Report By: Craig Bromley

Craig "Crash Master" Bromley

It was time for round 2 of the Midlands Series ran by Pearce Cycles, this time we were at Bala which in the dry is one of my favourite tracks, and in the wet one of my worst.

Well no worries for the weekend as astonishly dry and dusty it was too.....absolutely beautiful, the legendary service provided from the Pearce organisers made it a race to remember. To be honest it felt like you were in France going through the top section, it was extremely fast, in fact as fast as you could stand, dusty and rocky....just as I like it.

I was on my own as the Midlands Series is my local race series, I had my very first practice day on the Saturday which is unusual for me, although my 2.5 hour detour from going to the wrong Rhyd-Y-Felin in Wales put me in a bad mood.....I didn't know there were two of them 62 miles apart! You just follow satnav don't you......lesson learnt I think.

There was still enough time for me to get all my lines dialled and to be honest, any more runs and I would have been knackered. Come Sunday morning and I was up for it, practice first thing went well and I quit after 2 practices as I didn't want to get too tired.

The track is a mixture of challenges, at the top it is bloody fast with rocks and rutts to flip you out of control for the slightest mistake, time could be made up here as the brave risked everything on this flat out section, you then had to contend with a couple of wooded sections which were tight and off camber as you would expect, then you blast out into the field for the flat out grassy turns and off the 5 foot drop flat out, one more flat out turn and your over the line, not the longest course but still plenty of variety and places to get it wrong.

It was my time to rumble and I thought f**k it I'm having this, off I shot on the fast top section pedalling hard and nailing everything at speeds well in excess of my capabilities, it would be fair to say I was a complete passenger and well out of my comfort zone, I have no shame in admitting I was very scared a big crash was moments away. Thankfully I made all the top section without a single mistake and was getting excited at the prospect of a decent finish, within 10 yards of the first set of woods I found I was flipping over the bars and catepulting my bike through the tape.....damn it. To this day I still have absolutely no idea what stopped the front wheel dead but that's life I guess. I dragged my bike back on the track and set about messing the next couple of corners up whilst I gathered myself again, amazingly I managed a huge front wheel slide on an off camber right hander, it went on for a fair bit and came back just at the last second, probably the funniest slide I've ever done, it was rescued by pure chance, I actually laughed in my helmet as I listening to the spectators gasp, I knew I should have been on the floor again!

I crossed the line with a 3:22 and way down the order, it was not exactly astonishing but a little faster than I was expecting given the extent of the crash and subsequent mistakes, this made me think mmmmm....definate top ten in the offering here if I can keep it clean.

I went up for my second run and was quite nervous this time worried that the fat boy may actually really hurt himself if I was to attempt the top section at the same speed as the first run, I decided to take a more sensible approach which cost me some time but was within my capability. I kept it clean through the woods and was vitually still pedalling as I went over the drop near the finish, a power sprint later and I crossed the line with 3:09 13 seconds faster than run one, I was in 9th place with loads of the faster guys to come, fortunately most of the top riders had set faster times on their first run so I was in 9th for some time until Adrian Bradley took 9th by a split of a second, so 10th place it was which to be honest I was happy with.

There was loads of competition as always in the Masters category with Chris Whitfield and Scott Tankard battling for the win, this went to Chris by a fraction with 2:57, both were riding really well and setting great times. Colin Williams and Sion Jones were fighting over the remaining podium position with Sion winning that battle with 3:01 again by only a fraction ahead of Colin.

Shock of the day was Darren Howarth ex Kona rider coming in 5th only 6 seconds ahead of me, I think Darren expected much better results coming from the Expert category especially as this was only a regional race, he couldn't get to grip with the course swopping between 2 bikes for run one and two, he left probably understanding that there is never an easy race in Masters whatever series you race in.

Results....

Pictures courtesy of: www.FTMB.net