Hellvana - 23rd January 2011

‘Welcome to hell’, that’s what the sign said that greeted everybody as they drove up the gravel road that led to the venue! I’ve heard a few stories about Hellvana and seen a few pics, and although this year the organisers had cut out a few of the bogs, the word around the signing on area was that the course was still ’a bit of a test’ shall we say!
When I left home in the morning it was quite mild, but I reckon the temperature must have dropped about 10 degrees as soon as you entered the Hellvana woods, funny that, I thought HELL was supposed to be hot!

With this being the 1st round of the SW enduro champs, it was a right local gathering of allsorts, so wasn’t I short of a conversation or two and the odd bit of piss taking here and there. I took a walk from the start line up the woods to see a bit of what the course was going to be like beforehand. After about 100 yds of treading through a boggy stump ridden rut, I decided to turn back and go get changed, ‘blinkin hell’ I thought, this is going to be tough if the rest of the course is like that! Fearing the worse and knowing it was going to be a bit of a slog, I went straight back to the bike and let the back tyre down to 4 to 5 psi so it would give us more grip.

So then, first race of a new season and I entered the Vets expert class, so I needed a good start, but all the hole shots that I got in 2009 seemed light years when my strimmer didn’t start first kick when the flag dropped, bloody hell what’s going on here then? She always starts 1st kick! After about 4 kicks she fired up, but too late and I was last away. Things didn’t go too bad for the first 5 mins but soon after my hands started to get cold, and they got colder, and colder, and about another 5 mins after, I had to physically stop and warm them up. My fingers had gone completely numb and I just couldn’t hold on to the bars and one by one riders were passing me at a rate of knots and before I knew it, nearly the whole flamin field had gone by! I reckon it was a good 10 mins before I could get going again, didn’t really have much problem with them after that. I knew that 1st lap took me ages because as I went through lap scoring Mark Tucker and Adam Blake were standing there taking the piss and shouting ‘were the f*ck you been’? pointing at their watches!!

Now I don’t mind tough races (and I‘ve done a few), especially when the conditions dictate it, but I’m telling you, this was a ‘good un’. The woods were tight with roots and stumps littered everywhere, but oh my god, the number of boggy, peaty, rutted ’rabbit runs’ that seemed to go forever, just sapped your strength as the race went on. I mean not just one like you usually find on a course, but loads of the buggers, some filled with icy cold water as well. There was no getting away from the mud anywhere apart from a few short fire roads where you could open the bike up a bit, but that was short lived as you just went straight back into the deep gloop again! I reckon the course was a good 7-8 miles long and most of it was quite testing, especially with a trials tyre on the back (as always in the SW rounds) Must admit it took me a while to find my feet as it were, but after a while I was going ok, I hadn’t come off and felt good and made my pit stop about halfway through. Just after the 2 hour mark things went a bit ‘Pete Tong’ as I caught my brake pedal on a stump which stopped me dead in my tracks resulting in my lever being bent out of shape which caused my back brake to jam solid. Luckily for me The Hull lads, Kev, James and Dan were close by watching a bit of the action in amongst the woods and came to my rescue! After a bit of juggling and some nice footwork from Kev (obviously he used to take the penaltys and free kicks for his local football team judging by the way he booted my lever back) I got going again.

The next lap I went out on I started to overtake a couple of people in my class as they were beginning to flag a bit under the conditions (more so than me!) but about halfway round disaster struck, and after finding another line around a rider that had got stuck in a rut, as I passed him my chain got de-railed after my chain block banged against a hidden stump which caused it to come off and wrap round my front sprocket 4 times. Bloody typical that ain’t it? I tried in vain to unravel it but it wasn’t gonna budge, race over, oh b*llocks. I then dragged the bike out of the rut I was stuck in, lent it up against a tree and went walkabout looking for a way out of the woods to the nearest fire road. Luckily for me it was only about 100 yds away, so I heaved the bike threw the dense woodland and pushed the thing back along one of the fire roads (after asking some spectators directions!) to the van, knackered!!!

After I got changed and still with about 15 mins to go there were riders waiting around the pits and waiting for the clock to tick over to 3hrs and the flag to come out rather than put themselves through another lap of torture! They all could have got another lap in easily but were absolutely shattered (bunch of pussies if you ask me, Steve Jay & Andrew Smith included!!) so couldn’t muster up the energy or the mental strength to do anymore.

Judging by what I saw at the end of it and who I spoke too, the course had certainly taken it’s toll on a few bikes and bodies, and when I drove past ‘mad’ Jack Twentyman’s van and stopped to see how he got on, the guy was so physically worn out he could hardly speak, in fact all he said to me was ‘I’ll ring you in the week’, that was it, 6 words, no more!!!!
Personally I thought the course was brilliant, I love it when it’s tough and it’s excellent riding round courses like that because that’s when you really learn how to handle a bike properly, especially when the fatigue factor kicks in. Like all Camel Vale events it was another ‘good un’ with not a flat field in sight, good stuff.