Pump track results - 13/12/09

Hey everyone

What an awesome day we had on Sunday the 13th December, the weather was on our side and the son decided to pop through the clouds and watch some of the action every now and then. We had a total of 23 entries for the day which I am hoping will double by the time we have our next event. The spectator support was amazing, the banks were lined with people that came to see what it was all about. We started the day with individual practice runs around the short but technical and physically demanding course. Then the seeding runs started at 11:30 so that the guys could get an idea of how fast or slow their competitors were going. Racing started soon after with the BMX guys up first. The race format was heats of three, and the fastest lap put of those rounds would count for the final result. Brad “death grip” Purchase amazed us all with his no-brake BMX skills, the competition was close between him and Ricardo Springolo who is a well established BMX racer. Ricardo ended up winning just ahead of Brad and Tyler Klumper. There was some fierce competition in the MTB class between Travis Browning and Kelvin Purchase and pro motocross racer Liam O’Farrell. Travis took the win followed closely by Kelvin and then Liam. There were only two entrants into the cruiser class but that didn’t stop Sharlene McGilvray and Dylan Egger from giving there all. Dylan set an impressive lap time to take the win (he’s got skills…watch this space) ahead of Sharlene. Overall it was a super fun day with a good variety of riders. Thanks to all the guys who came out to support the event and to our sponsors Midlands plant hire, FOX, Morewood bikes, Adrenalin cycles, Tilly Fencing and Wimpy for making it such an awesome event. Also to our time keepers, Danni, Judy, Grant and Martin and David for the photees.

Here are the results as well as lap times
20” class :
Ricardo Springolo – 24.58
Brad Purchase – 25.15
Tyler Klumper – 26.51

24” class:
Dylan Egger – 26.98
Sharlene McGilvray – 34.04

26”
Travis Browning – 23.74
Kelvin Purchase – 24.30
Liam O’Farrell – 26.44

Fastest overall lap:
Travis Browning – 23.74

The track is open to anyone at any time during the week and weekends. You can find it at Fairways on main shopping centre, Howick (right next to Adrenalin cycles.) The shopping centre is open from 8am to 7pm at night. If you want any info on the track give me a call on 082 297 6587.

Ride safe,
TB

Taking Shape....

Things are slowly coming together at the pump track in Howick, we have done quite a bit of building since my last post on here. The track is now ridable but there is still some fine tuning to be done, some burms didn't work out the way I planned as they just to tight. So we gonna go back to the drawing board and re-design parts of the track and make it alot smoother when we are happy with the finalised plan. Other than that I'm really happy with how it came out. It's loads of fun to ride and is very physically demanding...3 laps of half this track at flat out race pace and you start seeing black dots and feeling a bit woozy. We had a session there yesterday once the sun had gone down and it cooled a bit, there's just so much you can do on this track it's awesome. We just rode and practiced cornering, finding new lines and playing some tag on the bikes, I'm really looking towards our grand opening and first pump track race! Here's some fun facts on the track as it looks now:

Track direction: Anti-clockwise

Left hand turns: 6

Right hand turns: 2

180 degree burm: 1

Rollers: 19

Tables: 2

Step ups: 3

Bob-cat working time: 6 1/2 hours

Man hours so far: +- 15 hours (and counting)

Sun burns: 2

Grant from Adrenalin Cycles has a key to open the gate above the pump track, so feel free to give it a test ride anytime! Thanks to Kelvin, Hayden and my dad for the help with building. Watch this space for more pics as well as the date for our grand opening event.

Check below for some updated photees

Ride safe,

TB

Pump track under construction...

On Friday the 23 of October I took a days leave from work to start building the pump track that I've been so eager to get done for the last 2 months now. Grant Dinkel from Adrenalin cycles has secured us a piece of land next door to the fairways on Main shopping centre in Howick for the next 2 years. We plan on developing the land into a skills track for other bicycle enthusiasts, and kids to have fun on while mom goes grocerie shopping. Our goal is to provide this facility to the public for free, we don't intend on charging any one to ride it, all I want is to see it being put to good use by any one on two wheels. After watching the pump track world champs held in Australia earlier this year I'm super keen to get the same thing started here, I want to hold events and have regular meetings at the track so we can set lap times and break records around this thing! We are very grateful to everyone at Midlands plant hire as they sponsored us the bob cat to make our goals a reality. I met with Greg and Wellington at 8AM on Friday morning and then the digging began! I was well impressed with the skills Wellington had in the bob cat, he knew exactly what I was wanting done and understood where to place the sand and was just super friendly, everything was done with a smile. We worked from 8AM until about 1PM with the bobcat, the layout of the track was completed and I had one heck of a sunburn (still hurting today). There were mounds of sand everywhere, then came the hard work of compacting and shaping rollers and berms. Again Midlands plant hire came to the rescue and dropped off a 650mm wide compacting roller which has helped a huge amount! we still busy shaping and compacting, about 50% of the track needs some serious attention, which I'm hoping to finish off this weekend.

Here's Wellington dropping some sand on the left hand berm. I'm going to make this a wall ride as well to give you some extra momentum for following straight as it's on a bit of an uphill.

Here's the land we have to work with, this was taken early on in the day.

Wellington and his bob cat dumping sand for a step up.

Here's our stock pile of sand, and the 180 degree berm...hope it works out!!

I'll post more pics as soon as soon as we have made some more progress!

Huge thanks to Greg from Midlands plant hire, Wellington "mad skills", Grant from adrenalin for securing the land and Liam for the help on Friday.

Keep it safe,TB

Maverick cycles/Monster energy Gravity dice

Hey dudes, been a while since I updated this thing, mainly coz there hasn't been much going on my side, the racing scene has been quite lately with a few cross country rides happening here and there. I been spending alot of time on my Shova riding the trails in Howick which are really awesome, loads of single track and good downhills...with one or two hill climbs to warm you up.

On Sunday Maverick cycles and Monster energy held a Gravity dice at Cascades starting near Fern cliff nature reserve. The track was really fun, the first downhill was out the start and pinned on a road next to the world cup DH course, hitting speeds of around 60-70kms an hour over drain bumps was quite intimidating at times. It then went onto a flat road and joined the DH course and went off onto some new tight single track. There were a few pedalling roads in between, more single track and then a sprint finish to the end which was near the car park.

The race format was heats of 3, you got points for the position you finished that added up to place you in the final. The first heat I finished second, I was leading the race until the end where I took a wrong turn and stalled letting Matt come flying past me. The second heat I finished first, Matt Kelvin and I had the most insane race, I was leading from the beginning with Matt and Kelvin right on my back wheel, I pedalled hard where I could and pulled a gap from them. They caught up on the end single track but I manged to keep the lead to the finish. You know your body has reached max power out put when you cross the line and see spots and feel like throwing up! was super fun though. The third heat I only needed to finish top 3 to get through to the final so I just took it easy and finished third behind kelvin and Alan. In the final I didn't get such a good start, I was second behind Matt who pinned the top bit and pulled a gap by the time we hit the road. I pedalled hard into the forest section and stayed behind him in the single track. I made my attack on the flat road section and passed him, managing to keep the lead to the finish. I was really happy how the day went, had loads of fun and enjoyed the fierce competition!

Overall results were:
1) Travis Browning
2) Matt Smith
3) Alan Hatherly
4) K-dub Purchase
5)Fab Lemasson
6)louis Smith

Thanks to Maverick cycles/Monster energy for organising the event and to Ian for preparing the course. And my lovely girfriend Danni for the support and nice lunch :)

Ride safe.

Jump bike

Really excited to have just built up my very first jump bike. I haven't tested it out properly yet, but it feels really comfortable riding it around the car park. Now with the Downhill season over it's always fun to go dirt jumping, I think that it plays a huge role in improving skills on a bike. Looking forward to getting some sweet air on this bad boy!

African Continental champs 11 July

This past weekend I went road trippin' with the Maverick crew to the African continental champs held at Mankele mountain bike park in Nelspruit. We left on Thursday around 11am. After a long drive and a couple stop and go's due to road maintenance we finally arrived. The venue was perfect for the event, there's loads of camping area's, lodges for the rich folks, a game room, pools, and most importantly good trails! I was happy to see our tents had already been pitched when we arrived at 7PM, coz I really didn't feel like wrestling with tent poles in the dark. I had been told it got cold in Nelspruit...but I wasn't expecting it to be that cold! We woke up to ice on our tents and a frozen solid Monster energy can that Conrad had left outside, but we survived!




On Friday Hayden, Tim, Tayla and myself walked the track early, it was pretty much the same route we rode in February which I was happy about coz I really enjoy that track. It can be divided into two sections, the top is really fast and rough, then a road crossing separates the next steep technical wooded section with loads of switch backs and littered with rock gardens. The super fast, steep off-cambered section at the top was a real suspension tester, I'm really thankful to Pat for hooking me up with the new Fox rc2 rear shock coz it handled so well on that rough stuff! We started practice at 12 on Friday, I felt a bit shaky on the technically demanding track to begin with, but a few runs later I got into the rhythm of things and started enjoying myself.


Saturday morning we started practice once it had warmed up a bit...this was only around 9 or so once the sun had come up over the mountain ridge over looking our camp site! I used my moto trainer and did timed runs of the course, I really feel this is the way to get faster because it's a race against yourself every run and it pushes you to improve even if it's by half a second. It was also useful finding out which lines were faster or slower, it was no longer a case of guessing which is faster, all I had to do was time it and decide from there. I had a small crash in the afternoon, luckily no serious injuries, just a tweaked shoulder and a roastie on my pinky finger. That afternoon I flatted my rear tyre three times in three consecutive runs...I wasn't in a good mood by the third one! So I pumped up my tyre quite a bit harder and used a heavy duty tube, that seemed to help as I didn't flat for the rest of the weekend.



Sunday came and it was go time...all the riders had to use SA jerseys as we were all representing our country (it was pretty funny though coz there were no other countries participating anyway.) I did two practice runs in the morning and headed up to the top of the hill for the timed run. I was way to cautious on the fast top section, and stalled a couple times in the wood section, I ended the run with a time of 2:24. That put me in about 15th position. I wasn't too concerned about that run since it was just to give us an idea on the times for the final. My race run went really well, I focused on carrying speed between corners and forced myself to brake just a bit later into the corners. My run flowed really well from top to bottom and I had alot of fun doing it. I ended up getting a 2:18. This put me in 9th position overall, just 0.01 seconds of 8th place, and 7th in the elite men. I'm happy with how the weekend went, this being my first actual downhill race after my accident I didn't expect to make a winning come back to be honest, just wanted to be on the bike again and compete in a race scenario. With racing over for the season I want to carry on with my training and get back some DH skills!

Thanks to Conrad, Mike, Steph, Fab and the Brown family for a really good weekend and to Lloyd for the photees.

Ride safe, TB

Fox Forward TV

Sorry this post is so late, been real busy since we filmed for Fox forward TV and haven't really been able to sit down and update my blog! So here's what went down...

On Friday the 3rd July Jonty, Kyle, Lloyd, camera man Zane and myself headed up to the World cup track at Cascades to do some filming for Fox Forward TV. When we got there we found that half the track was missing because of all the tree's that had been taken out by Sappi. This bothered me a bit coz the first jump we had to do was the one I broke myself on earlier this year, so I was really scared to be honest, my heart rate was going crazy while I was sitting at the top of the run up waiting for the go ahead from Zane, but I managed to put the bad memories behind me and nailed the gap first time, I was really happy with that, felt a huge sense of relief once I had done it another 4 times! We used what was available to us and got some very cool footage, mostly jump shots over the big tables and into the fast gully section. I'm looking forward to seeing what the final cut is going to look like. Kyle and Jonty were really sick, so big high fives to them for taking one for the team and riding!! Will keep you all updated and let you know when it's going to be aired on supersport.

Check out http://www.nsrmtb.co.za/behind-the-scenes-on-fox-forward/#more-2408 for more photos and write up. Thanks to Lloyd for the awesome photos

Ride safe!

New sponsor on board

This past weekend I got a very nice surprise from my teammate Jonty...out of his bag he pulls a moto GPX carbon Leatt brace with a custom black spray job...man was stoked! I'm really happy to be involved with Leatt, after my crash earlier this year I've lost alot of confidence when it comes to doing gap jumps and hitting fast sections, but after this weekend riding for the first time with my Leatt I felt way happier knowing that my neck is protected...I'll take a broken arm or leg over a neck any day! A huge thanks to Mark Hopkins from Leatt corporation, Kyle "huck to flat" Gifford and my own personal courier Jonty "J-Dog" Neethling for bringing the brace up from Cape Town.

Ride safe!

Maverick Gravity dice/photo shoot

This past weekend we did alot of riding, and I'm definitely not complaining! On Saturday I met up with Jonty and Kyle to ride some DH at Giba gorge and shoot some photees with Lloyd. We played around on the big table in the quarry and got some sweet air. Later that afternoon I put the DH rig away and pulled out the bike bike to try the new dirt jump park at Giba. Those things were pretty hard to get through, the lips are really steep so you gotta carry loads of speed between the jumps which was harder on a longer wheel base bike, coz I saw those bmxers making it through with no problems at all. I've gotta true my rear wheel later today...

On Sunday I raced the Maverick Super D event. The course was really hard in the beginning, it started with a steep climb that eventually worked it's way towards some nice fast flowing single track. It was just under 5 km's long so my Morewood Ndiza was the weapon of choice for the day. The race format was very similar to a 4X event, the first two riders made it through to the next round. I won the first 2 heats I was in, then came third in the 3rd heat after a scary crash that left me with a few roasties. The next heat I had to finish in the top 4 to move through to the finals, which I manged to do. I just didn't have the energy to keep up with the pace the guys set at the beginning of the final so I just had fun and enjoyed the single track! the cross country boys dominated the event taking the first two positions and Pat Morewood schooled all of us to finish third, don't believe these guys when they say "I'm not that fit"! I finished 6th for the day,was happy with that coz the track was really awesome.

• Thanks to Lloyd Ramsay for the pic

Keep it pinned!

Buck Jumps...

On Sunday we went to Tim Bentley's house to hit up a jump session, unfortunately he couldn't throw down some style for us coz he's injured his thumb but it was really good to dirt jump again, I haven't been there in ages. Those jumps are really fun, it took me a while to get through all of them but after a bit of practice and a few case's I finally got them dialled. check out the video for some of the action...

Greg Kaumpek memorial race 14th June

This past weekend was my first race back on the bike after a long break from cycling forced by a bad injury back in March. I’ve been riding for the past two weeks now and I’ve been loving every moment of being in the saddle, I have really learnt to appreciate the sport I do and have regained my passion for cycling after being sidelined for so long and having to watch friends racing and having a good time just riding their bikes.

Sunday’s race was at Cascades held to remember our good friend Greg who passed away in a car accident in 2004. The route followed the bottom half of the world cup track but branched off closer to the bottom. It was a very flat track with a few jumps so I decided to ride my Morewood Ndiza which turned out to be a good choice. My dad rode my DH bike and dominated his category in his very first Downhill race, was quite impressed! My first run started strong, I pedaled really hard out the start and into the first wood section, but at the half way mark I snapped my chain which ended any chance of getting a good time. I re-focused and pinned the second run pedaling just as hard and hitting all the lines. I finished 3^rd overall for the day. I was happy with the result as I haven’t done much training or spent a lot of time on the bike so I’m looking forward to getting in racing mode again and tearing up some DH courses!

Final results were:

1) Simon Dinkelman

2)Tiaan Odendaal

3)Travis Browning

4)Kelvin Purchase

5)Tim Bently

My next race is at Giba Gorge...It's a super D so I betta start some training!

Thanks goes out to Lloyd Ramsay for the pic

Keep it pinned!

Travis

First post to start off my new blog

Hey World! Welcome to my new blog. This is a place where everyone from friends to sponsors to fellow riders can read up on my progress during the year. Don't forget to bookmark this page and check back soon.

-Travis