Rough Ride

No shirt for me either - I'll stick with the smart casual.
Pub on Saturday night sounds good - better than firing up the primus.

Im another odd ball

Guys I'm thinking of in listing now that I'm not moving house this weekend, bloody solicitors, no offence if any of you are Solicitors. Will probably drive there and back on Sunday. Cool with riding as a group. No Cyclone Shirt though!!!

Stuart, drop me your mobile number on craig.llewellyn@bwffw.org.uk if you're coming. I think provisionally we're planning to convene on site at Wilf's cafe for 09:00hrs (or thereabouts) on the Sunday morning. Some of us are hooking up for a beer and a bite to eat on the Saturday evening.

I'll email everyones numbers out later.

Cheers.

We're cooking on gas now lads... Paul was good enough to lend me his cyclone shirt for the weekend

Guys just realised how far this event is, there are two Kington's, both in the same direction but one is 1.5hrs drive and the other is 2.5hrs. Anyone got a spare bed, if not I will camp with Pete, no only joking Pete, i have my own tent.

Looking at the forcast we will all be wearing waterproofs rather than a there being a few "odd balls" without cyclone tops

Good call on the B&B Andy Last weekend I had watercoming up through the groudsheet and the wind pushing the tent flat

Starting to feel guilty about the impact of everyone driving solo to the event. Anyone interested in car pooling. I have space for two.

ps. This offer does not extend to my tent!!!

The route ...

Heh heh yeah right


Right?

Oh

Aww ouch aw oooh me leg....

My arm....

Have I told anyone I have a bad back?

Crikey a tough route but hey ho we'll pull each other round!!!

Weather not looking too good so bring the waterproofs folks might even bring trousers!

Stu you should come down with Pete on sat he might have space?

I can't wait

Pete would love to jump into you car, I'll save jumping into your tent another time. What time u thinking of leaving?

Leaving mid afternoon on Saturday - send me an email and we can exchange details offline.

thebaggaleys at mac dot com

Pete, are you able to save the .trl as .gpx or something generic. I can't convert it to MultiMap as there are too many waypoints for my free converter If you can any chance of emailing it to me?

No converter - but if tell me how many data points you can handle I can cut it up or reduce the resolution presto

Pete no worries I downloaded GPSBabel and converted the .trl to a useable format for me.

www.gpsvisualizer.com is also pretty useful.

Cheers.

Guys,

There’re not kidding when they say there’s 6500ft of climbing on the 75km route. I naively thought yeah yeah it won’t be that bad and expected to get around in 1.5x my HONC time which was 30 miles in 3.5 hrs so estimated about 5 hrs. BIG rethink! The climbs drag on and on. The moorland tracks are made up of the soft spongey grass/moss that saps any wheel speed and drains your legs. If that’s not bad enough the compacted dirt trails are 4x4 wheel tracks which can get so deep and narrow your pedals ground out on the top, then when you lose concentration for a second you roll up the side of a rut and nearly have an ‘off’ which if your corkscrewing around the side of the hill is treacherous as there’re quite steeply banked. Oh and did I mention the general amount of rutted trail which means getting any speed up is difficult. The descents are generally very quick and either loose earth, rock or grass and over too quick to gain any recovery before the next climb.

I had a rather embarrassing off on some wet grass in front of a family of spectators, another when grabbed the bars as my hands got flung around and accidentally got a handful of front brake and went straight over, and finally I over corrected my steering and slipped off the trail and down the side of the hill for a metre or so.

I was thankful for the water stops. I had 3 litres with me anyway but still took on an extra litre.

Will probably do it again next year. I did the 75km in about 7hrs 3mins but I am waiting the electronic timings.

I was having a good time then the cramp set in after about 40k and the last 20K was hard work it was jsut hill after hill.... the thing that got me was after the finish line you still had a mile or so to get back to the camp site. Anyway I got back just over 6 hours. I recorded the route so I'll post it tonight.

Steve

Myself and Stuart paired up after the route split and posted times around the 7:40 mark - nicely paced to get back before 6 . And no - that wasn't me in the helicopter being airlifted to hospital, we rode past as they were landing, though I did back off on the descents (for a while).


I felt the riding certainly improved after the break with more gradual descending allowing you to engage the big ring and push the pace. The crowds disappeared at this point too. The most challenging section was around the western most, where the route took to the sheep tracks (skinnies) in big way with heather to the left and a steep drop to the right. Already looking forward to repeating the final descent with fresh legs/arms and when I can feel my hands! I echo Craigs comment about the ruts - I was scraping both feet on the edges at times.

Anyone found the results or photographer's site yet?

The photo's will be on the following site tomorrow.

http://www.sleepmonsters.co.uk/photoshop.php

Ride details:

http://trail.motionbased.com/trail/activity/2926853

The results are on the web

Well done everyone.

Respect to Mr. T. for that posting that time.

Just waiting on the pics now.