You ride across a floaty narrow thing over a lake. There were pros like Preston Williams, Jono Jones, Ben Deakin, Katy Curd of course.
The commentator was "here's James Weeks the DMR 4X superstar" lol we were laughing as he's never ridden a 4X bike or track. But the daft lad was one of only 6 to make it out of 20.
So he made it to finals which was a train, one after another.

Sadly he binned it on that one but it was a brilliant brilliant effort. Awesome.

He's made massive strides this weekend as a person and his whole presence, mixing with loads of people

[weeksy]

This was the return leg after making it over once



Finals train!

[weeksy]

Ghetto shower.






Even funnier was Preston Williams as his GF Kerenza seemed to be enjoying it WAY too much 

Last video. Finals run to win the jersey 

[weeksy]

p5pb28645235 by steveweeks59, on Flickr

[Count Steer]

The whole weekend looks like a load of fun. Must be to do something like that with some of the pressure off.

Did you give him a stern word about pitching the bike into the lake?

[weeksy]

Wasn't our bike

[weeksy]

We spent the day at FoD with the coach yesterday, it was massively interesting to hear/see the input, thoughts, ideas put about by her. The boy has just seemed to have lost a little edge and within the 4 hours they spent out there his riding was picked apart in really really minor levels of detail and put back together. Nothing was massively wrong it was a question of a few inches of movement here, a few inches higher/lower/ of certain things in a few places, a dip of a shoulder, a movement of a head, etc etc.. 

Hopefully it all put him back in a better place again and will let him move forward with his riding and get back his edge again... Time will tell but there's plenty to work on for him. 

THe weekend brings racing again, it's the Pearce Cycles series at Bringewood this weekend. There's not a lot between the top 3 in the overall and it's tight as heck going into this round. They'll all need to be on form and on their A game to keep in the running. It's a track all of the main contenders know pretty well, so all things should be pretty equal out there.

The weather isn't exactly looking super friendly though so may need a few tyre thoughts from us throughout the weekend.

[weeksy]

It's Les Gets World Cup weekend and as you'll have guessed we never got the call to go...

Screenshot_2025-08-28-12-51-33-537_com.instagram.android by steveweeks59, on Flickr

Part of me isn't as gutted at that as i should be

[edulord]

We spent the day at FoD with the coach yesterday, it was massively interesting to hear/see the input, thoughts, ideas put about by her. The boy has just seemed to have lost a little edge and within the 4 hours they spent out there his riding was picked apart in really really minor levels of detail and put back together. Nothing was massively wrong it was a question of a few inches of movement here, a few inches higher/lower/ of certain things in a few places, a dip of a shoulder, a movement of a head, etc etc.. 

Hopefully it all put him back in a better place again and will let him move forward with his riding and get back his edge again... Time will tell but there's plenty to work on for him. 

THe weekend brings racing again, it's the Pearce Cycles series at Bringewood this weekend. There's not a lot between the top 3 in the overall and it's tight as heck going into this round. They'll all need to be on form and on their A game to keep in the running. It's a track all of the main contenders know pretty well, so all things should be pretty equal out there.

The weather isn't exactly looking super friendly though so may need a few tyre thoughts from us throughout the weekend.

Bringewood’s always a proper test, especially if the weather turns. Tyre choice could make or break this one, hope you’ve got a couple of sets ready to swap out.

[weeksy]

We spent the day at FoD with the coach yesterday, it was massively interesting to hear/see the input, thoughts, ideas put about by her. The boy has just seemed to have lost a little edge and within the 4 hours they spent out there his riding was picked apart in really really minor levels of detail and put back together. Nothing was massively wrong it was a question of a few inches of movement here, a few inches higher/lower/ of certain things in a few places, a dip of a shoulder, a movement of a head, etc etc.. 

Hopefully it all put him back in a better place again and will let him move forward with his riding and get back his edge again... Time will tell but there's plenty to work on for him. 

THe weekend brings racing again, it's the Pearce Cycles series at Bringewood this weekend. There's not a lot between the top 3 in the overall and it's tight as heck going into this round. They'll all need to be on form and on their A game to keep in the running. It's a track all of the main contenders know pretty well, so all things should be pretty equal out there.

The weather isn't exactly looking super friendly though so may need a few tyre thoughts from us throughout the weekend.

Bringewood’s always a proper test, especially if the weather turns. Tyre choice could make or break this one, hope you’ve got a couple of sets ready to swap out.

LOL we've got that well covered, from Kryptotal to Argotal, then a Hydrotal and the compressor. We've got all bit and options well covered.
We've got 29 rears, 27.5 rears, various fronts

Well, hopefully.

[weeksy]

Was out with the boy yesterday riding and i commented something i've thought about a bit lately as i often jump on his bike to test various little things, but he runs his seat really low, for a tall skinny lad he runs it about 3" lower than me. 

"oh it gets in the way when riding down so i run it lower"

"ummmm so you need a longer dropper then?"

"yes please"

LOL why this never came up before i have no clue.. It's a 34.9 so i need to look into that for him.

We've got 2 sets of SRAM DB8s arriving as well, one for his Fuel and one for his spares for the Session. Although we may run them with Maven levers for the RSC adjustment. The Code RSC are getting old now and a bit flakey, i snapped off a bleeding edge port in one of the calipers on a set the other day which necessitated the first set, but then he tried mine and liked them, so i've got another set on the way. However this is next week, lets get this weekends racing out of the way first and then we'll sort everything else