It was hot yesterday and I was tired.
So tired, in fact, that i called the ride off after 5hrs and crawled home feeling very rough.

Now I feel many times rougher. Ick. I could fall asleep right now…or be sick. Great.

The new tyres on the road bike are very slow and mute the feeling of the road too much for my liking, they are a nice shade of blue though. Oh, and I still managed to destroy another rider up waddington fell, despite being way down on power. Yay me.

Lots of time trialists on their way to the garstang TT eyed me up jealously on my way home, wanting to thrash me in my weakened state. I might give that TT a go sometime, when I’m less feeble.

Quickie review:
Good fun - racing with added an added ‘mystery’ factor

The Prologue was at Go Ape in Buxton, which was quite fun (even if it did set the tone of getting eaten alive by midges whenever stood still)

The Start was (when we finally got given maps) a few miles out of town - and 3hrs later than the finish of the prologue - so we sat around outside the pubs and clubs of Buxton eating fish and chips and looking remarkably out of place!

Stage 1 was mtbing in the dark. Nightriding is always ace and this was no exception, some really swoopy sections induced big cheesy grins, as did riding down the broken road at mam tor…only just noticing the big drops becfore flying off them…great fun!

Stage 2 was running all around the castleton/hope area. I’m not the greatest runner by any means but it was still fun, trotting up the sides of the fells and skipping/sliding/tumbling back down

Special Checkpoint 1 was underground in Speedwell Cavern. Apparently tourists walk down the 105 stairs and get into a boat before being sailed along the low roofed tunnels…we walked down the 105 steps and were made to get into the waist deep, stagnant, FREEZING COLD water and wade for the best part of a kilometre. Nice. It was the first time I’d ever stood around at 4.30 in the morning in sopping wet clothes outside and felt really warm!

Stage 3 was mtbing again (it was light now, so no need for the lights). Sadly i had the most freakish of freakish accidents and pulled the rear tyre off the rim while ridnig in a straight line along the road!
Even more sadly it tore a 4 inch gash into the tyre. We bodged it back together with zip ties and the bodge held together for about 8km, before the tube, bulging out of the hole in the tyre, died and i was reduced to running/trotting/sulking again. We missed out on the 2nd Special Checkpoint and hundreds of points as we made our way straight to the next transition halfway up snake pass.
I got fed up of walking up the road so started riding on what was left of the flat tyre and, amazingly, wasn’t getting dropped by other competitors up the climb. Eventually the tyre died completely and I was forced back onto my feet, where i set about not getting left behind by another team that had just ridden past us (this seemed to annoying them a bit…)

Stage 4 was running again and my legs were quite shot! We trotted and ‘power walked’ our way round kinder scout back to hayfield, getting a couple of checkpoints and thinking wiser about going right over ther top of kinder for more points. We finally finished (which in itself was a miracle!) with a few minutes to spare after taking it easy and sat around watching other teams come sprinting into the finish straight in a desperate attempt to not lose any point by being late back…often in vain!

So there you are, good fun, nice scenery, some drama (thank god i only shredded a cheap bontrager tyre, rather than the expensive ‘racing ralphs’), some laughs with the other competitors and we didn’t finish 6th, hurrah!
Results are up on the open adventure site…amazingly we didn’t finish last despite missing most fo the 3rd stage!
Even more amazingly, my legs haven’t siezed up since the race, though they are on fire with midge bites!

Looks like another wet endurance event for me this weekend; this time the Open12 in the Peaks.

Tonight will be mostly spent packing a kit bag without really knowing what we (me and rich) will be doing during the race! The organisers mention “stomach tightening” special stages and insist each team has items such as gardening gloves and swimming goggles with them!

Suffice to say I’ve not done any running in preperation for it (I think i’ll use it as an excuse to kick start my running training for the 3 peaks later in the year) and my navigational skills are still fairly poor so it should be interesting to say the least…

Lets start with a little history lesson:

Sleepless in the Saddle 2006: 6th place solo
Mountain Mayhem 2007: 6th place solo
Sleepless in the Saddle 2007: 6th place solo
Mountain Mayhem 2008: have a chuffing guess.

I mean really?! What’s going on?!

Wayne’s support for the whole race - as well as being DJ in the way home - meant i didn’t die a death, despite my stomach doing it’s “I’m not allowing you to consume anything” trick again. He also kept the bikes going brilliantly so I never had to worry about slipping gears or owt like that and he steadfastly refused to complain or look miserable for the whole race. I don’t know how he does it; I’d have gone mental if some grumpy looking sod stumbled into the pits at 3am and demanded I sort the tyres out and raise the saddle a bit while he just sat there gazing vacantly at the floor!

I’m going to moan a bit now, just to warn you

The course started out stupidly congested and never really quietened down (i think they let too many people race TBH). It wouldn’t be so bad if everyone was experienced at racing, but a lot of the racers are “noobs” and throughout the 24hrs you’d get processions of riders 5 or 6 people long trailing each other through all the singletrack sections. This isn’t so bad when you’ve got enough energy and strength to power past the whole group, but 18hrs in I couldn’t get past that many people in one go so ended up having to tag onto the back of the conga line on several occasions. That kinda sucked.

I’m not going to maon about how unridable the course got, because I’ve raced there 3 times now and knew exactly what it would be like. I fitted (or, more accurately, ‘Wayne fitted while i sat gazing vacantly at the floor’) 32c cyclocross tyres to the scandal as they were the only tyres that wouldn’t clog the frame with mud and that seemed to work quite well, although i’m a bit gutted that all the stodge getting pulled across the frame by the cranks managed to wear away some of the anodizing on the previously new looking frame:

bah!

It certainly wasn’t all bad though, the course (when ridable) was good fun…not particularly technical but fun nontheless. There was a really good vibe in the solo tent and for the most part it was the same out on the course - though i think a few people who aren’t used to racing brough some pretty crappy attitudes with them. “Team On-One” rocked, with all of us getting right up there in the results despite the conditions/stomach issues etc.

The results are up on the mountain mayhem site for you to peruse…i dont remember taking 3hrs 13mins for 1 lap, but it does seem to have taken place in the middle of the night, so maybe that’s not too suprising!

I’m off to eat lots of cake now, as i think i’m owed a few calories!

finished building/tidying up the new scandal on saturday and what better way to check everything was correctly adjusted, tightened properly and bedded in than hammering it while racing?!
Nowt that’s what, so i did (race it…a bit)
The NPS series came to Grizedale so i entered the whyte enduro on the sunday and gave the bike a bit of a pasting.
I can officially say that everything that sas going to come loose has now come loose and has been sorted.
The chain came apart twice; both times it was the “QR link” thing that dissasembled itself on the rocky singletrack sections so now i’ve got rid of them and have put the chain together properly (and was eaten alive by miges while sat around in the woods fettling it)
The headset loosened off once (fair enough, that was just bedding in)
The saddle slipped down in the frame lots of times, though i think i’ve got that sorted now by turning the seatclamp round and winding on lots of torque

I’m v. happy with the riding position and overall feel of the bike, now the bars are the right width for me it felt really nice and natural…possibly slightly too long for really gnarly tech DH stuff, but then that’s not really what the bike is all about…and it didn’t slow me down on any of the swoopy, rocky singletrack or steep descents while racing, so i’m happy!

The course was good fun, it was what i was hoping the wildboar24 course would be like, with lots of rocky singletrack interspersed with some fireroad climbs to break the field up a bit, so i really enjoyed myself.
I only did 4 laps and didn’t go flat out on the tech stuff (mayhem is in a few days and i didn’t want to smash myself up poitlessly) but i got my heart rate up a bit, had the bike sorted by the last lap and managed to take part in another event where it didn’t rain! Yay!

Kudos has to go to joolze for taking pics in the most insane places; risking life and limb on some of the most crash-prone corners for what will no doubt be cracking shots!