BACK ONCE AGAIN WITH THE ILL BEHAVIOUR.
You think the Tokyo Olympic course was good? Wait until you see the courses for this year’s Soggy Bottom series. With a mere 6.2 million dollars having been spent at Tokyo, we’ll be buying ourselves a new machete and shovel to achieve equal magnificence. We’ve set ourselves the task of finding the next Tom Pidcock or Evie Richards here in the South West, and step one is top-quality racing.
Following a 2 year gap, the Soggy Bottoms will be returning with some changes to the schedule. Saturday afternoon will be kicked off by a short course XC race. We’ve all seen the footage of the World Cup races on Red Bull TV, and spent the afternoon taking the mickey out of Bart Brentjens’ accent, well now you can be part of the action in an all-out, death-or-glory 20 minute race. Held in the shooting ground at Newnham Park, the course will be action packed, pretty flat, and just good clean fun. Your finishing position in the short course will count towards your series standing, and give you a cast iron excuse to race badly in Sunday’s cross country race.
Also on the Saturday night, and a first for Fully Sussed, there will be e-bike racing on the full XC course. We’ve been getting requests for an e-bike category for years, so now it’s time to see what they’re made of. Race on the Saturday and compare your lap times to the races on Sunday to see how you would have fared. You see, I wrote a whole paragraph about e-bike racing without saying anything rude. I must be mellowing in my old age.
This year there will be some camping available for vans on the Saturday night so stick around, go for an arsenic wash in the river, and have a beer with us. Don’t have a van? Call yourself a mountain biker? I’m sure we can find a flattish spot to put a tent on, and only partly in a puddle.
This year we are delighted to be working with Stohk, an ambitious and exciting outdoor brand that will be supplying us with some of their range of beer for the events. Is there anything better than being able to unashamedly crack open a beer within seconds of a heroic ride? The Soggy Bottom and Stohk collaboration will make that happen. Saturday night will be a chilled out post-race vibe, time to catch up with racing friends, tell racing tall tales and completely forget to oil your chain.
They have been our go-to bike shop since we moved to Plymouth, and this year Certini Bicycle Company will be on-site, supplying prizes to the under 18 categories and continuing their long term support to South West racing. With this year’s e-bike category, we might even be able to coax Rob and Tony out of retirement and into the thick of the action.
Sunday will be the usual Soggy Bottom fun and games, making the best use of the elevation and trail features that the wonderful Newnham Park has to offer. The Soggy Bottoms have allowed us to develop such legendary trails as the Bear Pit, Cottage Carnage and Kong in previous years and while we don’t want to develop anything too ninja this year, riders expect something new each season, so stand by.
This season’s series will be registered with British Cycling. We’re aware that lots of people will still be nervous about the ongoing Covid pandemonium, and we want everyone to feel that we’ve done as much as we can to minimise the risks. Hence we’ll be working with British Cycling to make sure we work to best practice and up-to-date guidelines, and all that nonsense.
Dates
September 11th and 12th
October 9th and 10th
November 13th and 14th
Times
Saturday
4pm: Short Course XC
5pm: E-bike race
Sunday
9am: Under 8s race
9.30am: Under 12s race
9.35am: Under 10s race
11.30am: All other categories
All details are on http://www.fullysussed.co.uk/soggy-bottom-winter-series.html