April 24th, RG timed Practice:

Rider: Ed Smith, Fotog: Stu Hopkinson

Course details;

Little Bringe - Starting with the Ridge Line, right hand berm into short straight to finish

Conditions - Dryer than a Jack Dee show, hand polished roots and extra dust to go with the dust.

The final organisers email arrived on Friday night, "see you all on the hill at 9am tomorrow" were Harry's words. 9am?! Well it's not a work day so I got onto he hill around 10ish expecting to see people just starting rolling up. Harry, Rich and Mick were already off down the hill though with the course all taped out. The sun must have been making people's heads go funny or something.

The sun, the sun. Well it's been missing from a Guild Session for so long that it's might as well never have existed, but here it was making a storming come back. A light breeze, a few fluffy clouds and bone dry dusty trails. Perfect.

The course was Little Bringe, a couple of line options had been left open to gives riders a choice, last time we ran a session on this trail in 2009 the choices were a bit more restricted, more on that shortly.

Getting the course taped so early meant we were able to open it up before 10.30 so there was plenty of chance for people to get some more practice in. Everything was looking good. sign-in was all set, the course was taped, we only had the finish line to sort. Rich was taking first timing slot at the bottom of the hill so with half an hour to go was heading down the the bottom and squeezing in a final cheeky run at the same time. With Wyld Stallyn (ask you big brother) Harry following him down Rich was going all out on his short travel hardtail with street tyres pumped up rock hard. Not the ideal choice for one of the more tight and rooty trail on the hill but no worries eh.

Well not until the final section when the bike was binned and Rich used his arm as a brake. Wife beater vests don't offer too much protection and it was a pretty dazed and confused Rich I found when I headed down to see if the guys needed any help. Long story short but Rich ended up sitting out the day giving Lance (our new recruit to the timing tent) some training on the timing side of the event. He's now at home nursing a suspected broken elbow, get well soon Rich.

All this meant we had to kick off 5 minutes late with the runs so at 1.05pm we were off. With 55 Stile Cop regulars and new faces alike we were running one of the most chilled days we've seen for a while. The start line reached 28 degrees at one point although the breeze kept things nice. Riders were lined up on cue we had no faffing and everyone had a smile on their face, something else had to go wrong, but it didn't, sweet.

The fast boys started setting the pace and pretty soon the fastest times were around 52 seconds for a few of the usual guns. Once they got settled in though the times started dropping and it was looking like sub 50 seconds may be possible.Sam Maddison was throwing everything at the hill as usual and the orange and white blur was right up there on the clock. I mentioned that we'd kept a few line choices open this time around, well some of the lines Sam was spotted taking were off the radar all together, cheeky but inspiring at the same time.

 Rider: Sam Madison, Fotog: Alex Smith

It was looking like a usual kind of running order for the main category until new face James Gant threw his times into the mix, run on run he was up there to finally post a 49.4 and take fastest run of the day. Not wanting to be outdone Mitch Ingley (who for some unknown reason decided it was the day to bring his hardtail out) got down to a consistent 53 second slot until deciding to borrow a full sus which knocked 3 seconds off his times.

Becky Hilton made it onto the hill as our only lady rider of the day, posting a 1.17.8 to place respectably in the overall field.

As ever we had a few young rippers along who were putting in some very respectable times proving that the Guild is doing what we've always wanted to do by bringing new and young riders into the scene. A special mention to 10 year old Cameron Jones who got faster with each run and reached 1.34 in the end.

Thanks to everyone who joined us and to our marshalls for the day. See you again in May.

Stu.

Ian Boon's excellent video HERE