hiya everyone

last saturday the club went to hamsterly forest for a day on the mountain bikes. once everyone was ready we all set off for the skills course for a warm-up. the combination of the long hard climb on the way up and the rocks and jumps on the way down worked well as the climb got everyones muscles working and the descent got the rust burnt off some peoples skills. I really benefited from this as i havent rode a mountain bike properly for a while and i had been given a £2,500.00 scott carbon spark to ride.

after the warm up the group split into three smaller groups each doing a slightly different route me helen and rhys ( my two friends both who are into mountain biking )went with the fastest group first and later swaped to the second group after the pace uphill became a little to quick for rhys and helen. after a few crashes and little races we were back at the car park and the ride was over. i thought the ride was really good fun so much in fact that i've decided i want a new mountain bike.....eventually which is a big turnaround for me because i usually hate mountain biking.

On the following Monday my dad took Jacob and i down to Bradford for the monday night session led by Phil west and Matt Winston the two talent team coaches jake only did the warm up but that was 30 mins long and quite fast and he already done 30 mins so i think he enjoyed that. The session was really good I have been looking forward to them starting for ages. We did two hours all told and probably covered about 30 miles doing intervals staring efforts and a 10 lap scratch race. We didnt get home til 1015 but its well worth the journey.

this saturday was back to normal with training back at hetton. Andy cosgrove and alex were coaching the bigger group and steve macintosh was the coach for the little group. i'm not to sure what the little group did but the big group went for a ride to the farm to warm up then we did some off-camber cornering practise this got harder and harder as the session went on as the grass got more and more ripped up. after this we went for a ride to sort the course out for the race today.

The race today was fun and only my second cross race of the season so far. I didnt get to watch much of the under 12's race but I know Matt Worton won with a good ride from Tom Mein I'm not sure who was 3rd either Miles or Joe, then Emma B was 5th with a really good ride beating our jake then Ben, Christian and Im sorry but after that I dont know.

My race was on the full senior course so we only got 4 laps in but it was event packed Will Brown had a really strong start blasting into first place on the tarmac and into the grass bank closely followed by Adam (H.H),myself and the rest of the pack things settled down and myself and will broke free from the chasing pack with Adam just ahead. On the second lap Adam had a mechanical near to the start finnish and had to stop but my dad loaned him his bike to carry on and he soon caught back up. Changing back onto his own bike on the third lap. Will dropped back leaving myself and Adam then I lost touch by a minute or so> So Adam won followed by me then Will Emma T was 1st girl home and I think 3rd under 16. Well done to all who raced today. Next week is Mowden School at Darlington I think with the TLI so will hopefully see you all there I'm off to bed now so nite nite.

Josh...