Mini Downhill

On Sunday I had my first race of 2014 and unsurprisingly it was a wash out to say the least. I travelled to The Forest of Dean to race the second round of the Mini Downhill. On Thursday morning I was very please that Sheepskull had been chosen for this epic race. Me and Sheepskull have some past vengeance that I needed to change. Sheepskull was my first ever track I raced on back in 2011 and to say the least it wasn't my best result, crashing and bending my crank wasn't what I was hoping for.

I decided to mix it up a bit and enter the hardtail category, hoping to do quite well. I turned up on Sunday morning with the rain poring down and I had to drag myself out of the car to sign on. I pedalled up to the start (which some people thought wasn't right) and begun sessioning the top section and making my way down. Over the years sheepskull has grown in excessive breaking bumps which made it a lot harder of my 120mm cotic soul! The top section consisted of roots and a few small burms. This section was hard as it was basically flat and made it a lot harder to carry speed.

 The second section was much easier as there was minimal braking bums and a few jumps which I am quite good at. As you dropped onto the second fire road there was a rooted section that lots of people were standing and watching and many people sliding out over the wet roots. This was a section I knew I had to do well and not slide out on as on my small hardtail would make it much harder. Surprisingly it went much better than I thought it would and made it down onto the fire road. The next section was a flat out section down to the finish line. After dropping down from the fire road you are hit with breaking bump after braking bump until you hit a small drop and a small uphill climb. The final section consisted of two small jumps and a switch back that lend onto breaking bump hell and a final jump into more breaking bumps then you have reached the finish line!

I was ready for my race run freezing cold at the start line trying to stay warm. I heard the beeps and went for it. I tried to put as many pedal stokes in as possible at the start line and went into the first section. I nailed the first section and dropped into the jumpy section. I hit the first jump well managed to cut the second corner well and made my way to the rooty section. Lots of people were spectating on this section so I didn't want to bail here! I went at it a little slow as I didn't want to wash out and that would be the end of my race run. I managed it well and dropped into breaking bump hell! I could feel my forks bottoming out as I hit every breaking bump but I stayed strong and rode through it all. I then came up to the little drop and decided to take the high line which didn't go well as it sent me off line and down the bank. I managed to ride it out but not sure how I did it though! I came into the finish straight and could feel myself ride though the line but NO my hand decided to come off of the bar and sent my OTB and landed next to the line! I picked my bike up and ran across the line! My first race run went ok but I knew I could go faster I went into second place knowing that I wanted to take the win.

I geared up for my second run ready to do much better and beat my last run at the least! I nailed all the sections up the to second fire rode where I dropped in went over the drop and realised I got a flat! The worst thing that could of happened! I took the walk of shame down the hill and joined my fellow hardtail racers!

Overall it was a great day and to top that as I was walking down and I heard 'could Ollie Hooper come here as we need to tell him to stick around for the best crash of the day!'. I managed to get on the podium twice and got given lots of freebies including some nice goggles with roll offs which I could of done with in my race run. 

Thanks to everyone involved with the race and making it such a great day despite of the weather. 

Winter Months

The summer days riding are feel like year ago now. Those days where it felt like day light was never ending and the dusty trails meant you never had to wash your bike. Winter is not come and the trails are getting muddy and nackered from a long summers riding.

Those dry trails are a dream!

Don't worry they will be back before you know it!

Winter is a key time for mountain bikers but only if you want to do well. You need something that keeps you going through the winter. That for me is to do well. Last year went ok for me exams meant I couldn't do as many races as I wanted to but the races I did I pushed too much and either crashed or made too many mistakes. That was a huge learning curve for me but I am going to take that into next year and improve upon it. My last race (mini enduro) I came 4th place which was a huge achievement for me and I felt I could have done better. This shows that I could do well just need to have more confidence in myself. 

A trip to FOD in the snow left me very very muddy! 

I hate cleaning me bike!

Through this winter I want to balance skill and fitness. At the moment I am on my road bike quite a lot in the week and on weekends I ride my mtb most days. I am now finding new riders to ride with such as Taylor Williams and Brooke Foster who are much quicker than me and this improves my skills and makes me want to go faster. Over the Christmas period I have bought myself a Contic soul. A hardtail xc bike which I am hopefully going to have built up by the end or Christmas. I hope riding a hardtail will teach me things that a full sus can't. 

We need to keep riding through the winter and face that those summer days will come back. If we keep riding through the winter the summer months will come quicker. They will be here sooner than you can imagine. Keep on riding! 

661 Mini Downhill Round 1

Forest of Dean is always an exciting venue for the winter downhill series. With not many winter series held the mini downhill invites riders from all locations. The wide range of tracks holds some of the best racing all year round even in the winter!                  

Ski run was the track chosen for the first round of the mini downhill. Personally one of my favourite tracks. Skirun starts of rooty with a few drops that makes line choice vital in securing yourself a good time. It then drops down into a rock flat out with a few more drop offs and very tight between the trees. The bottom section consists of roots and a couple of switch backs that slow the riders down just before one the most iconic jumps in the Forest of Dean. The Skirun tabletop gives you lots of speed for a switch back and into the final road gap.

Hundreds of people turned up to race and many more to spectate and cheer on the racers. For me spectating was just as fun as the racing. Shouting and cheering on the racers was one of the best experiences. Seeing how fast people can shoot down the hill was amazing. This speed can come at a risk though. I never caught any crashes on video but I did see lots. The video below was one of the worst crashes I have ever seen.




As you can see Stuart Schneller landed straight on his head and even broke his neck brace in half! Thankfully the medics were on hand checked him over and he was all ok. Was a scary one though to watch.




Most people made it down the hill ok and had an amazing time. Can't wait for the next round. Enjoy the video!

http://www.pinkbike.com/video/342265/







All photos taken by AJB-Photography. Thank you very much for the photos! https://www.facebook.com/AJBFOTOS]https://www.facebook.com/AJBFOTOS



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Pink Bike

Just to let people know if they look at my blog or youtube channel regally (if anyone really does) I am in the process of moving all my videos from youtube to PinkBike. I chose to do this because PinkBike is a bike related website and will be much easier to share my videos and photos with the mountain bike community. I hope people will like my new set up on PinkBike.

http://www.pinkbike.com/u/hooperman68/

DMR Pump Track Challenge

Brendog showing some style

So this weekend I managed to get persuaded by my mate Ed to take park in the pump track challenge in Bristol. I had been down to the Brunel Way Pump Track a few times before to mess about and do a few laps but never raced it before. My mate Ed is into his DJs and pump tracks but me, not really I built a half jump bike/ pump track bike out of one of my old mountain bikes. I have never thought of racing on it though. I decided to give it a go as it sounded like a laugh and I would get to meet a lot of famous faces like Manon Carpenter, Ollie Wilkins, Brendon Faircloth (Brendog), Sam Reynolds and many more!

Cheers to MnD Photography

I arrived on the day ready to do some riding not really expecting much. I would give it ago and try my best. So I went round a few times testing out some of the corners and started getting into the rhythm. Practice quickly came to a close and race time was upon us.

Scott Beaumont

I did my first lap and decided to jump the first straight which seemed to slow me down a bit. Got through the first switch back ok and  
pumped away on the next straight. The next corner I was never really good at. Its a really tight left hand burm. I managed to get round it quite easily but slowly and finished.  '14.06' 

MnD Photography

Finished my lap and I got a time of 20.431 not just my quickest lap I have ever done but also quickest time to put me in second position! I was a shock for me to say the least coming to the event expecting to come second to last and now I am second!

My next two laps went well still good times but I didn't manage to beat anything about 20.4 what was still a good time. I stayed in second position until my last lap when someone two positions below me came out of no where a set an amazing time of 20.333 and dropped me down to 3rd.

I was supper stoked with my positions and my first podium for a while now! Was an amazing event and I thoroughly enjoyed it and looking forward to when I am 18 and can go to the after party!

Cheers DMR and all the supporting brands for an amazing
event!

Podium

 Ed getting his pump track design 

FOD Testing the New Bike

Testing my new bike. After finishing my exams I had a lot of money to spend on my bike. I was deciding what to do with this money and was considering buying a new frame. I looked up and it was going to cost me way to much to buy a new frame and all the new parts that come with it. I got the suggestion from a friend of powder coating my bike. Looked up and I thought it would transform my bike and make it look brand new. I got my frame powder coated red and the linkage black. The powder coating only cost me £75 and I designed the graphics myself and got them printed for £40. I then changed to a 1x10 gearing and bought a new shimano clutch mech. The clutch mech makes such a different shifting is so much cleaner because it removes any chain slap I used to have. Overall it was a good decision to do this to my bike. 

Lately I have been filming lots of people and making videos for other people. I then got the opportunity to ride with my mate Ben Strain. Great rider normally rides road but is really good at mountain biking as well. He also did photography for GCSE so I thought he would be a great person to help me make my next edit.

Its only a short edit of the trails I ride quite a lot when my parent take me to Forest of Dean. We based our day around the downhill trails and focused on Ben improving some of his downhill and also shooting a short video. Ben came out of it saying he felt as if he learnt a lot in a day riding wise and I got an edit! Sounds like a deal to me! 

I wanted Ben to film for me because he has the experience from his GCSE in art and I thought he could get some good angles for me. He used lots of different angles that made the video flow nicely between the shots. We managed to get lots of filming done in the time we had. I am very happy with what we achieved and thank you to Ben for filming the edit!

I now need to find someone who can do a full edit for me showing other aspects of riding so we can do an even better video! 

Enjoy the edit! 

Mini Enduro Final Round

Well on the weekend I went to the final round of the mini enduro series. The location for this race was The Forest of Dean and boy it was fun! I managed to convinced my Mum to take me down on saturday to practice the loop. My initial assumption after doing one loop was on race day it was going to be wet and foot out the whole way down! The weather was not in our favour on Friday night for race day but as the weekend went on the weather made a change for the better and as usual the weather man got it completely wrong. We arrived on Sunday and it was gorgeous sunshine but bitter cold.

Saturday- I went for a quick loop, tried all the stages and thoroughly enjoyed them. Stage 1 was not my favourite as on saturday we had lots of rain and was super muddy. Stage 2 was an amazing stage had some nice long pedally section and some steep technical sections. One of my favourite parts on two was the line choice half way down there was one section where you could pick a high line or a tight line. In the end I decided to take the tight line and it made it much quicker. Stage 3 was also reasonably dry on saturday morning. Staged 3 was going to be a hard one with the long pedally section at the top made it very hard to drop straight into the steep burmy section at the bottom. 

After Saturday I felt reasonably confident going into race day. I looking back over the GoPro footage trying the remember the course and having a good nights sleep I was ready for Sunday!

It was a good thing that I went down on Saturday as it meant I could have a reasonable lie in and leave for 9 o'clock. We arrived on time for check in and I quickly went a did a few sections of the loop. I started on staged 1. I sessioned the bottom section which I was not 100% confident after Saturdays practice. After sessioning a few burms and lines I was pretty happy how much stage 1 had changed. The lines were much smoother and I was having lots of fun o
n that section at the end of it. I then decided to go over the stage 2 to take a look at the lines and see if anything had changed. I practiced stage 2 for a bit and came up with a few lines that made my run much cleaner and alot faster. So thanks to the marshall on stage 2 for showing me some of the faster lines. I then went and rode down stage 3 to the bottom. I was very happy I did this because the dry and tacky stage 3 I did on Saturday was wet and very off camber! 

Anyway onto the race. I came back from practice in time for a quick lunch to make my way up to the start. I thought for some reason I was meant to be there at 1:15 and instead I was meant to be there for 1:51 what gave me a bit of time to chill. Stage one was my worst run I got the power out of the start but as I was sprinting down the first straight I hit a stump and through me off balance. I regained my speed and went into the first technical section. It then hit me as I went round one of the corners that this tree was not here yesterday! It turned out a tree fell on the track and they had to make a line around it. So that took me off track for a bit. I then had a few bad moment after that so that run didn't go to plan. I then knew I had to get some time back on stage 2 and 3. I have to say stage 2 was one of the cleanest runs I have ever done. I don't think O did one thing wrong. This put me in a good mood and got me 'stoked' as us mountain bikers say! Stage 3 was also a very clean run and the fans shouting at the bottom helped me get round some of the tricky corners and sprint to the end. Got to the bottom and found I got 3rd on on that staged which I was super stoked with! 

After I found out I came third I thought I might swell stay for the results. So I stayed for the results and I booked 4th in the bag which is my best result to date. I knew that stage 1 let me down and if I didn't make those few mistakes I might have been able to bag myself a podium finish.

After this result I am stoked to train this winter and can't wait for enduro racing next season. Can't wait to see what next season can hold for me. I know i need to work on that sprinting though!

Cheers to the mini enduro team for holding an amazing race and the atmosphere was very chilled and that is what these races should be about, having fun! Hope to see Forest of Dean on the cards for next years series!