Roll up roll up, come along and get loose in the woods for a Festive Tickertape winter series round 2 mix up with your friends.  Will the big ‘FC’ and ‘roody-olf’ make a guest appearance and give out some prezzies for biggest christmas pudding beanz.

Sunday 18th December

Freelap Timing from 1200 h – 1500 h (help needed setting up and packing away so please be there by 11:00)

£2 suggested donation

Be there or miss out, mince pies and festive clothing/decorations encouraged!

Today was ace, some track alterations to Spoons made for some very fun, fast, friendly and flowy ticker-taping.

Curtis smashed it again and Neil whooped ass on his XC bike with not very downhill tyres.  Then afterwards Tim scared everyone on 143 by ‘letting it hang out like a fat girl in a bikini’ as Rob Warner would say.

Full write up with photos to follow, for the meantime here are your results…….

First round tomorrow. 12 – 3. Be there.

Rnd 2 of the TickerTape Summer series was something of a treat, not only did we get to ride the loamy goodness of MCC but we also got to witness local hero (and secret practicer) Chris Smith testing the first ever set of schwalbe velcro tyres.

MCC is unique at the Allotment because of the way it’s been built, in that we haven’t actually done any building at all, just marked a super flowy trail down the side of the hill and left it to evolve naturally. What’s great about that is the fact that every time you ride it the fastest line changes; corners develop ruts, ruts become worn out and then new lines get formed to miss out the speed sapping loam piles. Now, as fun as that is trails like this just don’t ast very well, so we keep this one as a bit of a treat, something different to look forward to now and again.

Rnd 1 saw Steve Geall take the win from Chris Smith leaving Chris trying to find excuses why old man Geall had beat him on home soil. Well Chris took no chances at Rnd 2, with his secret weapon tyres that allowed him to pedal his way around every corner like someone riding a bike made from two loam spurting catherine-wheels. Chris took the win leaving the rest of us to dust ourselves down and think up our own underhand tactics for rnd 3 tomorrow.

Ollie Butler really impressed with his new attacking style, showing a marked improvement at every round, and Jamie Mc rode really well too despite shouting at himself on every run and nearly throwing up on a few! Both won beans, and deservedly so.

Thanks to everyone for helping set up and pack away, and to Rose Bikes for the ace prizes and support.

Tomorrow should be pretty slippery so pop a set of muds on or bring your body armour!

Set up from 12…

Riding bikes is great, riding bikes with friends is brilliant, making more friends riding bikes together even better, collectively running an unequivocally successful low-fi grass roots downhill event series on your tenderly hand groomed trails, for the benefit of the local cycling community…..priceless.

We asked Charlie Sheen (Actor, Philanthropist, Hero) for a few words on how he felt the winter series went; ‘’Well I felt it went a little something like this, ahem (pause) …… uh, Winning?’’ We digress.

The whole series was point based, with the points weighted to encourage people to attend each round and the points staggered to encourage friendly competition.  This made the events more interesting as people could take it as seriously as they want with all the competitive elements at their disposal, turning leisure into sport and sport to competition and vies versa.

Over the series we had 45 riders take part over the 4 rounds with an average of 22.5 riders per round and 29 at our final round, I lost count of how many times were recorded, but it was up around 400.

Now for the results

After the final round in March I can tell you that Andrew Denham (2^nd,2^nd,6^th,4^th ) won the overall series finishing on 521 points, 11 points ahead of Ben Irons (4^th,4^th,2^nd,5^th), noticeably neither rider managed to score the fastest time of the day at any round.  A special mention goes to Curtis Saunders who only managed to enter 3 of the 4 rounds due to other racing commitments, but made good use of those 3 rounds posting the fastest time of the day at each round he entered, we awarded Curtis the title, ‘should of, could of, would of’, because if he had entered all 4 rounds we’re sure he would have won the points race.  Also a special mention goes to Liam Arkell (8^th,8^th,3^rd,3^rd), for most improved rider, Liam really impressed us with his commitment and improved performance over the winter, sadly Liam’s managed to break his wrist at a race recently, so we wish him a speedy recovery and look forward to seeing him progressing even further in the sport.

Overall it was great series, we were really happy to see more people getting involved and riders of all ages and abilities getting along and encouraging one another, helping each other out and seeing people make real progress with their riding.  Basically lots and lots of beans, black canon collective beans that is.

Thank you to Rose Bikes for supplying us with all the beans awards, and ‘madison’ for the special race tape.  We also managed to raise £180 over the series for more timing equipment for future tickertapes (from our bank breaking two pound a round entry tax), so THANK YOU!

Here we are again, at the start of another TickerTape series… except this time the weather is on our side!

Leaving the track announcement to the day of the event certainly made for some interesting racing as some had banked on Puppets being used, so had spent time practicing confident that their efforts would pay off. Unfortunately for them SPOONS was the order of the day, and Practicing Peter’s aside it was a very popular choice.

Now, apart form the course announcement there were a few other changes; the event was shorter by an hour, and we brushed UCI rules aside to allow a certain OAP mountain biking legend wear what can only be described as a paint on FOX T-shirt in a bid to finally win a coveted TickerTape sticker. Skintight clothing is normally reserved for our XC or Retro events, but we figured that Steve is pretty retro (over 40) so would need all the help he could get.

Well we were wrong, he schooled every one of us including Mr Smith and led the event from start to finish. Chris wasn’t best pleased with the Commissar’s T shirt ruling and could be heard protesting that the only reason Steve was wearing such a tight T shirt was because he’d developed moobs and needed all the support he could get!

Now Chris, I’m sure you could grow moobs like that too… so don’t beat yourself up about it, you must be nearly 40 by now anyway?

Back to the racing, well there were plenty of entrants, and a few new faces too. Nick G impressed with his playful style, pulling tweaks off of every feature and making everyone cheer as he styled his way down the course. Tom Dunford’s riding also drew a lot of attention, it was attacking and daring especially through the dreaded tight middle section where he flicked the bike confidently between the trees getting sideways but always making his way through. Both won beans for their efforts, and rightly so.

The new berm was pretty popular as were the slight changes to the routing over a couple of features, it’s nice to make the odd change, keeps things fresh and keeps people on their toes, though some would have benefitted from a map taking the old line out of the berm as if on auto-pilot.

So that was it, a great start to the series, with plenty still to look forward to.

Special mentions should go to Nigel Fudge for competing in his first TickerTape, Ben Batt for looking scary as ever on a bike, and Rob Lewis for timing only one run but getting a 4th despite hating the bike he was on and being a bit worse for wear.

Check the calendar for details of the next round, don’t bother asking me which course it’ll be on though as I won’t tell you!

Cheers to everyone for helping to set up and pack away, to MADISON for providing the race tape and to ROSE BIKES for providing the awesome trophies and prizes!

Photos thanks to Aaron Veness, and Daniel Irons

I really need some help rolling the tape for this Sunday’s TickerTape, so if you like taking part in the TickerTapes and are available, please come along to my house (see forum for details) on thursday evening at 7:00, for doughnuts and a healthy dose of RSI….

This was last one we did, http://www.blackcanoncollective.co.uk/2010/08/17/hillbillies-with-ocd/

So, who can make it…?

That’s right, the BCC TickerTape Summer Series is here!
We’ve made some slight tweaks that we think everyone will like; every round is on a Sunday afternoon, they’re slightly shorter too and courses won’t be announced until the day of the event to prevent people racking up hundreds of practice runs.
Also, as with last series, we’re being looked after by Rose Bikes who will be providing trophies and prizes at every round…they might even bring some demo bikes along for a play too.

All this for £2 entry and some help setting up and packing away, not bad ey?

See you Sunday, beans!