Alpine Bikes Winter series - round 3, Innerleithen

4pm Friday evening, I got a text saying, your Santa Cruz V10 has arrived, in total excitement I drop everything and head from Heriot Watts library to Rock and Road cycles in Bridge of Allan. I ordered the frame in February and after 2 months of waiting I was desperate for it, I’d out grown my Commencal and at 6 foot 2 was ready for a XL frame. That evening was spent assembling the bike with help from Alpine Bikes mechanic and Videographer Stuz Leel, I finished at 1 30 am, with just a few tweaks left for the morning!

I awoke to the sound of rain on the window of our flat, it was to be another wet morning another bit of bike set up, bowl of porridge and I was off to Innerleithen by 8 30. With no idea what the track was I took a gentle roll down the track sussed a few lines out and was overall pretty happy with both initial set up and how the track looked.

The track was a mix of everything and was pretty testing, a lot of physically demanding sections, pedalling as well as some awesome turns nearer the bottom, a good time was a going to be sub 3 30.

With a solid 5 practise runs in I was pretty happy with where I was going and the bike set up, the track was drying up and rolling a little faster. I headed home, washed the bike and gave it a quick check over. With Edinburgh being fairly near to Innerleithen I had some guests staying, Dan Critchlow, Callum Dew, Scotty Mears and James Hughes, we hit the pool for a while and then headed into town for a Mexican. After the meal, we got a taxi home and went straight to bed for a early night.

In the morning, a large bowl of porridge, loaded up the van and I headed to Inners. It hadn’t rained overnight, so the track was almost dry. I did a solid 2 practise runs and was feeling comfortable on the bike.

Run 1 went well, a couple of small mistake, but was generally, pretty solid and all flowed well together, I went in to 6^th place 6 seconds back on the winner Adam Brayton.

In the break between runs it started raining pretty hard just as Juniors finished, it carried on raining until we got to the top, I went 2 seconds slower as did most elites, all positions remained the same as no one managed to go quicker.

All in all, another great weekends racing, thanks; to Matt at Alpine for spannering for me and all my sponsors; Leatt, Nema, Renthal, Mojo, Gamut USA, Crank Brothers and POC sports.

I head to Finale Ligure, Italy tomorrow for 10 days riding with Dominik Gspan and a few others for some pre-season riding, which I’m really looking forward too.

I’ll update you when I’m there!

Cheers,

Scotty