The first day of practice was a tough one on the riders and especially the mechanics!

With a wet and muddy track in the morning the sun decided to come out in the afternoon and start drying the track and making it really greasy. The track this year has not really had much work done to it so there are millions of roots the whole way down which act like ice in these conditions. - the famous Maribor Rock Garden is the hardest it has ever been this year.

Well the first race of the year on a proper track with the whole team and the new bikes couldn't have gone much better!

After a week over at ChainReactionCycles.com in Ireland, getting the bikes dialled in, doing team photos, filming with Stu from MTBcut.com and basically having a fantastic time getting the royal treatment by everyone at CRC. Frank also took it upon himself to scare the pants of us all by taking us for a 'leisurely spin' in his DB9!! We finally headed over and up to Fort William for the 2nd round of the Halo BDS National Race for a proper test of our new bikes in preparation for the first World Cup in Maribor - then back to Fort William for the second World Cup in 4 weeks time.

The Intense M9 proto's fully equipped and ready for testing and racing...

After the Icelandic volcano decided to stop making such a mess, our team flew to Ireland. Our main sponsor, Chain Reaction Cycles, has headquarters here just outside of Belfast. We are here to set up and test our new M9 Proto’s, get all our gear together, do some filming, take some photos and just generally get ready for the World Cup season madness.

What a weekend; sunshine, great organisation and an amazing track made some top racing. I wasn’t booked in to do this race as the team were scheduled in to be at Chain Reaction Cycles head quarters but as Nigel and the others are still stuck in America due to this volcano I managed to get entered thanks to Lindsey who keeps entries open for elites up until the event.

The 2010 season has kicked off or 'Erupted' with the Sea Otter Classic over at Laguna Seca Raceway in Northern California.

The event is more of a festival for teams to debut their new new race gear, bikes and sponsors with most of the USA bike industry showing off the latest products and of course tons of spectators and and amateur racers competing and getting to watch the Pros that would normally only be seen on-line or in the magazines.