Eastridge Gravity Enduro

Round 4 of the UK Gravity Enduro took place at Eastridge last weekend.

Luckily for me it is my local woods, where i do a lot of my riding so all eyes were on me to take the win on home turf.
Fortunately i was able to do it and not let the pressure get to me! It was nice to be back racing at Eastridge, i love the trails. I have also got a lot of good memories, especially winning the Junior National Championships back in 1999, 12 years ago!

If you haven’t ridden Eastridge, get yourself up there, it is well worth a look. The trails are a mix of rocky and loamy singletrack. There are loads of old DH tracks dotted around the woods and some of my favourite singletrack in the world.

Stage 1 was a mix of fast technical/ rocky singletrack, wide open drifty turns and dust so deep it was like riding in sand.
I had a pretty solid first stage and felt like i was up to pace from the get go. It can be hard to judge if you are pushing hard enough though. But sometimes you had to be cautious in the really dusty parts because a lot of the turns had blown out since you had practised them.

There seemed to be a lot of people really enjoying themselves and i heard lots of compliments on the riding, the credit goes to Alex Langley and the trail partnership crew that have puts loads of hours into trail building this last year. I have lost count of the amount of days those guys put into maintenance and building when they could have been riding.

All in all it was a mega enjoyable weekend of riding and racing and it just reinforces my enthusiasm in the Gravity Enduro scene. There really isn’t a more laid back type of racing. Lots of banter on the ride between stages, but more importantly the riding is amazing and i love the challenge of putting in 5 good runs on different tracks.

Photo courtesy of Iain at Turnip Towers and available on Roots and Rain where you can also find full results.