#rideworks

Robyn's in the crib! It’s been a busy June, I was competing in the Woodhall Spa Triathlon over the 13th and 14th and then cruising up to Wales for the third round of the Welsh GravityEnduro Series. Yep, I'm Sporty Spice!

This has really turned out to be a fantastic collection of races so far with many fresh faces coming to the fore. It's a fantastic building block to the National UK Gravity Series and Charlie puts on a great show with some awesome stages!  So far we have ridden Bike Park Wales and Afan, now for the third round we're at the trail centre of Cwmcarn in South Wales. It’s enough to want to make you leave the beaches of the South West!

What was going to be particularly exciting were where each of the timed stages would come out live so you could tell how well you were doing throughout the race. I think there are pros and cons for this. You used to be able to out-psyche your opponents knowing you had done well or by keeping a positive demeanour despite knowing that you may not have had a great time on the previous stage.

Charlie was running a three stage race this time around incorporating parts of the Cafall trail and the Pedalhounds downhill with the final stage taking in the Y Mynydd (The Mountain) downhill trail. The climbs were more challenging here than in previous rounds, we are talking an hour transition and this is something I am more used to with Steve Parr's UK Gravity Series, it means your downhill skills are tested whilst being fatigued. I was literally hanging on to my Burgtec bars hurtling down the Y Mynydd! I will definitely be visiting here again for some more riding in the near future.

I had a great dusty day with no mishaps and took home the second place in Elite.  It’s great to see the women's field growing and how quickly we are all progressing! I will see you all at Grizedale next weekend.

The Scottish Downhill juggernaut rolled into Glencoe, a course I've done well on in the past and I was hungry for it.  Set off from home on Friday afternoon and arrived at dinner time, got everything sorted out and heading up for a track walk.  The course had hardly changed from previous events with the exception of resurfacing at the bottom while up top was boggy in places and I was hoping it would dry out before practice got underway. Saturday morning and I woke up in an oven with the sun's rays beating down on my tent, sorted my kit, signed on, fitted my number board and with a cooked breakfast in my stomach I headed up to the gondola for the first runs.

The first few were good, got all my lines dialled in and my FTW was on rails feeling perfectly at home on the rough terrain, it caused me no problems all day.  Towards the end of practice I came to the most challenging part of the track and although pushing myself I was keeping the bike at a controlled pace when all of a sudden my front wheel washed out underneath me and I flipped off the bike smashing my knee up off a sharp rock.  Although I was wearing knee pads I couldn’t stand and had to sit trackside for a while.