The journey from small guy to teenager...

[weeksy]

Bit of a tough and complicated day here really. This is likely to be a bit of a brain splurge of words and thoughts, so only continue if you like the random insanity.

Day started ok, bike was prepped before Malverns with new frame bearings etc, so it was good to go as it never got out of the van that weekend.

The boy came back a little disappointed after his first few runs at Bringewood as he's been working on corners with the coach. 

The consensus he seems to be leaning towards is that this frame is too big for him. It's a 495 reach and his R2 is 465. His Fuel he was working on corners with Katy is 465 as well. 

So we dropped his flip chip into Low which drops the reach to about 490 I think which made things very slightly better. When he was thinking back, his Fort William podium was on the R2 white bike, then since then he's not really been on his best form. Which coincides with moving to the bigger frame. He did win a fod race on the bigger frame, but that's a fod race not a national.

Sadly it seems he's been feeling this for a while, but never mentioned it, so the R2 frame isn't here with us, otherwise I'd have already had it built up and ready for riding. So he's going to have to ride this one and then Sunday night when back I'll build the white one again out of spares and the forks out of this one. It's only really forks we're missing or I could have built it as a bike before coming. I've been trying to get some forks but that's been challenging.

So we're not really expecting much from tomorrow but we're here so we'll put down a run or two and see where we end up.

Always slightly complicated 

[weeksy]

Bit of a practice crash yesterday meant we didn't make today's race. Nothing major but risk Vs reward made us decide not to race. Well, he decided, I left it to him and despite the fact it'll wipe out his overall Pearce hopes I completely agree it was better to pull the plug. 

So instead I came home and built this.

IMG-20250831-WA0002 by steveweeks59, on Flickr

[weeksy]

Lol at least he had a bit of fun, he's the 3rd rider,  

https://www.rootsandrain.com/videos/74364?ref=3vzd5U

[weeksy]

Top couple of days and nights over at fod. I spent some time looking at houses and areas as well as 4 hour riding on Mon and 3 hours riding today. Got a lot of yes and no thoughts/locations for upcoming house move.

As part of the plan the boy is now a British Cycling certified coach. Its only the first step on the coaching ladder, but some of the other bits he can't do till he turns 18. But he can now do coaching sessions, it also cemented some of his plans for his future.

still lots and lots of little background plans and things going on as usual.

[weeksy]

https://www.pinkbike.com/news/average-r ... commenttop

Average lads take on World Cup

[weeksy]

Postie has brought us presents this week. 



DMR/Melon Optics goggles and a DMR direct mount stem, we've been waiting for them to develop/build one as he's been running a Burgtec, but looks a bit 'wrong' with all the other DMR bits, so we're excited to get them on there  

He's got some new DB8 brakes for the trail bike and a spare set for the Session, so we'll sell on the Code RSCs this week.

[Count Steer]

https://www.pinkbike.com/news/average-r ... commenttop

Average lads take on World Cup

Even the rutty flat bits look

[millemille]

Top couple of days and nights over at fod. I spent some time looking at houses and areas as well as 4 hour riding on Mon and 3 hours riding today. Got a lot of yes and no thoughts/locations for upcoming house move.

As part of the plan the boy is now a British Cycling certified coach. Its only the first step on the coaching ladder, but some of the other bits he can't do till he turns 18. But he can now do coaching sessions, it also cemented some of his plans for his future.

still lots and lots of little background plans and things going on as usual.

Do you know anybody who lives in the area already?

I don't know if you remember foo and polished arrow (Neil and Debs) from the old pbmag forum days? They moved to the forest about 15 years ago and have done very well with their business, Cinderhill Farm and the sausage rolls you find at Gloucester and Tebay services,

They're friends and I'm sure would be more than happy to give their advice on life in the forest, happy to reach out to them and put you in touch with them.

[weeksy]

Top couple of days and nights over at fod. I spent some time looking at houses and areas as well as 4 hour riding on Mon and 3 hours riding today. Got a lot of yes and no thoughts/locations for upcoming house move.

As part of the plan the boy is now a British Cycling certified coach. Its only the first step on the coaching ladder, but some of the other bits he can't do till he turns 18. But he can now do coaching sessions, it also cemented some of his plans for his future.

still lots and lots of little background plans and things going on as usual.

Do you know anybody who lives in the area already?

I don't know if you remember foo and polished arrow (Neil and Debs) from the old pbmag forum days? They moved to the forest about 15 years ago and have done very well with their business, Cinderhill Farm and the sausage rolls you find at Gloucester and Tebay services,

They're friends and I'm sure would be more than happy to give their advice on life in the forest, happy to reach out to them and put you in touch with them.

Lots of people mate, including @Taff from here still. But yeah plenty of people i know and regularly chat to about the places

[weeksy]

Well it's new frame day today... Strictly speaking it's not new frame day for AGES as it's got to be made then built etc, there's a huge lead time on it but it'll be with us for race season next year.

His Session is coming up to 3 years old by then and we thought we'd try something 'different' in terms of a standard pivot and probably a Rimpact Chain Damper along with the TMD. He's done a day at Dyfi on it as a test day and was flying on it, enough that i think he'd be pretty much straight up to his pace within a few days and a bit of setup work.

Slightly different to this as it'll be running a Vivid Ultimate air rather than the coil.

[weeksy]

Went over to see RSR Bikeworks the other day as i wanted him to check we'd set the suspension correctly, it appears i'd mis-interpreted his settings so for the last race the rear compression was slightly out, but don't think it made that much difference to him or his riding. However i do now know how to set it correctly which is ace.

Bike checked, lubed, prepped, pressures all done and ready for tomorrow.

IMG_20250912_084045 by steveweeks59, on Flickr

Must admit, i prefer this one over the purple/blue one..

[weeksy]

3d printed titanium lugs.

[Noggin]

I have zero idea what they are for, but that's ded cool to get them three printed

(I do love the idea of that, not sure I have the brain to actually use one, but tis awesome )

[weeksy]

Well it seems we're back to the crazy.

An exchange of messages on WhatsApp this evening and he's entered in Llangollen this weekend for the Welsh Champs. Sadly he's not Welsh, well I'd argue he is, but based upon their criteria he's not. His grandparents are Welsh but it needs to be parents in this instance. 

But we'll head up for the weekend and put some runs down and see where it puts him. 

I was expecting to potentially not be out at all this weekend so it's kinda great, kinda bad lol. We've got an evening with the coach tomorrow to dial him and the bike in again, then early doors to Gollen on Sat. 

Bring on the fun. 

[weeksy]

I have zero idea what they are for, but that's ded cool to get them three printed

(I do love the idea of that, not sure I have the brain to actually use one, but tis awesome )

If you look at all the joints, where the tubing meets, all of them are these. They're 'lugs'
Titanium 3D printed each and every part.

They're hand built in north Wales and hand painted too
Its part of the appeal to me

[weeksy]

Well last night wasn't 100% definitive but honestly it was a huge step in what's hopefully the right direction for him. He was out with Katy and within the first 2 runs both he and her could see a massive difference in his riding. Whether that correlates to a difference in speed remains to be seen. But he was cornering with aggression, popping into and out of features and working his body and the bike way way more... 

But that was only half of it, the major thing was seeing him coming down to the van in a manual for 100m into a 20m rolling stoppie with a massive smile and laughing in his helmet. That's something i've not seen for a while in truth and something that's really been troubling me. 

He rode some tracks they'd used recently for FOD Thursday racing and could feel a big big difference in how he was hitting it and a few things he wouldn't pull for but did on this ride last night.

Sorting the bike and kit now for the weekend up at Llangollen, it's not a track he liked a few weeks ago, but i'm really hoping a large part of that is because of the bike issue. So we'll see tomorrow morning how he goes. 

[weeksy]

[weeksy]

Well we're at Llangollen.

Yesterday it rained from 7am till way after midnight. But he seemed happy with bike and track. He was running Krypto x 2 but his rear was pretty dead before we started as that was just practice.
After food I was going to swap to a better Krypto for today but weirdly we're short on 29 as I've mostly been buying 27.5s lately.

Bacon and coffee sorted me out this morning and I ended up finding a brand new Argotal which I've lobbed on.
Track weirdly seems a lot less muddy than yesterday and he's loving it.
It's a proper field of riders though so going to be a tough one either way. 2 WC racers in his cat today.

Practice until 11.30 then game time

[weeksy]

Track drying by the minute so we've gone Kryptotal for run 2.

He's sitting P7 after run 1 with Billy Pugh 7s ahead of him in P1. Not unhappy with that, but not a massive gap to P3 so got to give it the full crazy on run 2.

[Count Steer]

The suspense is starting to get to me.....!