Llanwrtyd Wells merida

Ive signed up for this event the route profile looks interesting 1950m of climbing in 50km and I thought the ruthin merida had a lot of climbing.
I guess it just makes the down hills even bigger though

Im going to make a weekend of it as it falls on the right shift patten at work so I can travel over Friday afternoon.

http://www.mtb-marathon.co.uk/events/llanwrtyd_wells.php

If the merida isn't enough http://www.green-events.co.uk/eventinfo.php?eventdetails=51 somthing to do for warm up on Saturday

Pinky and I are planning on doing the Merida. I may be brave and go for the 50K with the extra climbing. We'll see.

I think I may sign Pinky up for the Peat bog ride as well. She'll be delighted, I'm sure.

Unless anyone fancies the bog snorkleing I am thinking about doing the trails at Brechfa on the Saturday. I haven't done the black route there yet.

This course profile looks really interesting, I could get quite excited over it if I had a bike

Tin Tin wrote:This course profile looks really interesting, I could get quite excited over it if I had a bike

I could bring a spare one if you could go back to riding a hardtail, 18" frame

not_so_speedy_daz wrote:

Tin Tin wrote:This course profile looks really interesting, I could get quite excited over it if I had a bike

I could bring a spare one if you could go back to riding a hardtail, 18" frame

I'll let you try this one this one first speedy, those climbs are awesome.

So who's going this weekend??

Darren
Pinky
Me
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Pinky and I are going afterwork tomorrow. Pitching new tent in dark, that could be amusing!!!

Gav and are are thinking of it depending on the weather - the last forecast we saw was of 3 days of solid rain...

what distance are you doing?

I keep checking Met Check and it's changing all the time. Last weekend was suppossed to be raining so we nearly changed our plans, we would have regretted it as it was hot and dry.

It looks like rain on Sunday at the moment but I've just put my finger in the air this morning and I could sense the sunshine needed a rest, it WILL be back, but mercifully not as hot as it has been. Well that's the forcast according to someone who has just signed up to 50K of torture. I'm thinking if it's not fun it will be an interesting challenge.

Pinky will be seeing how things go as she's been a little poorly, yes AGAIN!! I just think it's feeble excuses myself. She hopes to do the 25K.

We have a lounge in our new tent so your welcome to join us and shelter from the inpending deluge..........................................did I say that, I meen sunshine.

Come on guys how was it?

The 50K route was more like 39K, it was pretty much dull except for about 5 minutes towards the end.

2 hours of torrential rain during the night pretty much made the woody singletrack a gloopy mess. We didn't get rained on during the ride though.

The start was a bit of a mess. Not just getting off sight but after about 3 miles everyone came to a halt while 1000 riders qued to get through a gate single file. A couple of miles later we all had to que again to get onto the first piece of singletrack.

I here the longer routes got better after the distances split.

Mud mud mud mud mud.........................the worse and most disorganised starts ever (thats say something when compared to most other Merida starts) the most pointless single gate! Boring fire roads and more mud.

Cramped parking/camping, bordering on fire hazard. To few toilets. Not enough showers, even when they did work. Bloody awful pasta.

Usual really!

Oh and I'm not keen on red T-shirts!

I think I enjoyed it The better parts of the ride were on the longer route, it was hard work but glad I upgraded to the 65km route after seeing the route that the 50km took (no dothie valley)
There were a few bottle necks, no monster climb at the start to spread people out.
Real sence of being out in the middle on nowhere in places no roads, houses or anything in sight just hills trees and sheep
The mud and water spoiled a lot of the trails but made others great fun there was a really steep, muddy, rooty decent just before the feed station. It was a matter of holding your nerve and trusting the bike to do its thing. I swear I sped up when I hit the brakes.
I nearly ran over a few people I caught someone on some single track so just free wheeled behind them, with nice loud clicky hope hub they fell off I caught the next person same thing happed I idn't push then honest.
I think there were a few people caught out by the conditions heavy rain over night lets do the marthon on dry weather summer tyres.
I followed somone down into the Dothie Valley they had a bit of an off lucky they sort of carried on running and landed in the soft grass or I would of crashed into them.
Some of the climbs were monsters the one climbing up to do the second half of the trail centre was a monster bit like suicide brake in the peaks but steeper didn't see a single person even trying to ride past half way.
The last big climb after the last feed station wasn't steep but it went on and on and on Fizz and myself caught swampy at this time well Fizz caught swampy and they waited for me.
The ride in the forest could of been great fun but the amount of rain had just trashed the trails found it really hard work with legs that were starting to cramp.
The last proper decent of the day I nearly took out another person dark, wet slippery narrow rocky trail and a photographer jumps out and flashes at me I think a few people nearly took him out.
After a ford crossing and another climb (that I walked) it was road back to the start and a finish at 16.27
No queue for the showers at this time

The photos are up http://www.sleepmonsters.com/photosystem/rightplacerighttime/digital_photosales.php?event_id=7578

Bugger, anyone remember my number?

Gav,

3084 - No i dont have an unhealthy interest in you Gav dont worry, it was on one of the photos that came up as 'not tagged' when I searched for mine, it also had Darren and Fizz in it.

My photo's are'nt much cop. What happened to the photo's taken at the last watersplash??? Where's the photo of me going down the 'rocky tunnel near end', you know the one Darren, the one where someone jumped out at you and flashed, yes yes yes, it was a camera flash before anyone asks.