Forest Products Challenge Llandegla

This new event for the forest industry kicked off at the Llandegla trail centre in North Wales.

Teams of 4 riders rode 2 laps of the 12 mile red / black route with honors going to the quickest total time for the team.

Fifteen teams from across the country took part including one representing FC Scotland and riding in 7stanes colours (Gibb forgot his 7stanes top so rode in the colours of the local Hard Rock club)

The trail was new to me so we headed down for a course inspection the day before. The first 3.3 miles was a steady climb on a wide track with easy overtaking before the single track kicked in. Some fast flowing riding with plenty of kickers and berms and a few steep climbs - the race the next day was going to be fun!

Next morning we had an early breakfast and short drive to the trail head to sign on and warm up for the start in our teams of four at minute intervals; we were twelfth off.

Across the line and the race was on to pass as many as possible on the long climb before hitting in to the singletrack sections. I caught and passed most of the slower riders and had a fairly clear run for the rest of the lap.

In to lap two and I took a wrong turn (how? the race arrows were big enough). This allowed another rider to catch and pass me. I sat on his rear wheel for most of the climb but he dropped me just before the top (he did recorded the fastest lap time of 57 min).

The descents seemed to flow better on the second lap but the climbs were harder as I started to tire, time to dig deep.

The final decent saw me safely home followed by the rest of the team and into 3rd place.

If you haven't visited Llandegla it's well worth a try. The black sections are not really technical, if you can ride 7stanes red you will have no problems, just watch out for those kickers!