A day spent not pedalling

Johnnie went and signed us up for an uplift day at Ae Forest (scotlandshire) think he just wanted an excuse to visit the motherland. Mark, who hates riding uphill, unbelievably couldn't make it but Ryan the part time downhiller took his place so along with Si the 4 of us headed up there. With the exception of Ryan we had the weediest bikes there but with his full facer and borrowed body armour Johnnie looked the part - if you ignored his tights. First run down we were advised to go down the shredder but we had been warned thee were some do or die sections on bot runs and they weren't signposted (gulp). Shredder is like llandegla or lee quarry on steroids, bigger drops, bigger jumps, steeper switchbacks but similarly flowy and eggs you on to go faster. We saw the DHers ahead stopped at the fireroad jump a 4-5ft drop where you tired to clear a fireroad and land on the downslope. We watched a DHer come up short and bottom out very harshly on the flat (on an 8" travel bike) hmm. 2nd run down on a whim I went for it, again came up short and bottomed out big time, got full travel on my forks (1st time ever!) and tweaked my knee. 3rd time I didn't bother but Ryan did, he was short too and slammed down, Johnnie came round the corner and stopped next to it, then Si came tearing round the corner I thought bloody hell he's going for it! Nope he'd forgotten it was there, too slow, nose heavy his front wheel pile drived into the ground followed by his head - not good. He got up feeling OK-ish but his glasses had cut pretty bad into his ear, tacoed front wheel, I stamped on it till it was true enough to roll, helped him fit a new tube then he minced down and off to A&E. We were late for the uplift so I charged down, properly quick, barely in control but made it back incident free and in time for the bus.

The downhill run was more technical, rooty and rocky with some tight switchbacks oh and a HUUUUGE stepdown which we looked at and said no way. It was good to see that on the tech stuff similar to what we normally ride we were a similar speed to the downhillers, then on the silly big drops and jumps they kept going while we minced. After 7 runs down Ryan was threatening to sit one out as he was tired....tired he's 22 he should be able to sit on a bus and ride down a hill FFS. Actually by then my hands were getting tired, braking was hard work, anyway we persuaded him mocked him till he relented. We did the shredder again and this time tried the log ride, Ryan went 1st I followed, from the start it was looking bad, was going to fall to the left but hung on and recovered then started to go right argh, tried to keep on but no chance, so jump off bike or ride/drop off? Jump/drop/jump/drop eek, I dropped, nearly landed it too but bars twisted and threw me off, Ryan cleaned it git! The last few runs we had it dialled and ripped down, really good fun, DH was good but shredder was better, so many jumps/drops to fades where you seems to be in the air for ages then touch down smoothly and I was getting some proper height and length on the tabletops. Managed to clear the fireroad gap on the last run aswell. Feeling rather battered today but will be going back next year, maybe a trip to innerleithan aswell.