The 2018 Tweedlove Festival kicked off this weekend with Vallelujah seeing riders tackling the technical delights of Cademuir and Glentress.
Team Wideopenmag’s Christo Gallagher was on hand to open his racing account for the year and managed to bag himself a second place in the process. Here’s his race report.
All photos by Ian Linton.
With the Beast of the East parts 1, 2 and 3 threatening, Tweedlove’s first event of the year, Vallelujah, managed to find a clear spell of weather and bring dry(ish) trails and great racing.
After a long off-season and plenty of training I was stoked to get this years racing finally underway and get my Nukeproof Mega 290 between the tape. It was to be my first race on Team Wideopenmag and my first race on the big-wheeled Mega and in my new Alpine Stars/Bell/Camelbak kit.
The Tweedlove team always put on a great event and this years Vallelujah was no different.
There was a mix of trails split between Cademuir Forest and Glentress Forest, which provided some really fun stages and some physical savagery if you were so inclined to bury yourself on stages 4 and 6.
With a few of the top boys away in Chile for the EWS I was keen to continue my run of podiums at Tweedlove events from the previous year, but there was still plenty of fast folk to contend with.
Practice day was a great day all round. It was an absolute blast shredding some new trails in the Tweed Valley and some classic ones too. Catching up with everyone after the Winter is always a treat too.
On race day, I was keen to put down some good times, but if I was to be honest my riding wasn’t something I was proud of. However, it was another stellar day out with all the fast boys and I more or less got the job done even with a wee crash involved.
Sam Flockhart put down fastest time of the day in the men’s, with Ian Austermule not far behind and myself just slipping in behind Ian for third fastest time of the day and 2nd in the seniors, which was not too bad for the first race of the year.
In the women’s category, Polly Henderson took the win ahead of Janey Kennedy and Elena Melton. I expect we’ll see Polly taking a few more wins this year too with the pace she was riding at.
Now we’ve got a couple of weeks off before the Scottish Enduro Series opener at Laggan, which I’m thoroughly looking forward to and a little bit of redemption from last year.
Hutchens sneaked by me by less than a second to take the final spot on the podium last year, so I’m keen to make amends.
Full race results and the rest of the Tweedlove festival schedule can be found over on Tweedlove’s website.
You can check out our Scottish Enduro Series preview here.
Thanks to Christo – and Team Wideopenmag’s – excellent sponsors:
