National Championships and Bala

The National Champs were at Llangollen, or if your listening to Al Bond CLlangollen ! As this is the biggest British race the organisers wanted to test the riders so they decided to use the original top section in the woods. This is the steepest track that is raced in the UK, and when walking the track it looked like it was going to be tricky in the muddy conditions! Luckily for the organisers the sun did its job and started to dry things out making it a little easier to ride over the slick log drops! I managed 6 practice runs on Saturday, its not a great uplift system so 6 or 7 was the most that could be done, some slackers even managed 2 or 3! 

Race day, i got on one of the first uplifts that set off to the top, which didnt go to plan, as one of the local farmers decided he needed to move his cows from one field to the next blocking the uplift road! Top bloke!

After 2 practice runs i went up for seeding and came down in 14th with a steady run! For the finals i had the main man Steve Peat following me down, which was a bit of a worry! I had a good run, just making one mistake which proved costly as i finished 14th just 0.5 seconds from 11th! Top 15 was all good though, and i thought i would have some good UCI points, but someone pulled a sli move so it was just the top ten getting them and not top 25! Ruaridh Cunnigham won the race with a storming run, Al Bond took a deserved 2nd, showing he could deal with the pressure of his local fans, Adam Brayton slipped himself onto the box in 3rd after he seeded in first! 

Click below to watch my-
Headcam from National Champs

Full results
http://www.rootsandrain.com/race291/2011-jul-24-bds-uk-national-champs-11-llangollen/#hsenior-champs-m

Top pics
http://www.rootsandrain.com/rider333/robert-smith-elt/photos/

Bala (The Shrewsbury track)! Always one to look forward to as the Pearce crew put on a great event and the track is always good, nice to see some changes on the track to freshen things up. Its a little weird how people can deem certain things on tracks dangerous, but on this one they were happy to have a barbed wire fence in the track! After some abuse from fellow elites i hopped over it in practice! The uplift drivers do a great job getting us to the top quickly at the pearce races, but it doesnt impress us when they try to drift round corners so we get to watch our bikes getting roosted by stones! Save it for the ps3!

Racing, after a few crashes earlier in the week and in practice i was covered in the muscle relief pain cream, and after a solid first run i was in 3rd place which i was really pleased with as there was some top competition in the elites. Second run i went a fraction of a second slower but still rode well and finished 4th on the same second as Joe Smith and Harry Heath who were 2nd and 3rd. Matt Simmonds was 5th, just cruising at this one ready for the World cups in the following weeks! Younger brother Ed's took 4th in the experts and David 7th in elites a couple of seconds behind me. Alex Bond (Shropshire/Wales border) destroyed everyone with a gap of 5 seconds between him and second place, everyone else was left speechless when his time popped up! A well organised race on a great track. 

Nice video from the race including me at 55 seconnds !
http://www.pinkbike.com/video/209566/

Full results
http://www.rootsandrain.com/race298/2011-jul-31-pearce-cycles-4-bala/#helitem

Ive been in Europe for the last few weeks so will have a report on that soon ! 
All the best !