You can't keep a desperate man down.

Imagine you are a twenty year old lad with two spankin' Cove DH bikes in the garage, a pile of Shred/Bikemagic.com jerseys sat in their wrappers just waiting to have the elbows torn out of them and you can't ride your bike because some quack has said that you've got a fractured spine.

If you've got that mental image then you are somewhere near to being in the shoes of Shred/Bikemagic.com team rider Ashley Mullane. Add to this the sick DH track at Gethin, two rounds of the UK's numero uno series the Dragon Downhills and the nod of approval from a reasonably priced physio and you've got yourself a carte blanche, sealed deal, ticket to ride.

So Ash rises like the evolution of man in just four weeks from a knuckle dragging, hunchbacked, fractured spined cro-magnon man to... well, just shy of knuckle dragging, baseball cap wearing DH rider.

Back off the lounge floor and into the pasty van. Ash cruises up to rounds five and six of the Dragon series, Starmix in hand, to see if he's going to be able to recover the form he had earlier in the season of whether he'll be freaked out like Cole Trickle in Days Of Thunder.

Day one and the track was damp. Gethin is steep, fast and rocky and prime territory for messing yourself up. Fortunately you only really mess youself up if you fall off and as Ash managed to stay on the bike, despite some brakes-off attacks on a rock garden, he was looking good. As the sun came out to a roaring 30-odd degrees he decided to switch to slick tyres and the speed went up even more. Just shy of Dan Stanbridge, Ash got second place in the Elite category.

Sunday was a different story, sussing out some new lines and putting the hammer down was all it took to blow apart the field and Mundane scored himself his first Elite win in the Dragon series this season - he was stoked to beat Junior rider Brendan Fairclough who's been showing up the Elite boys all season!

We're all totally amazed by the recovery of Ashley, it's the perfect combination of some physio, a lot of Haribo and some TLC from his family and the lovely Haby, his girlfriend. So the Shred/Bikemagic.com Summer Tour continues - we're working flat out on the new issue of shred magazine which should be with you in the next couple of weeks [I'd better pull my finger out, then - Mike].

Keep an eye out for it at www.shredmagazine.com.