UXC Round 3 – Ballykelly forest & Fred Whitton Challenge

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Dromara CC’s offroaders headed up to the north coast on Sunday to take part in round 3 of the Ulster XC series. Missing from last year’s calendar, Ballykelly made a welcome return to the 2016 series as It is always a popular venue with the racers.

Heavy rain the day before the race left the course very testing. Slippery surface mud and plenty of wet roots where the mud was missing had most of our racers very excited, as the conditions were practically identical to their standard training ground at rainy Friday night club league.

Rylee Broome was first off in the U6 race and finished in 5^th place, with big sister Lexie off next in the Under 8 race, taking an excellent 3^rd place.
Ben Wilson was next up, on his new 29er, taking a brilliant 3^rd place on the podium. Big things to come once he gets more used to the bigger wheels for the next few rounds. Best of all, now him and the aul fella can talk to each other on the way to races again since they are both 29er sell outs, probably about how badly the big wheels corner but how fast they are in straight lines.

Derek Miniss broke into the top 10 of the S4 field again with a good solid performance. Paul Hamilton (Plush MTB Dromara CC) came home with 4^th place, yet again narrowly missing out on the podium. Andra Ungureanu (Plush MTB Dromara CC) took to the line in S3 Ladies. More bike tinkering and a new warm up routine didn’t work out as well as expected, but she still managed 6^th place and has since decided to join #TeamProCommute, in an effort to raise her fitness up a notch of two.

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The Senior 3 men’s race had Davy Broome, Brian Wilson and Adi Booth battling it out for honours. Davy had to suffer that awkward moment after crossing the line, when he realised he had won by almost 4 minutes…
Brian continued his good form with an 8^th place finish and Adi, still recovering mentally and physically from a recent crash, finished in 12^th place.

Peter Davison had a great result, finishing in 3^rd spot in the junior men’s race, which was set off seconds after the Senior 1 men’s race. I know this, because they came past me at an alarming rate, ruining any chance us Old Boys had of easing ourselves into the race. As soon as they came past, it all kicked off with attacks, crashes and hilarious line choices the order of the opening lap. As things settled down I ended up racing with Tomasz Michalski for 3^rd/4^th place, until I seen Gareth McKee in the pits with sealant spraying out of his tyre. I lifted the pace in an effort to get a buffer of a gap on him as I knew he would be back in action any minute. Subsequently I managed to distance Tomasz a little, and McKee took longer than expected to get going again so I managed to come away with 2^nd place. With Graham Boyd taking top step, quite a way ahead.

Well done to everyone representing the club and a big thanks to Caldwell cycles for hosting the event and thanks to Marcus Cromie for the photos. Full results are here.

Club League resumes this Friday night with a round of EnduroLite^TM

Next up in the open race season is the Combined UXC/NPS race at Lady Dixon on the 22^nd May, hosted by XMTB.

Fred Whitton Challenge

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Finally with such a busy weekend of events a couple of club members made a trip across the water to take on the Fred Whitton Challenge. What is that I hear you ask….well here is a link to the route. To say it is hilly is an understatement but young Paul Mawhirt and Mike Barton love a challenge. So after 8 plus hours on the bike we managed to get a quote from Mike that we could publish ‘Brutal!’. Look above and you can see he loves it!

Awesome achievement lads and well done to Deon McNeilly (shimna cc) and Mark Kendall (Banbridge cc) who made up the quartet.

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