Weekender

Singletrack Classic Weekender, Lee Quarry, Lancashire, July 2nd-4th 2010

• 3 different races
• 1 bike
• The ultimate “all rounder” event

The idea of the event is a light hearted competition to find the best all round mountain biker and for riders to work out where they stand in a test of skills, speed and endurance.

The disciplines – XC, Downhill and Classic Trials:

There will be three events in the Classic Weekender that will lead riders to an overall position. It’s roughly based on the old ‘NEMBA’ races, where one entry fee got you entry to three disciplines – the only difference being that in this event, all your performances count towards a final, overall position.

Classic Trials:

Modern trials riders are fantastically skilled, riding impossible obstacles. However, this event is aimed at mere-mortals. There will be five simple, taped off, sections to ride, resembling ‘normal’ mountain bike obstacles (with a couple of ‘modern’ additions). Once ‘on course’ you have 15 seconds to ride each section. A foot down, crash or leaving the course is an instant ‘kill’.

Singletrack Classic Weekender – Trials from Singletrack Magazine on Vimeo.

A clean ride between the tapes is a ‘clear’. For every ‘kill’, you will earn a time penalty for the following day’s cross country race, added up after the five sections. Nothing too serious, probably a couple of minutes per ‘kill’, but enough to give you a hard time to make up.

Downhill:

Downhillers, again, are fierce riders, capable of clearing huge gaps and big drops. The downhill race at the Classic Weekender will be for more mortal riders, and doable on any bike from a hardtail to a monster DH bike – just remember that you’ll have to race whichever bike you choose in the following day’s XC… Smooth all-round riding will get you a better time than just being fearless.

Singletrack Classic Weekender – Downhill from Singletrack Magazine on Vimeo.

For this event, there will be a ‘benchmark’ time declared. If you’re within a certain percentage of this time, you miss getting a penalty. The further from the time you are, the bigger your time penalty at the following day’s event.

Once again, the penalties won’t be too severe – and the penalty for not doing a discipline at all will be far stiffer… Even crashing or puncturing will get you a better score than not turning up.

XC:

The Sunday will host the cross country races for the various age categories. The start of these will be handicapped so that riders with perfect scores from the Saturday will start on time, followed a minute later by riders with a minute’s penalty, and so on until the riders with the maximum penalty score bring up the rear. The race then goes on for 90 minutes or so, with the winners of those races being crowned as the overall champion of the event – and the best overall mountain bikers in the land.

Find out more and enter this Classic event.

New Info:

Camping: Yes, there is FREE camping at the weekend from Friday evening onwards. There will be camping in the quarry itself, with fresh water and toilets. As it’s a rock quarry, bring a comfy air mattress, but we reckon there are enough flat, smooth places for everyone. Due to the limited access to the quarry itself though, you’ll have to park at the bottom of the hill at the Kingfisher Centre (where we’ll have 24 hour security) and lug your stuff up to the quarry itself. To help this, we’ll be running a Land Rover and trailer shuttle every half hour or so on Friday evening and Saturday morning. If you’re going to be arriving late on Friday, it might be worth bringing a wheelbarrow

Marshaling:

We’re on the lookout for marshals for the event. If you’d like to volunteer, please email Mark at his singletrackworld.com address and let him know when you’re free. Marshals are particularly needed on Saturday 10am-5pm and for the XC on Sunday (around 11am-3pm depending on the size of the race, more below). We’ll need you at a marshal briefing at 9.30am on Saturday and 10am on Sunday. You’ll get to borrow a snazzy yellow vest and we’ll keep you well-fed.

Timings, racing and trials:

Trials: After our dress rehearsal last week, we reckon that it’s going to be only fair to let you practice the trials and to seed yourself for the downhill. The trials will be set up by 6pm on Friday evening and will be open for practice until 10am-ish Saturday morning. After that, the competition starts…

For the downhill, we will have the downhill marked and marshaled from 10am Saturday morning. You have three hours to have a go at the DH and to work out what your rough time will be (we’ll have clocks so you can work it out) – you can then present your rough self-seed time at signing-on and we’ll arrange your start time accordingly. If you’re not that bothered about the chance you might get stuck behind a slower rider, then feel free to ignore this and we’ll set you off near the back with everyone else.

Sunday’s XC race timing is dependent on numbers. If we have fewer than 150 racers (we’re getting near that number now…) then we’ll have a single XC race for all classes at noon. If we have more than 150 racers, then we might split the field into under-40 and over-40 and have two races. The first at 11.30am and the second at 1pm. Both races will be 4 laps of the course (roughly 1hr for the fast folks).

More info will appear here as we have it…