Douglas F Shearer

SXC 2012 Round 1 - Kirroughtree

Wed, 13 Jun 2012 22:48:22 +0100

The first round of the 2012 Scottish Cross Country took place at Kirroughtree. The course used parts from previous races there, but was an all-new arrangement. The usual singletrack and fireroad to start, followed by a long natural climb, into an undulating rocky section, then some fast natural descending before a forestry road drag. A few pieces of natural singletrack dropped you into the finish of the Red route, back to the arena to start it all again.

There was a pretty good turnout for the first round, so the racing was going to be fast. On the first lap I tried not to go to wild chasing the elite guys, they were off to do their own battle. Weirdly on the first lap there were five elites up front, then the expert racers including myself fairly close together behind. It was at this point I realised I could have quite a good battle with Hamish Fletcher-Cooney, a fellow expert who I’d raced against a few times last year.

At the end of the first lap he had about 29 seconds on me, but I noticed as we did the first half of the lap that I could take him back fairly quickly on the climb and natural sections. I overtook on the natural climb, and pressed on a little bit to see what would happen. On the forestry road drag I lost some time, and we crossed the line at the end of the second lap with only a few seconds between us.

This status-quo continued on the next lap, with the gap over the line again being only a few seconds. For the last lap I knew I had to put a big effort in on the climbs to make sure he couldn’t close the gap on the flatter sections. I properly turned myself inside out on the first half of the course, then did my best to keep the speed up for the rest of the lap, resisting the temptation to look behind.

I crossed the line in sixth position, first expert, and held Hamish off my 18s. The course really is well suited to differing types of rider, I’m really looking forward to racing Kirroughtree again in June when the British XC Series finally comes back to Scotland.

Thanks to the SXC and the girls at The Breakpad for the awesome course.

Full results are available on the SXC website.

BMBS 2012 Round 1 - Sherwood Pines

Sat, 12 May 2012 15:44:28 +0100

This year Sherwood had a mostly new course on offer for the first round of the British series. Unfortunately it was as flat as the old courses, with minimal technical sections to separate riders, resulting in some very close racing. After the race I was told there was caution arrows on some sections, I never saw these and still think my leg is being pulled.

I was gridded first, so was in the front row with a good chance of staying out of any trouble. Unfortunately there was a big crash in the row behind as the barriers narrowed in the start straight, ending many people’s races very early and resulting in Wheelbase’s Joe Richards having a helicopter ride to the hospital to be checked out (he’s OK, it was just precautionary).

The first section of singletrack came pretty quickly, by which time I was probably down in about 20th due to my lack of power for the start. I sat steady, laughing at riders being too keen to make a pass in inappropriate places, and at those who were now regretting their seriously-slick tyre choices. Once the second lap came round I started to move up places, blasting past people on the one short-step climb on the course, and drafting riders on the forestry roads before sprinting past into the singletrack.

On the last lap I was still making up places, but struggling with some of the elite back markers who were riding some sections a lot slower than I wanted to, especially frustrating with the narrow tree-lined singletrack that makes up the majority of the Sherwood course. The run-in to the finish was tight, with some rooty singletrack and right-angles to negotiate. I managed to pass some more elites on get on the back of a group of three other expert riders but I was outgunned in the sprint by all of them and came in for a rather pleasing tenth place. Not bad for a course that’s not supposed to suit me.

Scottish Cyclocross Season Roundup

Sat, 31 Dec 2011 15:35:00 +0000

Scottish Cyclocross is now bigger than ever, some of the rounds had almost 300 people turning up. Great courses and great people, I look forward to more of this in 2012.

SCX Round 1 – Irvine

I’d never ridden the cyclocross course at Irvine before, despite it appearing twice in the past, once as an SCX round in 2009, and as the delayed 2010 champs in January 2011. Famous for it’s sand-trap, a long stretch in the dunes at the back of the beach, I was keen to see this was a gimmick or something worth using as part of the course.

The course has two runups, one short up a set of steps, the other a 25m steep grass section. The sand-trap is about 100m long, and is an awesome addition to the course. It takes more grunt than skill to ride it, though things are much easier when you realise you can skirt along the margins out of the really soft stuff, though you risk getting stuck in some of the larger ruts.

As for the racing, I had a horrible first couple of laps, going backwards after the initial fast start it took me a while to get into the swing of things. For the second half of the race I had Rapha’s James McCallum in sight, allowing me to keep my lap times sensible even though I was feeling a bit horrible. I put in a big effort on the last few laps, but didn’t make the catch by the end.

13th place, an improvement on my first CX race last year. Full results on the SCX website.

SCX Round 2 – Plean

A bit of a classic course remixed for 2011. Gone was the large climb at the back of the course, replaced with two new grassy sections. Loads of people complained about this course, but despite only having the one bike I had little issue with the bike clogging up. Definitely a course for the more powerful and skilled riders.

I got into fourth wheel into the first singletrack, then had to stop because my brake hanger cable was rubbing on the tyre. Almost as soon as I remounted I jammed my too-short chain on the big-ring, big-sprocket combination. My fault, fixed that then remounted. I was down in about 30th at this point. My disaster lap continues as I go some course tape caught in my cassette.

After this things started to come together, I was making up lots of places by riding sections others with running, and taking risks on some of the fast muddy descents. I did manage to drop my bike about halfway through as I hopped the hurdles, resulting in twisted bars and a bent STI. With no tools I just had to ride it like that.

I ended up 10th, which I was very pleased with given the troubles I had. Full results on the SCX website.

SCX Round 3 – Mugdock

Another classic course, this time without the crazy start of last year which resulted in lots of pileups. I got a good start and started to pick people off quite early. On the third lap I thought I felt my front tubeless tyre burping some air when I slammed it into some off-camber ruts. The next lap at the same point I was sure it was happening, and now had a very low front tyre. I kept riding it, hoping to make the pits where I could borrow a pump. Alas it burped the remaining air on a fast gravel corner, I luckily managed to step off the bike as it happened, with no injury. I ran round to the start-finish area to see what the time was like, then posted my DNF, my first of the year. Spectating was great fun after this, though I think some people were a little shocked by my enthusiastic heckling.

Hallocross

Organised by the Tri Centre on the same course as the Edinburgh 48 races, Hallocross was night-time cyclocross, in fancy dress, with cider. 60 people turned out for it, very impressive for a midweek event that required lights. Even knowing the course very well it was pretty frightening at times keeping the ’cross bike upright on the gravel corners and going over some of the blind drops. The racing was close and fast, with lots of mini battles to be had. Results were only down to third, due to the technical difficulties of reading numbers in the dark. I think I was seventh or eighth, but had fantastic fun whatever the result.

SCX Round 4 – Ballater

Ballater isn’t exactly close, but some nice weather meant the drive north of the Lecht was one to remember. The Ballater course was very non-traditional ’cross, with some fast rocky tracks interspersed with forestry road. A few technical sections, punchy climbs and a horrible set of steps made it a tough one though. My only issue with the course was a rocky burn crossing which was very hard to cross without kissing the rims against the rocks.

I had a good start here too, and picked off places as people dropped chains and punctured due to the rocks. The climbs were really suiting me, with the descents allowing some recovery time.

I ended up 6th, my best result so far. Full results on the SCX website.

SCX Round 5 – Strathclyde Country Park

One of my favourite courses from last year, it had been changed slightly with one of the grassy climbs replaced with hardpack, and one of the descents on a gravel path. It was super muddy, with the field section being calve-deep mud. More than 30 people sheared their rear mechs off due to the small stones on the descent getting dragged into the mech by the mud. I joined them on the third lap, my mech sheared clean through, with the hanger being left completely perfect. Bah. The chain needed replaced too, only having been on for three races prior.

SCX Round 6 – Meadowmill

Another redesigned course for 2011, with lots of flat out fast sections, the usual awesome singletrack, and some horrible headwind sections due to gale force winds all day. It was nice to race on a dry mud-free course after the previous round. The course wasn’t really for me, there was no rest on it so I had to ride at a pace I could sustain for the whole hour, rather than just a few minutes at a time.

Despite this I really enjoyed the high pace all the way round, and the interesting technical sections. I had a near-miss with a spectator on the course, unfortunately Davie Lines didn’t manage to swerve and was on the ground and out of the race instantly.

I ended up 15th. Full results on the SCX website.

Scottish Cyclo-Cross Championships

Made it to within a mile of this race when I crashed the car due to slippy conditions. No race! I don’t think I’ve actually ridden the champs since I won them as a junior in 2002. Will have to make it next year for the 10th anniversary.

Callendar Christmas Cross

A new event for 2011, run by Franco Porco and Davie lines around the spectacular venue of Callendar House and the Antonine Wall. The course was fantastic, with steep run-ups, long off-camber sections and slippy climbs. Those who were technically inclined had no running at all. It rained for almost the entire day before the race, meaning there was lots of sloppy mud to be had once the grass was chewed up. This was good, certainly better than the sticky mud we had seen at other venues.

The start was along a fast section of tarmac. I hung back so as to avoid those weaving side-to-side as they tested their VO2 maxes. On the first steep run-up and muddy corner I went from 25th to 10th by virtue of riding it then going round the inside near the apex. I then stormed up the first climb to find myself in fourth position for the rest of the lap. Myself and the other mountainbikers were definitely at a big advantage on this course. I couldn’t hold my position on the flat sections of the following lap, and was riding round with Paul McInally and junior rider Calum Foster. I only made two mistakes the whole race, one being losing my line on a long off-camber section and losing about 20s, and the other crashing on an off-camber descent where I lost very little time.

Calum started to make some mistakes about halfway through, and I took full-advantage of him losing his line on the section I lost time on, by putting the hammer down as soon as I saw him veer. Paul was yo-yoing back and forth, making lots of time up on the fast sections round the house and one muddy section that had become a run, and losing it as I took risks on the back-side of the course. On the last two laps I put in the big efforts on the climbs and the running section, eeking out enough of a gap to take 7th overall and 5th senior. Paul was 8th a few seconds back, and Calum finished an impressive ride to take 9th,

A great result to end the year, especially after a few weeks of zone-2 riding and a complete lack of intervals in December.

Full results on the SCX website.

No Fuss Tour De Ben Nevis 2011

Thu, 13 Oct 2011 18:43:30 +0100

I missed out on this event in 2010, a lack of enthusiasm at the end of the season meant I just wasn’t up for it though. Innerleithen MTB Racing was well represented though, with I-Cycles own Steve Deas just missing out on the podium, and taking No Fuss’ Best All-Round Mountainbiker prize. Steve raved about the event, adamant that I should do it in 2011.

This year I was much more enthusiastic. Not racing for most of June and July, and not training properly in months meant I was mentally fresh and ready for this big day out in the hills.

On the Friday night I stayed in a bunkhouse with Marty, Niall, Dave, Dave and Colin. Only some beer was drunk by me, and we were in bed by midnight. Up early, and at the start venue for 8:30, we had to wait for a while to dib in. While we were waiting in the road to start there were heavy showers which only lasted a few minutes at a time. This did not bode well for four plus hours in the big hills. We were led by a police car to the High Street, where the official start was to be. Pipers piped us down the high street at slow march, with us riding along very slowly behind (no dabs!). Once onto the main road we were off.

Up the first climb I was in the first couple of riders, looking for James Shirley and Rauri Watt who had performed well last year. A couple of roadie-looking guys were pushing good pace, but I wasn’t wanting to blow myself up in the first couple of miles as I had no idea how fit I really was. Nic Smith slowly pulled away towards the top, and left a small group of us wondering whether to chase him or not on the rolling roads. I worked with James, Rauri and a few other guys on the road, then it was every man for himself on the first part of the West Highland Way.

Rauri pulled out a little gap here, again I was content not to chase. After about ten miles we got to the Kinlochleven descent. Saddle down, dibbed in, and off! After only a few hundred yards a rock struck me on the shin, the pain rolling up and down my leg as I tried to keep the speed up. I didn’t know the descent to start with, and the pain wasn’t helping things. I got down in one piece, no punctures on the huge drainage channels due to following Steve’s advice and jumping them. I was 17th on this, the first, special stage.

Up the climb to Mamore lodge I was caught Ben Arnott. He’d managed to land on his face during the descent, and had broken a finger. I rolled on, hoping to get a good result in this special stage. I almost caught James Shirley who had got a gap on me before the previous descent, and was struggling a little with his single ring. I was 4th on the climb.

Next up we rolled along the side of some lochs, splashing through huge deep puddles. I made good pace along here, aware that there were a few people with me as we had bunched up after the previous special stage. Right before the river crossing I dismounted to avoid what looked like an especially deep puddle, only to discover the water at the sides was also waist deep. After that the river crossing was an anti-climax, being only knee deep at it’s deepest.

At the other side the path was punctuated by ditches every few meters, so it was quicker to run. After about half a kilometer I met James coming the other way: we’d both missed the dibber after the river crossing. Rubbish. I ditched my bike and bag and joined James on the run back along the riverbank to the dibber, then back to the bikes. This special stage was pretty much a 40 minute walk/carry up a steep mountain path. We made good time up here, eventually dropping other riders who looked like they were making good pace on the bottom section. The end dibber was at the Lairig bothy. I was 6th on that stage.

As I had been descending the section to the bothy I noticed that there was a rattling coming from the backend of the bike. I suspected it was loose bushings as I’d had them apart a few days before to clean them. After getting my allen keys out of my bag I realised it was the rear wheel that was loose in the frame, rattling in the dropouts. The skewer-nut was seized onto it’s thread, so there was no way for me to tighten it up. I left it out, confident that the wheel wouldn’t be pulled out even under heavy load.

The descent down towards Spean Bridge is a cracker, full-on 30-40mph snaking forestry road for several miles. At the bottom James had a puncture, so I kept on trucking, hoping I might catch some of the four guys up ahead. I passed the 20km to go sign, feeling my legs weakening on the rather dull trails and forestry road we were faced with at this section. I necked my remaining gels, all three of them, within about 15 minutes. Shortly after I felt better again, knowing I just had to keep it rolling. As soon as I recognised some of the trails and knew where I was, it was like someone turning on the nitrous. I took a gulp from the bottle on my frame, then emptied the rest onto the ground as I knew I wouldn’t be needing it. I was flying up the final climb, knowing it well from many races in the past.

The final descent was the Blue Crane down to the top of Nessie. I knew this descent well, so was confident of doing well. In my tiredness I made a mistake and lowered my saddle. This was great for the first section, but the middle section is a fast forestry road where you need to pedal all the time. Having the saddle down here was not good for my tired legs, but I wasn’t convinced I would make any more time up by stopping and raising the saddle. It was great fun anyway, especially as I hadn’t ridden these trails this year. I was 16th on this stage.

The final little tarmac section to the start-finish was over pretty quickly, taking turns in front with James who had caught me up at the bottom of Nessie. My legs collapsed within sight of the end, and I finished in 6th, a few seconds down on James.

Oddly at this event, the positions rather than time on the special stages were what mattered. This meant I was 4th, which was a pretty pleasing result all things considered. I am already looking forward to next year.

Full results are available from Sportident.

Scottish MTB XC Championships 2011

Tue, 27 Sep 2011 21:55:08 +0100

Unlike previous years where the Championships were run as part of the SXC series, this year they were run as a stand-alone event. It was the first time since 2002 this has happened, and it’s good to see the Champs get to be their own headline. Having no series to contend for, means that everyone between 18 and 30 (and above if they choose) gets to race for the senior championship. So sport riders got to join expert and elite riders to see how they stack up. This results in quite a healthy field, unlike the last two rounds.

I managed to sort out my knee niggles about a week and a half before this event, and with only one interval session in three months, I wasn’t expecting much. Even though I normally make the trip down to Drumlanrig, the venue, on the Saturday for a pre-ride, I didn’t feel my fitness warrantied the extra effort involved in the preparation. I didn’t even bother with a proper pre-ride on the day, riding only the first and last kilometer or so of the course. This wasn’t a worry as I know the ins and outs of Drumlanrig pretty well after racing there for ten years.

The gridding was a bit lacking, the commissaries just left us in whatever order we turned up in. This meant that Rab Wardell was back on the third row. Luckily things got off pretty cleanly, and Rab was back up the front where he was supposed to be. I totally overcooked it on the first half lap, with a mega-high heart rate on the descents as well as the climbs. I told myself to settle down and lose a few places.

The race was pretty uneventful, I was cruising the climbs and railing the descents with lots of confidence. After a few bad months it was nice just to be able to ride fast without pain. I was so chilled I even turned down Gary Macrae’s offer to get past him on a descent after he caught me on the way to the vets win (thanks Gary).

I eventually finished in 7th, in what turned out to be my longest XC race of the year at 2:19. Roll on next year!

Dave Henderson defended his title from last year, Grant Ferguson took the silver, and Rab the bronze.

Full results are on the SXC website.

Arch Arm Linux on PogoPlug - Keeping Time

Fri, 16 Sep 2011 19:00:00 +0100

I recently procured a PogoPlug V2 from Ebay, hoping to use it as a small linux server for various tasks. A PogoPlug is a small internet-enabled device that allows attached external hard drives to be accessed from anywhere, whether on the local network or on the wider internet, with minimal hassle.

It’s architecture is open, and a flick of a checkbox allows you to SSH in. I decided to install Arch Linux for Arm, and found this to be pretty easy to do following their installation guide.

Unfortunately the PogoPlug does not have a hardware clock, and will consistently think it is 1st of January 1970 after reboots. Not very handy, especially as I was planning to use it to report measurements to external services, and this was time-sensitive.

So, to set the time on each reboot, I installed and enabled the Network Time Protocol client, ntp. Here’s how to do that, and how to set your timezone correctly.

First up, update the package manager to have the latest packages available. You may be asked if you want to update pacman itself, and a bunch of other stuff. In my case it grabbed the latest linux kernel version, and took a fair amount of time. Run this command a few times to make sure everything is the latest it can be.

pacman -Syu

Next up, install ntp.

pacman -S ntp

To enable ntp on startup, edit /edit/rc.conf, adding ntpd to the DAEMONS array, and removing hwclock.

# before: DAEMONS=(hwclock syslog-ng network netfs crond sshd) DAEMONS=(syslog-ng network netfs crond sshd ntpd)

Next you should configure ntp by editing /etc/ntp.conf. A list of local ntp servers can be found at http://www.pool.ntp.org/. I chose to use the UK servers.

Comment out any existing lines that begin with ‘server’, and add in those you want to use. Append iburst to the end, this specifies how the servers are polled.

server 0.uk.pool.ntp.org iburst server 1.uk.pool.ntp.org iburst server 2.uk.pool.ntp.org iburst server 3.uk.pool.ntp.org iburst

Next, set your timezone. A complete list of zones can be found in /usr/share/zoneinfo. I went with Europe/London. Edit the TIMEZONE variable in /etc/rc.conf, changing it to your chosen zone.

TIMEZONE="Europe/London"

Now restart.

reboot

That’s it! You should now have the correct time and timezone.

# date Fri Sep 16 19:58:09 BST 2011

SXC 2011 Round 5 - Perth

Wed, 07 Sep 2011 15:47:12 +0100

After partially rupturing a thumb ligament in June, I had several weeks off followed by several easy weeks on the bike. I rode 10 at Kirroughtree, but was suffering from thumb pain and cramp. The week after I started to feel niggles in my right knee, similar to my left knee earlier in the year. I rode the Selkirk Marathon anyway, and despite a painful hour or so in the middle, I finished second senior and eighth overall.

I planned to ride round the Perth SXC round, knowing it would likely involve lots of stops for stretching. Unfortunately the date I had in my calendar was still a provisional date, a week later than the actual event. 9pm on the Saturday night was very busy for me, giving the bike a quick wash and getting things together. Not ideal preparation, but then I wasn’t expecting much anyway.

On race day I rode a practice lap with Eddie Addis and Megasmith. The course was awesome, as I remember it being last year (on that occasion I ended up not racing due to illness, watching other people race was torture). Lots of rooty singletrack, steep up and down, and multiple tough climbs made for a great loop. It was dry too, ignoring the huge muddy puddle near the end.

On the start line it was just Rab Wardell, Chris Pedder and myself, not exactly the turnout of the year. Injuries had blighted the field, with Gareth having a broken collarbone, Dave a bad back, and Rob two broken wrists. Oh well.

Off the start line it was Rab that took the lead. I followed Chris’ wheel before jumping him into the first singletrack to get a clean run at the rooty climb. Rab disappeared about half a lap in, out of sight for the rest of the race. I could see Chris behind me for the first two laps, catching me on the climbs, with me putting a little time in on the descents.

By the third lap I couldn’t see Chris, so had to just plod round at my own pace, stopping on the fourth and fifth laps to stretch out my sciatic and ease the pain in my knee. I rolled in for a second place finish, Rab taking the win. Turns out Chris broke his rear mech, completing his clean run of DNFs at every SXC round.

I was pleased with second, but after trying for seven years to get on the podium, sometimes coming very close, it wasn’t the way I wanted to do it. On a more positive note the result meant that I finished second overall in the series, with Gareth taking the win.

Full results can be seen on the SXC website.

Glentress Seven 2011

Mon, 04 Jul 2011 17:44:05 +0100

As part of the Tweedlove festival week, there was a seven hour endurance race held at Glentress. Two days before the race I decided to enter the solo class, otherwise known as the nae-pals category.

To course was the best endurance course I’ve ever ridden. A fast smooth up to the Buzzards Nest car park, a small section of muddy descent at Pennel’s Vennel, followed by a huge climb back up to do blue velvet. A natural link took you into one of the old race links, then down a natural descent before the final off-camber descent to the transition area.

On the first lap I stayed below threshold, knowing there was a lot of riding ahead. I was in the first couple of riders, and took the front on the second big climb without putting an effort in. I came through the transition area in first, so it looked likely that my goal of getting the fastest lap was already dealt with.

On the second lap I sat with Iain Nimmo who was riding pairs, usual great banter from him on the way round. It started to rain on this lap, just lightly, but enough to grease things up a little. Unfortunately leaving the transition area for my third lap I slid-out on the first corner at fairly low speed. I got back up, and with encouragement from the likes of Martin Graham I got back on the bike and kept going. I had lost some skin from my knee and elbow, by hip and shoulder hurt, and for some reason the opposite thumb was agony.

For the third, fourth and fifth laps I went round with Martin Graham. We were doing good pace, keeping Rich Rothwell within striking distance. The rain continued, and things started to cool down. Before the sixth lap I stopped to put a Gilet on and take on more food than normal, so I lost touch with Martin. No problem, I was just riding to finish now.

On the eighth lap I came across Martin in one of the feed stops, looking very cold and sore. He’d caught Rich, but then crashed on the final descent at the end of lap 7. Nasty. As I was talking to him I notice Barry Wilson riding by, but didn’t really pay that much attention to it. I continued on that lap, went out for a ninth, and finished in six hours and 51 minutes.

Rich won the overall, and was first vet. Barry was second overall, first senior. I was third overall, second senior, plus I got the fastest lap.

A great day out, I really hope they do it again next year as it is great antidote to all the dull endurance courses out there. I’ll definitely consider support next year, as having to stop on every lap to pick up food and the likes cost a fair amount of time over the whole race.

The aftermath: The next morning I went to A&E to get my thumb checked out, nothing broken, but a partial-rupture of the ligament. Two weeks off the bike with a splint. I can ride again now, but certain situations make it pretty sort, I just have to be careful. Decided not to enter the British XC Champs as a result of this. These things happen.

Full results.
Photos from Ian Linton on the BBC.

SXC 2011 Round 3 - Comrie Croft

Wed, 15 Jun 2011 19:32:58 +0100

Round four of the SXC series was at the fantastic Comrie Croft trails, a trailcentre, but none of that gravelled mince. A steep double-track to start, onto some grassy switchbacks (more headwinds here, what is it with races this year!). Another steep double-track up, then down a little. Then the real stuff started, a steep switchback single-track with some great little exposed rock sections, a fast descent to a burn then back onto a muddy double-track with plenty of line choice needed to stay out of the mire. Down some steep rocky single-track, then a fast twisty moorland descent before a super steep double-track section back to the start-finish.

I got a good start, slotting in behind Gareth, Dave and Rab (the return of Rabulous!). On the double-track climb I passed Rab, but Gareth and Dave were already pulling ahead by this point. In a similar manner to Aberfoyle I had the mince dialed high for the first two laps, as I was hitting every bad line on the descent. I pulled over to let Rab past, but he’d had a bit of an issue so I was letting Rob past instead, no problem, he was on good pace.

Rab made it back on the climb, then I lost the pair of them when I unshipped a chain at the bottom of the single-track climb. More time lost as I crashed on the descent avoiding a backmarker, I was on my own from then on.

The later laps went a lot better, the last being pretty tough as the course had taken it’s toll on me. I rolled in for fifth, nine minutes down on the winner, another solid result. Gareth took the win, a nightshift tired Dave second, Rab third, and Rob fourth.

More at the full results.

Nutcracker 2011 Round 2 - Aske

Tue, 14 Jun 2011 18:50:06 +0100

The second round of the Nutcracker was held on the same course as is to be used for the 2011 British XC Championships, and is within a ten minute drive of Emma’s dad’s house, so accommodation was sorted.

The course itself was pretty disappointing. A bumpy grassy start into a headwind, a small descent to a burn crossing, some fast flat grass, a steep grassy climb of about two minutes, followed by a fast descent on grass, through some fields, a few sections of wiggly, loamy singletrack, and a finish into the headwind. I hear there have been some changes for the champs course, but short of adding another climb or a few weeks of torrential rain, it’s going to be a course for the powerful boys.

The expert and junior categories start together, a few minutes behind the elites. I got a decent start, sitting in about fifth before pushing to the front for the little descent. On the flat section I lost contact with two small groups that formed at the front. An ill Niall Frost followed me round on the first lap, filming for his XCRacer report, but sadly the camera was pointing the wrong way and the footage was a right-off.

On the second lap I caught the second group containing Hamish Fletcher-Cooney [expert], Joe Home [junior] and my teammate Scott Lynsey [junior]. I thought Joe was riding expert, I’m sure he was wondering why I let him work lots into the headwind then jumped him into the singletrack. On the fourth lap I decided to really push on and try and catch the front runners, but this just resulted in Scott blowing his doors.

On the final lap I popped a little at the end, and Joe put around 30 seconds into me. I finished 2nd expert, just over two minutes down on local lad Tom Stewart. I was pleased with the result, but a bit disappointed in the course.

Thanks to Emma and her dad for the support.

Full results are available on the Nutcracker site.

SXC 2011 Round 2 - Aberfoyle

Thu, 12 May 2011 12:48:34 +0100

Aberfoyle is a bit of a classic venue on the SXC circuit, having seen a number of different courses on it’s steep hillside over the years. This year saw the return of the dreaded Heart Attack Hill (HAH), a steep bottom-gear climb of several minutes, mostly on slippy surfaces. Those of a weaker demeanour could opt-out, and take the forestry road itself, though this came with a small time penalty due to it’s distance.

The first section of descent was down an off-camber technical loamy section, lots of roots and rocks to put the unwary offline. There was a short forestry road sprint after this, followed by a super-fast rutted descent, across the forestry road at the bottom, and onto a supremely hard off-camber traverse before joining the forestry road again. A minute of high-speed big-ring gentle descent took you to the last section of singletrack, being fast singletrack with some tight turns and plenty of line choices in it.

At the start things went pretty steady, a group of six at the front; Gareth (GT Racing UK), Rob Friel, Si Ernest (AW Cycles) [who I initially thought was Chris Pedder after a growth spurt], Niall Frost (XC Racer) and James FM (Pedal Power). On the first lap we were to avoid HAH and go round the forestry road. Once we got to the steep sections Gareth started to float away, with James and I giving some chase before Si finally engaged the after-burners and gave Gareth a proper chase.

Down the first few descents James was apologising profusely for getting in the way, not that I was bothered as I for some reason had the mince dialled up high for the first two laps, before finally getting it together on the third lap. Niall came past me on the second lap, mentioning something about me getting him back on the climbs.

By the fifth lap I could still see Niall, and could see he was having a bit of trouble on HAH, as he got off then managed (much respect for this) to get on and get going again. By the end of the lap I had caught him, had a bit of legsplosion related banter, then dropped him along the forestry road to the bottom of HAH.

Gareth took the win, Si was second, Rob third, James fourth, myself fifth and Niall sixth.

Thanks to Emma for doing my bottles, and I-Cycles and Innerleithen MTB Racing for the help and support. Also thanks to Norman and the rest of the chaps at Squadra Porcini for the great course, and the SXC volunteers for the great event.

Full results are on the SXC website.

Other reports can be had from Si and Niall.

Technical Aside: When building my new bike I had a lot of concern for two races on the calendar with respect to gearing; this one, and the Selkirk Marathon. For as long as I’ve run 9 speed I used the standard 44-32-22 chainset and 11-32 cassette. Switching to a double limits both the top-end and the bottom end. The top-end isn’t a worry, but the bottom end is. HAH was only really doable for me in the granny ring last year, though I did manage it in practice using the middle ring, but decided it was too hard on my legs for six laps. I ended up going for a 40-28 chainset and a 11-34 cassette. This gave me a 21.41 inch gear as opposed to the 18.56 inch gear on the double. Turns out that this was more than low enough, worst fears averted. Much respect for Si Ernest who raced on a single ring, giving him a 36:36 lowest gear.

BMBS 2011 Round 2 - Dalby Forest

Tue, 19 Apr 2011 09:12:19 +0100

I’m a big fan of the course at Dalby. If they made the descents actually technical rather than just scary-looking and bumpy, I’d be even more keen. Again the course followed the World Cup course, but with some shortening near the beginning of the lap, and missing out the pointless BMX track near the end. I believe it is going to get this way for the World Cup in May, in order to come under the UCI 6 km course length limit (Dalby just makes this, being 5.9 km).

I was in the third row for the start, after my poor performance at Sherwood Pines a few weeks before. The rider directly in front of me missed his pedal, and stopped dead, so the entire field went past on the line. With some elbows out I managed to get back into the top 30.

Down the first little descent a cheeky inside line saw me overtake Nick Evans (see Sherwood Pines post). Up the first climb I took another couple of riders, then took about 7-8 riders on the grassy section back past the feed zone. There’s a 8ft high steep rocky slab you ride up early on in the race, if you hit it with speed off the forestry road you get some air at the top. Some numpty cut up a group of riders in front of me, then failed to make it over the top, so it was a case of running up this for me due to the knot of riders. The climb out of Worry Gill (the first time) saw me make a few more places on the super-steep climb, then a surge at the top of the Medusa’s Drop climb saw me take another few riders.

I settled down after this, though my second lap was the fastest just because there was no-one in the way. I cleaned the rocky steps out of Worry Gill (on the second time, going back to the arena) only on the third lap, every other time people running got in the way. Seriously, if you can’t ride it, take the chicken route. Your technical inferiority should not put me off when there are alternatives available.

A few little battles later on in the race saw me on my own for the last lap, and I can in 8th, around 5 minutes down on the winner. Super happy with this result, definitely a sign that things are back on track. A lot of it is the course, it’s so easy to get my head in gear when the course is challenging and I know there is more than just pure horsepower at play.

This was the second (third if you include the Pentlands Trailquest) outing for my 2011 race bike, the Rocky Mountain Element RSL. On this course it was the business (Geoff Kabush won the senior race on a very similarily specced one), light and well-behaved enough for the climbs, and able to swallow up anything on the descents and flat sections. I’ll have a full post on this soon.

Full results courtesy of TimeLaps.

BMBS 2011 Round 1 - Sherwood Pines

Mon, 18 Apr 2011 11:58:09 +0100

Due to knee issues in February, I was never going to repeat my stellar result from 2010, but did hope to do at least get a top-10. The latest iteration of the popular Sherwood Pines course was shortened and had lost anything that you would call a climb. It was a pure dirt crit, all accelerations, with little on the course to benefit less strong, and more technically adept riders.

I was gridded on the front row, but was losing places fast off the start. I tried to settle but was having a hard time winding things up on the forestry road sections. One amusement in the first lap was having someone pass me into one of the twisty-bombhole sections, and then slow right up. I shouted at them to get a move on, stopping short of making some sort of roadie-scum comment. They pulled over and let me past, result! Turns out they thought I was a junior, and couldn’t make out what I was actually shouting.

I slowly faded throughout the race, not really feeling the love for the course. I knew I was having a bad day when on the fourth lap I was passed by Nick Evans, at this point, all enthusiasm was gone.

I rolled in for 27th, 9 minutes down on winner Lee Westwood.

Full results courtesy of TimeLaps.

SXC 2011 Round 1 - Kirroughtree

Thu, 31 Mar 2011 10:15:06 +0100

Arriving on the Saturday to pre-ride the course, we were met with dry and pleasant conditions. The course was bone dry, with the majority being man-made trails or forestry roads, with some natural linking sections. I found it pretty dull, and was not-so secretly hoping for rain overnight to spice things up a bit.

I got my wish, it bucketed it down overnight, so much so the first singletrack climb was now a run, around 250m per lap. I missed my pedal at the start, but managed to get on the back of the pain train, AKA Gareth Montgomerie, Dave Henderson and Kenta Gallagher. I only held them for about the first kilometer, and out of the top of the running section they shot off. Rob Friel came past about halfway through the lap, using his power on the forestry road sections after a slow start. I settled in for a long one.

On the second lap I slid-out as I rejoined the forestry road after the running section, there was a lot of mud dragged out onto it, but only lost time and kept the impact on my side to a minimum. I dropped my bottle a bit further up, this lap was not going well. I was then with James Fraser-Moodie for the rest of the lap, before getting dropped by him the next time up the run on the third lap.

By the time I got to the fifth and final lap I managed to pick things up a bit, cutting a minute off my previous lap time, even though I stopped to pick up my earlier dropped bottle. I rolled in for fifth, not bad considering my knee issues in February.

Gareth took the win in an exciting sprint with Dave. James had overhauled Rob to take third. Full results on the SXC site.

Innerleithen MTB TT 2011

Wed, 16 Mar 2011 11:43:25 +0000

The TT was the final round of the Innerleithen MTB Racing Proper Mountain Bike Series.

Year on year the course for this course has been progressed in terms of the level of demand it puts on competitors. This year it not only featured the first descent from the Enduro, but also some fresh cut descents off Minch Moor, and a resulting 940m of climbing.

I pre-rode on Saturday with Dave Henderson, and to make the course more difficult, we were treated to snow on the ground and constant rain for the two hours that it took us to go round. The course was great though, and I knew that it was going to be a smasher the next day.

On sunday the weather was much warmer, so warm the jacket got ditched in favour of a gilet. I was off about 50th, and the snow was only on the sides of the trail higher up, so nothing to worry about there.

I started hard, after having a good warmup. I pulled back about 20 seconds on my minute-man, Gary McCrae, within the first few minutes, finding I was quicker on the steeper sections, but wasn’t gaining any ground when it flattened out. On the top section of the pushup track my chain went over the top of the cassette, so I had to fix it then get going again on the 30% slope. Down the first descent I was behind Gary, then lost a bit of time by going off-piste for a while.

Gary was gone, and by the time I got to the quarry section, I couldn’t see him at all, so suspected I may have passed him somehow. Turns out he’d missed some markings and bashed on up a fireroad for five minutes. I kept the hammer down, all the way up Minch Moor. The next section of descent of minch moor was pretty steep in places, and I felt like I was more skiing the bike than riding it down. I kept my feet up the whole time, unlike the day before when I was making some sort of human tripod.

The climb out of the bottom was pretty brutal, with a steep section of the Southern Upland Way. Near the top of this at the crop-circles I got passed by Gareth, who had caught me for almost ten minutes. I tried to hold onto his wheel on the flat muddy section, even following has rather off-piste line to avoid the mud, but could only hold him for about a minute.

After this it was down through Plora Graig rock gardens, then out onto the uplift track. I motored up there, slowed a little bit to chat with Chris Herraghty over the top, then chased Dave as he passed us both. Just the last descent to go, and that was over pretty quickly.

I ended up in third place in 1:32:08, 10 minutes down on Dave, with Gareth in first by 18 seconds. I was pretty pleased with my result considering the time off I had to take in February, though a ten minute gap to the next rider is huge.

Thanks to Helen, Steve, Dan and their team of helpers and marshals for a great event.

Full results.

Threadsafe File Consistency in Ruby

Sun, 13 Feb 2011 16:11:46 +0000

A large part of the work in the 0.7.0 release of Acts As Indexed was in guaranteeing the consistency of the index files which may be written to by many processes. I shall split this into two halfs: atomic writes, and locking writes.

I talk mostly of processes here, since most Rails hosting implementations at the moment employ multiple processes, though the same methodologies can be applied to threads.

Atomic Writes

An example: Say we have one process which writes to a file, and many processes which may be reading from that same file. If we do a simple write, it is possible that one of the reading processes may see a half-written file. While digging through the Rails source I discovered a monkey-patch on the Ruby File class which added a method called atomic_write.

The basic operation of this as is follows:

Write to a temporary file.
Move that temporary file to be the actual file we want to write to.

Since we are delegating the move operation to a system call, we can almost guarantee that any process reading the file will only see a fully written one, since all that is being changed during the move is a pointer to the file’s physical location on disk. A simple implementation of this would be thus:

require 'fileutils'

def atomic_write(path, temp_path, content)
  File.open(temp_path, 'w+') do |f|
    f.write(content)
  end

  FileUtils.mv(temp_path, path)
end

The Rails implementation goes a lot further than this, creating a tempfile in the OS mandated location, and making sure the newly written file has the same permissions as the original file.

Locking Writes

Another example: We have many processes, all of which can write to the same file. Our processes first read the file, and then make some change to it. A race condition for this looks as follows.

Process A reads the file.
Process B reads the file.
A makes changes and writes these.
B makes changes and writes these.

In this example, changes made by A are lost. The solution to this is to use locks, which are provided by the Ruby File class via the flock method.

def lock(path)
  # We need to check the file exists before we lock it.
  if File.exist?(path)
    File.open(path).flock(File::LOCK_EX)
  end

  # Carry out the operations.
  yield

  # Unlock the file.
  File.open(path).flock(File::LOCK_UN)
end

We can combine this with the atomic_write method as follows:

lock('my_file') do
  atomic_write('my_file', 'my_file.tmp', 'Hello, World!')
end

Rails’ file store has a great implementation of this pattern, which automatically unlocks the file again in case of an exception while the lock is applied.

Innerleithen Enduro 2011

Sun, 06 Feb 2011 16:12:53 +0000

Innerleithen MTB Racing are for 2011 putting on the Proper Mountain Bike Series. It features an enduro, a push-up downhill and the traditional Alistair Lees Memorial TT.

First up was the enduro. The basic idea of this is timed descents from the highest point of the downhill tracks, riding back to the top. There is a time limit on the total time, but I doubt you’d have problems with that even on a DH bike.

I entered, and only having the one MTB at the moment, I used a XC race hardtail with 100mm SIDs on it. Most other people were on 5-6” travel bikes, probably the ideal machine.

The first stage had a rough start followed my a more mellow second half. The second stage was flat to begin with, went through the Plora Craig rock gardens, then finished on the super steep ‘Classic’ section. The third was down some of the easier DH runs.

I went very early, and posted a time just under 27 minutes. The fastest chaps were doing it in 18 minutes, and fellow XCers on more appropriate bikes were doing it in around 20. I was a little disappointed with the result, but had to be objective about it given the handicap the bike provided.

On the other hand, it was possibly one of the best MTB events I have ever taken part in. The atmosphere and banter with other competitors was spot on, the riding (including the climbs) was fantastic, and the organisation was clockwork.

Using Bundler With Rails 1.2

Thu, 03 Feb 2011 12:39:45 +0000

Bundler has truly been a revolution in how dependencies for Ruby projects are managed. The Bundler site provides a guide for using it with Rails 2.3 and Rails 3, but not Rails 1.2.

This won’t matter for most people, but if you have clients on older Rails versions, it can be nice to manage dependencies in the same manner across all installations.

So here’s how you do it:

1. Create a new Rails 2.x app, and copy it’s config/boot.rb across to your 1.2 app.

2. Make the VendorBoot#load_initializer() method look like the following:

class VendorBoot

3. Follow the Rails 2.3 Bundler guide for the rest.

I’ve only tested this setup with Webrick, Mongrel and Passenger, using Rails 1.2.6, so your mileage may vary.

Prevent EC2 Instance Termination

Thu, 13 Jan 2011 15:17:10 +0000

Ever accidentally deleted an EC2 instance? Save yourself a lot of trouble and use the following API tools command:

ec2-modify-instance-attribute --disable-api-termination true i-01d3e23b

Swap in your own instance ID for best effect.

Run the same command again with the boolean switched to false to allow deletion.

2010 Racing Wrapup

Thu, 30 Dec 2010 12:40:00 +0000

I’ve not posted since May. Since then I have started many event reports, but never got round to finishing them. Hence I have here a quick summary of the year’s highlights, together with some thanks to all the great folks that have helped me out.

I had some good results this year, especially at the beginning of the year where I managed to train properly:

I had a second place at the Sherwood Pines BMBS.
In May, Jack Richards an I rode ourselves into the ground for third place at Ten Under the Ben. Some more endurance work, and probably setting a less fearsome pace, might have seen us hold onto the lead.
July saw me riding for the Glencroft Rabble to the win at Twentyfour12 in the 24 hour senior category. Jack Richards, Ewan Thorburn, Gavin Shirley and Jamie Maxwell were incredible teammates. Special thanks to Gav and Ewan for sharing the 20 hours of driving to Plymouth and back.
In August I took the win at the 4th round of the Nutcracker MTB series. After a start straight tangle with the lane-rope I got up and rode the legs off myself to catch and pass everyone but Tom Bell who unfortunately broke his front mech and had to withdraw. The cramp in the last km was not enjoyable.
Also in August I had my best ever ride at the Selkirk Marathon. Top 10, 4h 15min and some great company on the way round in the form of Martin Graham, Greig Walker, John McCaffery and Roy Hunt.
Second place in the inaugural Edinburgh 48 race was quite pleasing. Was just like the old days, with Rab Wardell taking the win.

Huge thanks to my sponsors:

Steve at i-Cycles in Innerleithen. Great coffee is served hourly.
Helen at Innerleithen MTB racing. I hear she’s making a comeback in 2011.
Steve Parr at MSC UK for the pit support at BMBS races.

Many thanks go to Emma for putting up with my pre-race anxiety, and my folks for the support at races. Also Becks for doing my bottles at Sherwood, and Paul Newnham for running to the second feed zone to hand up a bottle I missed.

Finally thanks to all the people who come to, organise, and support racing.

Here’s to the 2011 season.