National
Points Series 2005 |
Ae
Forest Rnd 1 |
26th
and 27th March |
 |
Gummy starts as
he left off....on the podium |
| Well for most teams the first round starts off on the Saturday morning with practice and qualifying, for RapidRacers it started on the Friday night re-union. Some of us hadn't seen each other for some months and as the saying goes...."ride hard....party harder". Gummy, Phil, Greg, Aidan (new boy), and myself took a walk to down town Dunfries to see what the local night life had to offer. Apart from boy racers going around and around the same short circuit outside the kebab house, there wasn't much to write home about. So Aidan, Phil, Greg and myself decided to liven things up by Pole Dancing in the local drinking hole.....yes you did read that right. Things were about to get out of control as Aidan decided to Pole Dance upside down in his underpants, he even managed to clobber the bouncer (unintensionally) who was trying to evict him as he was spinning around half naked. Unfortunately many of us suffered injuries during our pathetic attempts to Pole Dance. In the end Phil cracked his wrist, Aidan twisted his ankle doing some shady dance move, and I badly twisted my ankle jumping from the pole to the dance floor which was covered in beer. So that was 3 of us at the medic centre come race day. As you can see below my twisted ankle was beyond repair for the race and so that was that for me. |
 |
Anyone for fat feet? |
| Paul May (Gummy), Phil Mowatt, Greg Pickles, and Aidan Bishop all attended Ae Forest for the first round of the National Points Series, with Stefan Gleed out due to an expectant baby it was left to Paul May and Aidan Bishop to push the top guys in the Expert and Masters category. The team went up for some much needed practice as the course is very challenging, rocks and high speed jumps and drops were the order of the day. I hobbled up the last section to watch the team come down only to see Aidan take the huge step down at the same time as some plonker waiting on the chicken run decided to move. There was a big t-bone collision and Aidan was hurt, believe it or not it was the other ankle that was now damaged. Aidan sat out the rest of practice elivating his ankle and packing it with ice. Practice went pretty good for the others considering the greasy conditions. Seeding came and Gummy came in 7th which he felt was pretty hard work, this year was always going to be harder as the Pro-Elites category has been chopped from 45 to 20, this has left 25 world class riders to register in the Expert and Masters category where we all race. With famous riders like Tim Ponting now in Masters along with many other big names it's easy to get down in the mouth about your chances of a podium. |
 |
The rain stayed away for practice but it was still very greasy from the previous days raining, conditions got worse for the race as some light rain blessed our land...well it is Scotland. |
| Race Runs |
| Greg had a couple of moments including crashing on the corner before the big step down, this left him leggin it down the chicken run which dropped him further down the order posting a final time of 3:16. Next up was Phil, he seemed pretty dissapointed with his run although the time was pretty respectable at 2:53 putting him in 39th, more will come from Phil as he's spending the summer in America racing DH in th sun for a few months.....lucky git. There was big dissapointment for the new boy on the team Adain Bishop as he eventually had to retire due to his ankle not being good enough to ride. So it was all down to Gummy, he felt he had overpaced himself but still had a fast clean run and crossed the line in a amazing time of 2:32, despite the odds he mananged yet another podium and trophy to the scores he already has....top result geezer. |
 |
Although me and Aidan retired due to injury it was fantastic to see Gummy keeping things alive for the team, this after not riding his DH bike for 6 months....pretty amazing I recon. I think we learnt a valuable lesson about partying the night before a race....."never use baby oil when your Pole Dancing!". |
 |
and finally....well done to Michael Cowan one of our sponsor from Chainreaction Cycles, he crossed the line in a superb time of 2:39 putting him 40th in Expert. Keep it real folks. |