Tuesday 26 November 2013

Northern Downhill in enduro mode, the ND(H)uro at Kidland, 20th October 2013

One word for this race..... AMAZEBALLS!!!!!!!!!

Oh my god, where do I start here?  Well, I hadn't been to Kidland since 2010 when Steve and I did one of the Northern Downhill races there, I remember it being a total shocker thinking that I just couldn't ride anymore!  So when I heard that Carl Davison was running his first Enduro event at Kidland I must admit to being a wee bit nervous, and that was before I knew he was planning on running them down the downhill tracks.  Oh my!  For those not in the know, Kidland...... is.... STEEP!

Like the previous Borderline Events' Escape to Gisburn it was a one day event so practice was first thing in the morning with the racing kicking off from 1pm.  There were three tracks, two of them were on the Alwinton downhill tracks and the third was the Kidland downhill track with a slight detour around the steepest bit, phew!  And the best bit?  It had rained solidly all night long so the courses were a grease-fest, lovely and muddy, tyre choice was crucial, I managed to get away with running Maxxis High Rollers, I didn't have any mud specific tyres to hand.

We all made the first pedal up, none of us really knew what to expect so took it easy to start with, all the tracks were pretty similar to be fair, steep and rooty with tight corners.  It felt absolutely mint to be sliding around in the mud with the back end slipping out on roots. The last time I rode my bike tripod-style with my tummy on the seat was at the Megavalanche in the snow and oh my god we were having so much fun here. Full on belly laughs the whole way down.  As we got to the bottom we didn't even need to say anything we just looked at each other with huge grins on our faces, our eyes on stalks and knew we were all loving it. 

For me track three was the best, it was more ridden in and just rode so smoothly, I couldn't wait to race it.  Steve's Yeti was sadly still in bits so he was on his Cotic hardtail again and although everyone was taking the piss out of him for riding a hardtail 29er at Kidland he didn't do too bad and came 8th in the Master category.  I took a 3rd with Helen and Sarah taking the top two steps. 

The Weapons; Sarah Newman, Helen Gaskell and Angie Coates

I really cant wait to ride there again, it's given me a huge amount of motivation to ride steeper and more technical tracks, I can't wait to get the FTW downhill beasty built up to hit some more of it!

See you on the next hill punks,

Angie
xx 


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