BUCS Domination!

I'm sure you guys have already heard about our recent trip to Sheffield to compete in the BUCS Hill Climb, which took place on Saturday 29th October. Here's a quick recap of the results.

Individual Gold was won by Harry King for Leeds Uni, who set a phenomenal time of 05:37.
We also won the Team Gold, thanks to impressive performances from Harry as well as
Stu Clayton (06:14) and Chris Palfreeman (06:27).
If anyone else wants to know their time and position, you can find all the BUCS results at www.bucs.org.uk/

There will also be pictures up on the Facebook page, but until I can get hold of a decent camera/cameraphone you'll have to make do with this one.

It's from the Societies Photoshoot which was held earlier this semester and contains your friendly, hardworking (sometimes...) Club Committee.

Freshers' Week/Start of Term

Here's a summary of what's going on:

Tues 20th and Weds 21st Sept- Freshers' Fair.
We'll be down in The Edge from 10am to 4pm, wearing our jerseys with pride!

Sat 24th and Sun 25th September- Rides begin.
Rides happen on weekends at 11am (Road on Saturdays, MTB on Sundays) and Wednesdays at 2pm.
Meet at Headingley, in the car park opposite Wilko's.

If you're a member or just curious, come along to any of these as it would be great to see you!

BUCS CX Championships 2011

Well, it has been our nemesis for a few years and 2011 proved no different, with Leeds placing 5th in the team competition, represented by Mike Jones in 12th, Tom Bell in 13th, Henry Stam in 26th and John Guly in 28th.

With Mike and Tom both on Mountain Bikes, little could be done to hold the pace of the leaders who were on the right equipment and in shape from a season of CX racing. The course proved to be incredibly slippery in the corners (Mike having a major slide and subsequent stack on Lap 2) and with a huge banking in the middle, it made the race very slow going (especially for Tom who lost about 45 seconds on one lap through shoddy banking technique!). In addition, towards the bottom of the course were two long, flat, open drags, giving those riding a CX bike even more of an advantage over the struggling MTBers.

Feelings of nausea and utterances like "I'm never racing cyclocross again" were in plentiful supply post-race, but be assured there will be some sort of representation there next season!

On the plus side, we are pleased with how training is going and form is building for the MTB championships and intend to go all the way in Wales. We used this race as training and will show the other Universities how "real" off-road riding goes down.

Below are a few team shots from yesterday's race. Enjoy.

British Cycling + Kit

Just a quick post to let everyone know that we are a British Cycling affiliated club this year.
If you are racing, please add the LUUCC as one of your clubs and give the University some exposure!

The best membership package to get I believe is a Silver membership with a racing license. Gold membership seems to include a load of stuff that isn't really needed or worth the extra cash.

Please let us know of your success too. Send us pictures and reports of you racing and we'll stick them somewhere for people to see.

As you may or may not have seen, in the last few days, British Cycling or more specifically, the regional committee for this area dealing with affiliations has objected to a certain slogan on our kit, which reads "Moist and Chewy". Although this is a slogan of our sponsors Torq and simply a description of the Torq bar products, we have been told it may cause offence. We have had nothing but praise on all aspects of our kit design and we are a little angered that British Cycling charge such a high affiliation fee for teams with sponsors and then tell us to take parts of the kit away.

Anyway, after that little rant, I would like to say that we have an easier way of ordering kit for our members. This involves the club shop facility on the Impsport website. Members can now order kit whenever they wish and get it delivered to them direct, without having to wait for a bulk order from the club or arrange picking it up from whoever was unfortunate enough to have the whole order dumped on them. When you want to order kit, please email the club and we will provide the password for the club shop.

For now, please don't order any kit as it is in the process of having the slogan in question removed. We'll let everyone know when the design is updated and ordering can begin.

Website: www.impsport.com/myclubshop.asp

Ride times and lengths

Our rides have traditionally gone from the same place. This is the former site of our sponsors Stif Cycles, who were previously situated in the centre of Headingley, next door to Jam Hair Salon and over the road from the Post Office. Although Stif have moved on to Summerbridge, we continue to use this car park as our meeting spot. Search Jam Hair salon on Google Maps and locate the small car park to the left of it. That's us.

Our weekly rides are as follows:

MTB: 
Wednesdays at 2PM
Sundays at 11AM

Road:
Wednesdays at 2PM
Saturdays at 11AM

Our wednesday rides run for 1.5-2H for both Road and MTB.
Weekend rides will go from 1.5H up to 3.5H for both. If there are enough people, we may split up and take a longer/faster or shorter/slower ride. These are not training rides however, and only for leisure.

Our rides and where to check out

In Leeds we are blessed with the best of both worlds; go one way and you have the city and all the benefits of urbanized living, with shops, university, restaurants etc, and head just a few miles the other direction towards Otley and one has mile after mile of tranquil countryside. As a cycling club, this suits us down to the ground.

As a club which specializes in both Mountain Biking and Road riding, we have fantastic and varied routes for both disciplines. Here I will explain some of the best spots to head to.

MTB


Meanwood
This is where many of our MTB rides head, beginning just one mile from Headingley. Meanwood is a mixture of fast but technical single track, steep climbs and fire road. It is great to have a blast round, improve your handling skills and discover some hidden sections. At the far side of the wood is a place we call "Adel jumps". This is constantly being built and improved and has a wicked section of jumps and berms.

Stainburn
Located about 11-12 miles out of Leeds on the far side of Poole, is the hill-top Stainburn Forest, dubbed by many as the most technical MTB trails in the country. Although small, there are a number of trails here to improve and test your technical skills, with steep climbs and descents, North Shore and more. It is a fairly flat ride out from Leeds, with a monster hill climb to reach the forest. Recommended.

Road


Almost all of our road rides head from Leeds towards Otley and Ilkley. The best roads generally to reach Otley run to the right hand side of Leeds road and pass alongside the picturesque setting of the Harewood estate.

From here, one reaches the Poole road which passes through Arthington. A great ride which features some rolling hills takes you up to Armscliffe Crag and round to Poole.

Another option is to head through Poole, and towards Leathley, over Norwood Edge climb and out into the Yorkshire Dales, towards Summerbridge and Pateley Bridge. This again is a long rolling road that gives access to some great climbs such as Greenhow Hill.

To extend the above ride, we like to head further to a place called Grassington which is a very pleasant village for a coffee stop. The roads are quiet and rolling, with some awesome views, climbs and descents.

A final favourite of ours leads us beyond Ilkley and towards the roads in the Bolton Abbey area. This is a slightly less hilly means of heading to Grassington, taking in fantastic settings of Bardon on Scale and Burnsall. Before reaching Grassington, it is possible to take the road all the way to Skipton, which is another place worth a visit if you have the legs to get there.

We'll hopefully be showing you many of these places and more on our future rides. Feel free to take these places as milestones and create your own routes to ride. There are some great roads to play with!

Results

The club has seen some major success since its beginnings in 1997 and has had some classy riders pass through over the years. This post will be a document of our results this year in BUCS competitions as well as a look at our results from last year. (Will be updated after every event)

We aim to step it up each year and having only completed the Hill Climb Championships this year so far, we have already begun to set new club records...

2009/10 Season results

BUCS Hill Climb: Team Bronze

BUCS CX: Team 4th

BUCS MTB: XC Team Bronze

BUCS 3-up TTT: Team Bronze

BUCS 10mile TT: Individual 4th

BUCS 25mile TT: Individual 7th

BUCS Road race: Individual 3rd

2010/11 Season results

BUCS Hill Climb: Team Gold (new club record)

BUCS CX:

BUCS MTB:

BUCS 3-up TT:

BUCS 10mile TT:

BUCS 25mile TT:

BUCS Road race:

A few photos here of us at the above events too: