races

Super D – Tampines

Super D, the all mountain fun filled race get featured for the first time in Tampines Bike Park.

We’ve the chance to build it better and slightly more technical than what we can do in Kent Ridge some half a year ago.

The track will includes rollers, big berms (inslope turns), a slope style like 7ft tall WALL RIDE, simple drop off, DH rock garden, XC-like false flat and contour rides, and the ‘got to be skillful to ride fast’ ziggurat.

For the past 1 week, Jason, Peter and I with the help of 2 workers and occasional help from various other bikers, we managed to get half the wall ride up, 1 full berm ready, a 1 1/2ft drop off( with rollable options)  and a nice long rock garden that react nicely to those well chunky suspension fork.  The series of rollers is half done and should be ready by the end of the week.

We do suggest riders not to ‘test’ the wall ride at the moment as we are still securing some of the sturcture.

Rock Garden – building in progress

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the Making of a Carnival

We’re just got back into Tampines Bike Park just  after Christmas. With 2 months of time for trail work (Feb 14th 2009 being our internal dateline for GO!), it seems that some interesting lines can be placed into Tampines for this coming race.

First we’ve to address a few issues before building new one. The state of the trail is bad after the new contractor for this place trying to keep things sane by doing whatever without knowing what is it to manage a bike park. The wooden wonder is rotting away with various key bridges broken, the pond loop is disconnected as the new earthy plateau is place over the old BikeAsia100 race trail. Descender is a series of ruts (is a fall line truck road in the first place) and Mimosa is eating up the whole trail.

With a bit of luck and planning, National Parks committed some resources from their contractors to grass cut whatever needed so to ‘resurface’ all those hidden trails that everyone race on a good 9mths ago. Dirtraction with RMC came together with a proposal to get all these fix up before moving forward to build new trails.

With resources tight as ever and the economics timing as bad as the imploding white dwarf, support for these trail restoration effort is minimal. We’ve (Dirtraction and RMC) decided to place in our own resources, time and money to complement and get things into place before we loose all these trails to mother earth again.

The bridges is repaired, new connecting lines from the pond loop to the top of the kidney hill is made and most of the grass cutting  are done within this one month.

– the wooded wonder is totally ridable now.

pond loop is now connected to the new lower kidney climb

kidney loop is split and reused (600metres)

– totally new upper kidney descend and contour line ride is created (approx 800m)

With the addition of new these new trails in tampines, this coming Night Marathon race can be race on the ‘best of’ Tampines Bike Park.

Monster Mud Madness is probably gone and the good old finishing straight would no longer take the riders with the old Kids Singletrack taking over.

A point to note,

Upper Kidney and Lower Kidney still needed abit of surfacing work. the trail is freshly cut, ruts are big and random. we will make it a fun surface to ride on soon.

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race day – National MTB Championship 2006

Finally the race is on.

The work of the past 3 months, climaxing at the top of Car park A of Kent Ridge Park in the morning, with the first race flagging off at 8am sharp.
A secluded park it used to be, a roudy place it became.

never before we seen such a crowd on a Sunday, riders push punishing gears, spectators taking glimpse of daring downhill and gruelsome climbs, the carnival is certainly on.

some race videos

race photos

some good read

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the trail get a quick fix

Is race day tomorrow.

With work still yet to be done on the ‘mud slope’ just before the 3rd bridge, the focus turn to getting it ready first thing in the morning.

With a workforce of 4 labourer, I get to have a good load of granite chips transported to the site, together with cement to secure the landing.

We gathered from previous rain that water drainage might simply be the main problem for that slope. Two drains are dug up, one at the top of the slope, and other other cutting diagnonally at the bottom face of the slope.

the top drain being a simple flat drain, get a good dose of granite chips pounded in.

the bottom drain took some extra effort to finish.

A cement log is buried in together with 3 bags of granite chips.

By mixing the granite chips with 6inches of mud available on site, and with a handful of cement powder sprinkle all around, the mixed up compound is then pounded around the curve and landing itself.

We are forced to divert the trail for the day, so to let the mixture harden up as much, gathered that 24hrs is good enough from our previous experiment on the Snake berm on Thursday.

The early afternoon is spent on getting the snake bend fix up, one of the 7 cement log is lifted so to get a smooth flow again, again handful of cement powder and clay are mixed in to harden the unbermed corners.
While this part of the course doesn’t allow any alternative rerouting, do check your tires for cement powder if you ride through them.

I guess I’ve taken most of the cement chunks during the 5 test ride I did around the new lines for the Snake slope.

I’ve been an advocate of not having cement as one of the trail maintainance/building material. But these 2 days had brought new use for this greyish powder. Water vapour and mud simply do the job naturally, creating good sticky mud-like lumps gel together and harden in the rain, instead of softening as natural mud do when water is excessive. I guess slight usage, as in handful and not spadeful, will do most of the jobs.

As far as the trail is concerned, the trail is ready to be raced on.
The race course is only complete when every section of the course is ready.
The trail is part of them, the Kent Ridge Park walking/cycling track is another, so is the granite climb.

As one of the course director for tomorrow race, the afternoon is spent fixing up tapes , evac points and course redirection.
The whole bunch of helpers for the day, Max, Ling, Alvin, Liyana, Pling, RenHao, Chi, Jaymes and companion turned a bare carpark and grass patch into a proper presentable start finish area.

workforce for trail
24 manhour – mud slope and snake slope fixes
90 manhour – race specific setting up
is a long day…

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trail repairs

The Saturday is spent more on repair, riding the trail ourselves to make sure it works, mark out danger points, determine evacuation points, brief the medical, marshal team and photographers on the trail.

Nik and PLing do their rounds on the safety, while Max guide the medics, the photographer and the marshal through the whole course.

Me and RenHao took the chance to fix 2 patches, the ‘Japanese Rock garden landing’, the ‘yellow slide’ after the roadie’s ramp.

We gathered after lunch again to refill granite chips onto the Snake Slope. Before taking our chance to ride around the trail rounds after rounds, to determine all is right.

At 5pm, we start our first bike clinic. Samuel rode down after some rest from his morning trainings, and we ran the clinic for around 1.5hrs. We are certainly happy to see the clinic participants learning something new in the process.

8 manhours – odd and end fix

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race course survey

We did a simple race course evaluation to see what’s needed to be done before the race starts or even the Jamboree starts.

the race start area is checked, so are the lap counts.

12 laps is therefore decided for the Elite, giving them a solid 2hrs of race on a pretty technical circuit.

KRelevation.jpg
KRMap.jpg

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race circuit length

Chun and Sam both paid us a visit today at the trail.

We took the chance to measure the trail, take gradient readings by riding the race circuit in full. With these 2 engines pushing, I must say the murderous pace that I went through is simply some orientation ride for them.

circuit distance is 3.6km, with around 50% on road. starting off from the parade square, riding towards the pond and then up the crazy slopes after a going through the trail.

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