Rheola practice day 26^th of January 2008,

The day started of with a nice refreshing ride from my house in the village of Glynneath to Rheola, I reached the the big green forestry gate at 9.30 then began the short push to the car park then rode to the event organizer Jason Carpenter to sign on he handed me a little ticket which quoted “Rheola in the wind” I then placed my bike on the bike rack that was being towed by a service bus. After a 30 minute drive up the twisty forestry road we finally reached the top and I got out to find that it was very windy. I then removed my bike from the bike rack and began my decent down the physically and mentally challenging course. It all started with an almighty pedal down the first hill then into a few jumps which were very difficult in the strong winds, It suddenly became very rocky and steep which was scary and exciting at the same time I managed to stay on some how and carry on down the course the rest of the course wasn’t to bad with a mixture of rocks and roots but very challenging nevertheless but then I reached the infamous “star wars section” which was just a field of trees and very slippery roots but some how I got through without any problems. I pedalled as hard as I could into the last section of the course, half way down the last stretch there was a big wooden jump approaching I pedalled as hard as I could into it and landed very nicely I was very happy at this time and carried on as fast as I could, I came to the last corner over the last jump then across the line one completed successful run but that success was not repeated for much longer as my bike broke and my day sadly came to an early finish.

Dev.