On September 6th a group of Stewartry Wheelers made the trip up north to Aviemore in the Highlands. On the way up, it was a wet journey but soon dried out for practice. When we got to the race site we were greeted with a course of tight, rooty, twisty singletrack and dusty fireroads. The majority of the club thought the course was excellent and some said it was the best course this season! There were some technical sections with steep drops and tight corners but it was very fun during parctice! After a couple of laps, everybody was confident about the course and had figured out their lines so we all went back to our accomodation and refuelled before getting a good nights sleep to prepare ourselves for the race the next morning. Come race morning, everybody was anxious to get on course so before we knew it everybody was on the startline waiting to get gridded. First wheelers off were Ross Green and Ryan Fenwick who would be completing 2 laps. They both had good races with Ryan finishing 4th with Ross in 6th position. Next off were the juveniles with Morgan McConnell and Jenna Fenwick flying the flag for the wheelers. They would be doing 1 lap of the challenging but fun course. In the males, Morgan finished in 5th spot, and in the female, Jenna finished in 4th after a good race. After them, off went the veterans with Paul Crotty and Sam Sherwin representing the club. After completing the tough 4 laps, Paul came in 17th and Sam 21st. In the afternoon races, we had one club representitive racing, this was Jason Sinden racing in the masters category completing 4 laps to finish in 13th place. We had two primary school racers riding for us, Polly Henderson, finishing 1st in the primary 1-3 category , and Adam Hughes finishing in 2nd place in the primary 6-7 category. We were well represented at this race with all club members doing brilliant in their races. We are looking forward to the final round of the Scottish Cross Country series on the 20th of September at Drumlanrig Castle. See you all there!

by MORGAN McCONNELL