Apologies, as always the weekend is busy.... not always busy, but mostly busy.
We rocked up at 8am on Sat after Greggs on the way to get us going, it was straight out into practice pretty much. First time there for him/us and he was obviously a little cautious on the way down for run 1 but he came down happy which was to continue throughout the day. He seemed to be riding well and his practice times were decent, the bike was running nicely and the boy came down with "best track of the year, it's awesome"
This obviously is something we've not really seen for a fair while now but it was very much welcome to see and hear.
He's a funny creature at times and he was riding in his Freeride type jersey which apparently made him feel a bit more 'freeride' lol.. So he asked if it was OK to seed in that jersey, which of course it is so he did.
As always the level at Nationals is insanely high, there's 5 of the lads there who are current/recent World Cup racers, so there's no free passes. Anyone who's not at WCs aspires to be of course.
IMG-20250928-WA0002 by
Steve Weeks, on Flickr
Seeding run was clean and nice, the time was a 2min 47 which put him in at P16 in the end. He's finished twice in P16 at Nationals so i guess that's about right. But in truth, 2-3 weeks ago on the bigger Session i don't think he'd have put it in 16th. But we ended the day happy with that, feeling he's got a little bit of speed and form back. It was then onto the Premier inn via a brewery/smokehouse and we were stuffed full of food. We very very rarely do the hotel thing but in truth after 20+ weekends in a tent, i kinda needed it... Especially with the monsoonal rain that came overnight.
Sunday brought bule skies, but with a big hill it took a little time for the sun to come over and start drying it, so the bikes were coming down muddy and some were changing to more mud-based rubber.
I'd fitted a brand new pair of Kryptotals before the race and he was loving it, so i left him on them.
Race was late in the afternoon and thanks to some muppets taking advantage of things on their Ebikes i wasn't allowed to Ebike up pre-race to give him a coat/handwarmers etc as some of us had on Sat. (i also do the jacket thing for other riders, not just mine).
Before he went out i was fixing my 3rd set of brakes for the weekend, but happily none were ours... but i like helping and had nothing to do for the time, so a bit of lunch and some brake bleeding done.
IMG-20250928-WA0003 by
Steve Weeks, on Flickr
Race runs started, the track had dried plenty but as always you've then got to take advantage of that. Due to the Juniors going out late it's nearly 4 hours from your last practice until race runs so the tracks can change a lot with 250 riders and drying tracks.
A lad we know Billy had crashed in seeding and came down to set a blistering time about half way through the bunch, the Harry who's fast followed him a few riders later with a fast time.
The boy came down in P3 at the time but with 15 riders to go he could still be P18... but his time was 5s quicker than yesterdays seeding so we were more than happy... He'd put on a great time.
As riders came down he fell down the list into P10 which is where he finished. P10 is his 2nd best Nationals performance so in truth we're ecstatic with that result... Awesome job.
He ended up P8 in the 'overall' championship which was way above where he'd thought for 2025 but at times depending on who won today and top 10 riders, he could have ended up P5.... or actually P11 lol. So we'll take P8
But the great news for us is that he's enjoying riding, enjoying the bike and just really happy with everything at the moment. We'll take that all day
revsresults by
Steve Weeks, on Flickr
