Saturday 5th August and only a short trip of 22 miles to Silton Forest near Thirsk in North Yorkshire for practice day of the Silton Downhill Race.
With no uplift until race day it meant plenty of pushing up the hill in quite hot and humid conditions. The course itself, although
built on an existing track has been considerably altered, with the addition of new jumps and berms, giving the track plenty of variation
in its short
length.
Practice went well, with various comments made on just how were they going to beat that lad on the Nicolai, all coming from riders in the 18+ category.
Sunday 6th August and we arrive at the course at 8.00am to set up our gear and check the bike before signing on and heading for a couple of practice runs to refresh the memory and build up the speed ready for racing. There were 3 race categorys on the day, 12-15, 16-18 and 18+
Race run 1, pedalling away from the start and straight over a tabletop with a short gap before a fast stepdown leading you through the
tight trees and onto the road for a short pedal on the flat to put you into the middle section. This section is a complete change with
rocks and roots combining with flat corners to test your skills before heading down the slope and another stepdown takes you over the
2nd road gap and onto section 3. Fast through the trees round the berms brings you to the elevator, stay to the right here and avoid
the tree in the middle of the track. Next is the off camber part, muddy and rooty you need to keep your wits about you here, then its
over the bridge and onto the pedals for the hip jump then back on the pedals for the last 2 berms and the jump into the finish line.
Although a good clean run the timing gear wasn’t working properly so Ben was awarded with a re-run, and with a time of 1min 31.20secs this was to be his best time of the day. Run 2 was only 0.0.20 secs slower than run 1 but Ben still remained in first place by 3 seconds and secured his second win of the year.
With the fastest rider of the day coming from the 18+ group, Ben came in second overall out of 115 riders, this was the icing on the cake and a fitting end to a good weekend of racing.