The journey from small guy to teenager...

[Mr Moofo]

^ loks good.

What colour spokey dokeys will he be running?

[weeksy]

All of them

[Mr Moofo]

All of them

Cool - look forward to the Insta

[weeksy]

All jobs now done. It’s ready to roll

[Count Steer]

Look forward to the test ride report.

Where are you taking it?

[weeksy]

It’ll be out tomorrow either at Tirpentwys or FoD depending on weather. Couple of tiny things to do on it today and a quick test ride. Maybe some pictures

[weeksy]

Untitled by Steve Weeks, on Flickr

Untitled by Steve Weeks, on Flickr

[Taff]

very nice

[weeksy]

[weeksy]

The bike got it's debut at Tirpentwys yesterday and things went well and pretty much. Couple of minor niggles with seatpost height, shifter position for the gears and the rear needing a better bleed, but all those were sorted last night
Overall due to him having mostly been off the bike for 5 weeks now it was as much as shakedown for him as it was for the bike, so he wasn't looking for outright pace, just getting back to going fast, being a bit loose and riding again.
A mate was there coaching someone and has taken some vids but they're not up on Insta yet. But apparently he looked good on it.

Due to the conditions (very wet) and his not riding, we didn't do much more than just lap lap lap. We'll leave the setup and adjustments for another time. He reckons it's more stable than the Session, but he's not brilliant at times in terms of feel, he's not what we'd call in motorbikes a Development Rider.

[Count Steer]

Good to hear he's 'back in the saddle' again.

[weeksy]

Ride 2 brought a failure, but wasn't the Atherton as such, it was the jockey wheel in the rear mech which was pretty sticky. So that was whipped out and a new jockey wheel installed. The boy was quickly happy again, but with the handling being 'all over the place' we've got some work to do.
Some of that will be me and him but mostly it'll be him and RSR Bikeworks using telemetry and electronic wizardry to get the bike dialled in on the 29th of this month. We were going to wait a couple of weeks, but Rich has an open date and the boy complaining has pushed that idea forward a little bit.

[weeksy]

Well it's been a year that's for sure. He spent most of the year at the top of the British Rankings, which was honestly amazing, that only changed with the Euro races being added. In the overall titles he slipped down slightly due to injuries at one stage which made him miss 2-3 important point scoring races.

Highs of the year being P2 in the Nationals at Fort William.
randr-photo-15559659-6000px-by-jack-k-photography by Steve Weeks, on Flickr

National Champion up at Malverns in Dual Slalom
IMG-20250822-WA0000 by Steve Weeks, on Flickr

Signing as a full-time rider for the DMR Crew.
Untitled by Steve Weeks, on Flickr

I guess the final and arguably most important one is becoming a British Cycling Coach as that will give him a purpose, an income of course and a career within MTB going forward.

In terms of 2026, it's now straight into the work, the training and the pushing for speed.
Monday was spent up at Forest of Dean with Rich at RSR Bikeworks.
https://www.rsrbikeworks.co.uk/

What they both found was that the balance of the bike was completely wrong, the rear was set too slow (which is interesting as i sped it up for the day at Antur) along with too low pressure in the front and the rear. I found this interesting as he hasn't really grown since the last setup, so just shows how different the kinematics of the Trek and Atherton differ. The progression curves between the 2 bikes were quite different. But that's all done now and yesterday he hit BPW and had fun, apart from a minor lie down which didn't hurt him but hurt my wallet as he killed his rear mech. Bit of a shame but not a lot i can do about that. But the Atherton is riding well apparently and he's happy.

At this stage due to the unknown nature of things we honestly have no clue where or what 2026 will or won't bring. We will be trying our best though to get where we want to be and see where that takes us... But who honestly knows whether that's possible.

There's an early season race at Forest of Dean on the w/e 25th Jan which i'd like him to enter, just to get back in between the tape and racing for the first time on the Atherton. But he's more inclined for a day 'away' than a day on FoD racing, so i'm not sure where we'll be yet.

One thing is for sure, this adventure isn't over yet.

[weeksy]

Plenty of riding, playing and testing going on this early in the year. With the setup done on the bouncers he's hitting the trails hard at the moment.

Sat as you may have seen on Instagram was on the very snowy side of things.. Nearly crashed the van more than once trying to navigate the uplift.. ! But the day was survived and the boy and Hattie had an absolute blast out there.
Sun we had a rainy icy day at Cwmcarn on the pedals, not exactly the ideal comeback ride from man-flu for me, but good cardio time and good riding time for him

He's currently very focused on his goals and how he's going to get to them, trying different thoughts, ideas etc..

We've got an interesting one as of last night. There's a 100% race at FoD in a few weeks. We'd decided not to bother doing it as there's really not much use with the levels of competition he'd find there. But when i was looking last night Seb, one of the GB team from last year and arguably the 2nd fastest junior maybe even #1 for this year was entered. This changes the dynamics a little, so we may end up playing there on the 25th, i think he's waiting for some wisdom from the guru.

We're looking forward to this year though that's for sure

[weeksy]

Well that changed after sitting down and chatting about it all

fuelex8xt_23_36348_a_primary by Steve Weeks, on Flickr

https://www.trekbikes.com/gb/en_GB/bike ... 6/p/36348/

Just ordered up one of these... It made sense to go a little heavier but have more bounce, better bounce and a little stronger in terms of frame etc.

It's a 64.5deg head angle and he's gone for ML rather than L due to the extended reach on the Gen6, this one is 470mm reach which is the same as a Gen5 Large and 470 is about industry standard in Large.

We've now owned this a year and whilst it gets used less than the DH bike it still gets a fair few decent run a year. It's honestly been spot on over the year we've owned it and i've barely touched it. We put in a longer dropper post for him to give him better clearance for tech, but other than that and a pair of tyres, it's running how it came out of the shop. Not touched the bearings, pivots etc apart from a clean/grease every now and again.
Oh, i have put a pair of 160 Lyriks in his one, but that was due to wonky Fox bushings as much as anything else. So not really the bikes fault, but Fox's.

There's thoughts for one of us to end up with an Atherton trail bike instead of one of our Fuels... but that's a little while away yet.

[weeksy]

So this is how 2026 potentially stack up at the moment.

March 15 B1ke Windhill
April 12 B1ke Rogate
April 18-19 Rhyd-Y-Felin
May 01-03 South Korea WC
May 9-10 Antur Stiniog
May 15-17 Fort William IXS (Pearce Cycles) Opens March 17th
May 28-31 Loudenville WC
June 13-14 Pearce Cycles
June 19-21 Lenzerheide WC
June 27-28 Glencoe
July 03-05 La Thuile WC
July 08-12 Pal Arinsal WC
July 18-19 Revs National Champs.
Aug 8-9 Llangollen
Aug 14-16 Les Gets WC
Aug 29-30 Pearce Cycles
Sept 12-13 Fort William
Sept 19-20 Pearce
Sept 25-27 Whistler WC
Oct 02-04 Lake Placid WC

Obviously i've optimistically added in World Cup entries, how viable that is though we simply don't know yet. Either way, i'm not convinced we could do ALL of them anyway due to finances, that seems somewhat insane. There's exams for his A-Levels to consider early on in the year as well but there's only the Fort William IXS that causes a massive conflict there.
The UK Nationals were opened up this week and we've entered all of those, so we'll be getting plenty of driving, riding and fun this year for sure.

The boy is working and training hard, riding hard, but it's that time of year where you simply have no clue whether he's going fast or slow, faster or slower than last year, who knows, it's all just guesswork. There's a race in a few weeks at FoD and half of me wants him to enter it so we can see how he's going, but half of me knows he's better off out somewhere else playing on techier terrain, it's a real tricky one at times.

His new 2026 kit is nearing completion, the design honestly looks FAB !!!!

[Taff]

Damn, that's not just busy, July aug and sept look like a full time job just traveling to those tracks. But it's a plan for a year of adventure that's for sure.

Can't wait to see how it all pans out

[weeksy]

Damn, that's not just busy, July aug and sept look like a full time job just traveling to those tracks. But it's a plan for a year of adventure that's for sure.

Can't wait to see how it all pans out

There's things that may get taken out depending on selection (or not).... It's funny but even though i have the list, at the moment i'm not really giving it a lot of thought in terms of logistics, only the events that i'm 100% about and need to plan in more depth for. The rest of them, just kinda pass me by until i need to put something in place for them in terms of getting there, getting somewhere to sleep etc... Until we know more, i just kinda ignore it.
It's hardest not knowing at the moment as it makes the planning side of things really complex.

[weeksy]

SO today was a good day and a bad day LOL.

British Cycling released the application for World Cup entries. So his application has now gone in.
End date for application is 15th March so it'll be a while before we hear anything.
That is of course the good side...

The bad side is that i still have no clue what's happening with my job, meaning i have absolutely no idea how we're going to afford this if he gets any/some of the races.
Especially with Race 1 being South Korea which is obviously sodding miles away and going to be an expensive one... But... well, this is what we do and what we've been working the last 5+ years for.
I don't think any of our sponsors would be able/upfor financial assistance and in truth they've done amazingly over the past years that i'd feel pretty harsh asking them

So we'll see first what we get or don't get and after that, worry about how we're affording it

[Nordboy]

SO today was a good day and a bad day LOL.

British Cycling released the application for World Cup entries. So his application has now gone in.
End date for application is 15th March so it'll be a while before we hear anything.
That is of course the good side...

The bad side is that i still have no clue what's happening with my job, meaning i have absolutely no idea how we're going to afford this if he gets any/some of the races.
Especially with Race 1 being South Korea which is obviously sodding miles away and going to be an expensive one... But... well, this is what we do and what we've been working the last 5+ years for.
I don't think any of our sponsors would be able/upfor financial assistance and in truth they've done amazingly over the past years that i'd feel pretty harsh asking them

So we'll see first what we get or don't get and after that, worry about how we're affording it

Does Lottery funding assist with this sort of stuff? I have no idea, just a though that popped into my head, probably bollocks like all the other thoughts mind you