More podium action....Erlestoke 12

After Andy's recent SS Champion podium appearance, the pressure was on for Nick & Rich to deliver at Erlestoke 12 in the 12hr pairs race.

Despite a rather wet Friday, the course was absolutely bone dry on the Saturday, and proved to be a fun-packed mix of rooty, twisty singletrack, with a few sharp climbs thrown in for good measure.

Employing a one-on, one-off tactic,  the laps steadily went by, and despite a number of issues with the timing systems, Nick and Rich ended up on the podium with a third place.

The efforts to level the number of podium appearances with Andy were sadly unsuccessful however, as  earlier on in the day, he'd pulled off yet another podium appearance with a third place in the 6 hour Singlespeed category!

Note - small person not part of third prize package

 

 

Some catch-up news from earlier in the month:

 Nick Towers picked up an excellent fourth place for the team in the Enduro 6 six-hour mountain bike race at Catton Park. Towers was competing in his first endurance race of the season – and his first for Naked Bikes – and had been looking for a top-10 finish from the 80 riders.
However, his consistency over the ride saw him do considerably better than that, and four hours into the event he was running in fifth place.
He managed to pick up one more position and even shaved a minute from his lap time on the final circuit.

Nick's result is even more impressive given that he obviously had to overcome the mental reluctance to ever race at Catton Park again after 2012's Sleepless in the Saddle event, where the course conditions resembled a World War 1 trench system!

 

A Champion in our midst!

Naked Bikes Cycle Shop Rider Andy Faulknall won the Midland Single Speed XC championship held at Wyre Forest near Kidderminster this past weekend

Andy took the win by 15 minutes from second place Alex Martin of Mountain 2 Mountain cycle team .

Andy rode a solid race to take the championship for himself and Naked Bikes on a very tough and challenging course

In other news, Nick Towers put in a solid ride and came in 21st in Veteran Male class. Paul Daniels in sport class finished in 35th with Ben Piringer in 36th

Overall a great weekend racing for the MTB Team.

Naked Bikes Director Paul Daniels said : We are still in the first year of MTB Racing as a Mountain Bike team and we already have a regional champion in the team! We have a great bunch of riders who go out every week and push themselves to the limit and we have a great atmosphere in the team who support each other at all the events . It is the endurance events where our team will do well and these start next week with the Erlestoke Twelve hour endurance race where the team will be going for a podium position.

A start....

The members of the Naked Bikes Race Team are not new to racing, but they are new to blogging!

As a brief introductory first post, here's a snap of Rich Edge at Exposure 12/24 (The European Solo Champs), where he finished 8th Vet. Despite his bike violently clashing with his kit, and being soundly beaten by a chap on a fatbike, he was quite pleased with the result.