Twelve50 Bikes

Sunday the 16th of March saw the official 2014 launch of the Twelve50 Bikes Race Team at Foel Gasnach, North Wales. Excited? You should be. The roster this year looks something like this; Alex Stock (Elite) David Read (Masters) Rick Minshull (Masters) Matt Steadmen (Masters) Cheri Mills (Elite) Nicole Mallet (Women) Russell Cosh (Veteran) Josh Dodd (Senior) Ross Adams (Veteran) Des Ryan (Head Chef) There’s more racing pedigree in that line up than a copy of the Racing Post on Grand National weekend. With glorious sunshine threatening dust in mid March (!), we’d not had riding this good for months. Kitted out with fresh gear from Renthal, Osprey, Mavic, Power Bar, Fox Head, Maxxis and Weber Barbecues we've not had support this good for years! New bikes have been built, tuned and tested. Existing bikes have been stripped, serviced and updated with shinier, lighter and all-round faster parts.  This year we’re going to rip. Come and say hello if you’re at any of the UK...

More barbecues than you can shake a stick at, freshly shot, plucked (that’s with a ‘P’ Mr Read!) and butchered goose, stargazing to shame Sir Patrick Moore, a midnight birthday count down and some of The Midlands finest trails. It could only mean one thing, team Twelve50 were back in town for the fifth and final round of the 2013 UK Gravity Enduro Series. With an unavoidable mid season venue change, Eastridge once again answered the call and rounded out what can only be described as an awesome seasons racing. Stretching the format with an additional sixth stage come race day Sunday, we faced old favourites, some with freshly cut corners to keep us on our toes. Saturdays seeding stage was repeated twice on Sunday, prompting extra attention paid to the stage that would bring nearly half the weekends racing. With a good mix of fast, loose, tight, technical, rocky and rooty trails, the woods lived up to their reputation and seemed to please everyone who came down the hill. C...

Round 3 of the UK Gravity Enduro series was upon us again and this time around riders were descending on Hamsterly forest, up in county Durham. As the year was rapidly heading into spring, thoughts were on the weather and memories of wall to wall sunshine from this round last year. As we travelled up from Twelve50 Towers on the Friday morning the memories of tan lines and dusty trails seemed a long way off as the horizontal rain over battered the road as we left the M6 and headed east over the moors. On reaching our grassy clearing for the weekend, the rain had stopped and pockets of blue sky were appearing. Time to get the pits built! Second season in and we’re getting pretty slick at getting our home built for the weekend, we left Chef Des to get the customary beer can chickens on the bbq and we went out to look at the trails. Stages 2 and 5 where in close proximity to the finish area, so we decided to look at these first. Stage 2 used the top se...