Cwmcarnage

What a great day. Dry trails and sunny weather. Shame about the masses of crashes. Here’s a collection of videos:

The one where Rich has his big smash:

The one where Gary smashes it:

The one where I drink Red Bull (it works – fastest of the day)

The one on the Cwmcarn freight train (Gary following me, Rich and Al)

The one where Gary followed Rich

The one when I get a puncture

The one where I get lots of air

The one at the end of the day when Gary has a moment after the road drop

Rich’s videos:

Al’s videos:

Tune

Definitely the sound track to the day was the harlem shake. Those on the last run of the day (party bus) got to see this, make sure you have the music on nice and loud ; )

Don’t know what it is? Here’s the original. The driver was trying to get everyone on the bus to do this:

Cwmcarn August 2012

It was cold, wet and miserable at Cwmcarn, and on the day the east of England had the hottest day of the year at nearly 33 degrees – about 15 degrees warmer than South Wales.

Here’s a few firsts from the day (more to follow).

This was my best run down the red – 3.53.

Me following Skid:

Skid’s edit of him following me:

Cwmcarn Christmas ride

The Christmas trip to Cwmcarn turned out to be our best attended trip to date – 8 of us in total. The track was wet, the weather windy, and it felt really cold. Still, great fun was had by all. Here’s the videos of the best bits:

One of my better runs of the day (my watch may have only cost £9.99 but t is complicated…

A dark, stormy and moody chase – night was closing in fast:

And other chase:

 

Mark’s crash damage – looks sore:

too much air in his tire apparently

 

A week to go…

…and it looks like the new mid section at Cwmcarn is open. Looks awesome, super fast. Can’t wait.

All change at Cwmcarn

The mid section is closed for a revamp. Trail is diverted through the narrow woods section. Shame as it is not as fast and rough. Hopefully the new part will be open when we go in three weeks.  Info and photos here

If it is still closed it should be a bit more even for those not on DH bikes.

Video of a guy heading down on an Orange 5. Impressive riding.

3:49

3 minutes 49 seconds was the fastest I made it down the red DH run at Cwmcarn today. That’s 28 seconds better than my previous fast time! Which is masses. I’m well stoked. I was hoping for a sub 4 minute time and knew it would be hard, but to get sub 3:50 is just amazing.

I possibly had my best day ever at Cwmcarn. The weather was perfect, it was sunny and hot, amazing for April. The trail conditions were spot on. We managed to get in 13 runs, which is a bit of a record too.

Mark had two offs. One was big, his helmet is smashed up pretty bad and his bike if now at the menders. Neil sorted Mark out and let him borrow his Iron Horse which Mark managed to stack on a jump right in front of the mighty ray gun. I believe there may be photographic evidence, more to come on that.

Neil – we couldn’t see any damage and Mark wants your bike.

Kenny joined us on our last run on his pimped out 224.

I managed 3:49 twice. This is the helmet cam footage:

3:49 Chesty cam to the tune of my bike flying down the hill.

Chesty cam with music, different run, a few seconds slower.

Photos courtesy of the Mighty Ray Gun. If you want to buy a high res version you know where to go.

I’m puzzled how Mark ended up where he did on the crash photo. Mark – can you explain what happened?

Sllloooowwww motion

The Go Pro HD can record up to 60 frames per second (fps). That’s twice as many as we watch on TV. This footage is smoother in realtime and offers smooth slow motion. However iMovie doesn’t support 60fps so it dumps half the frames and makes slow motion jerky 😦 Frustrating.

However  a bit of research via google has provided a solution to the slow motion problem through the aid of free software. Essentially I set the footage to play back at half speed and then import into iMovie.

The results of my experiment can be viewed below. I don’t have much 60fps footage so this is a short video and limited in variety. I do have plans for this weekends filming though…

Cwmcarn Downhill

The weather and the track conditions were spot on, there had been no rain for two weeks, the track was dry, dusty but packed down. Almost perfect – the temperature was barely above freezing though.

I was running a GoPro HD chest cam and got some glorious HD footage.

It was Mark’s first trip to Cwmcarn and first time down a downhill track. Have to say he did rather well, only managing two offs and riding all the large features. He seemed to be loving it on the Alpine 160.

Both our bikes sustained damage. I lost both the rollers from my MRP chain device, a bit of an oddity. Mark lost the lock on part of his grip in his second crash.

Chest cam video

HD video also available on Mpora (can’t get the darn thing to embed)
http://video.mpora.com/hdep/cX1DE3kb6/
More Mountain Biking Videos

Mark in all his kit and with his 160. According to a girl on a black 160 Mark’s bike is the same colour as her nail varnish, I’m not sure if that’s a complement!

Dave and the mighty gambler. Note missing rollers on the MRP. The chain managed to stay on though.

Cwmcarn Feb 2009

Finally got around to uploading what is now a bit of a vintage video from a trip to the DH course at Cwmcarn. For February the weather was spot on, trails were powder dry. Superb day.

The forward cam is me on my Stock Scott Gambler DH20, front rider, slowing me down ; ), is Neil on his Ironhorse Yakuza.