#ardmoors

Ard Moors, ran by the same guys that run Ard Rock so you know two things; there are going to be awesome stages and there are gonna ‘ard transitions.

Those were my thoughts coming into the weekend, and surprise surprise i was correct. Saturday practice was greasy and the narrow start to stage one was sketchy to say the least. We then had the climb from hell from the bottom of stage 1 past the event village and a bit of a hike a bike to stage 5. Stage five was slightly better as it was wider but it was still greasy to say the least. 

The weather was amazing all weekend and by sunday midday when we got to the top of sage one for our race run it was dry and running sweeeet. I unfortunately got really held up a couple of times by slower riders due to the narrow nature of the trail so not their fault at all. I apologise to guy whos wheel i ran over i had no where to go i promise (he crashed in front of me). 

then the transition to stage 2 started with that horrendous road climb again although you was rewarded with some nice singletrack to the stage.

Stage two is easily one of the best trails ive ever ridden, flat out with rocks to pop over and compresions to pump into a short steep section with a couple of line choices and finally into a flat out greasy gully that was wide enough to let the bike get loose which really suited me and as such was my best result of the day. 

From this point on the transitions were nothing but brutal.

stage 3 was a lot of off camber grassy turns into a flat out finish that spat you out on to a natural wallride. short sweet and good fun.

stage 4 was a bit odd i struggled to find flow on the very narrow tight singletrack, it did have one very tight fun switchback on it though.

stage 5 was the old carlton bank dh track and was so much fun to ride. For once i felt like i had some legs left for the last stage and was flying down but due to the conditions changing from greasy to dusty i was carrying a lot more speed into corners than i thought i would and as such had a couple of little crashes.