Tuesday 26 June 2007

Mountain Mayhem

It was Mountain Mayhem last weekend - 24hr mountain bike racing(?) at it's best and worst. i was honoured to be riding with Singlespeeders of Destruction, thanks to Chipps, Biff and Nick for being a gorgeous team to get properly broken with. Felt absolutely empty after the first lap, so just tried to survive after that. It got easier on the next lap, then I did a double night lap and went to bed feeling sick. woke up after 3.5 hours sleep and thought "my knees hurt, I don't want to do another lap". Had a quadruple espresso and thought another lap or two might not be so bad and ventured forth. The horror. It was like a re-enactment of the Somme with bikes instead of bullets. I might have thrown my bike down when i got back and cursed about dragging a 50lb mud laden singlespeed around that course.

It was ace!

Wednesday 13 June 2007

SSUK 2007

It was in Brizzol. It was ace. You had to be there.

DNF!

After my sterling (ahem!) performance in the 1000m peaks I was humbled last night in the Moel Elio race - completely blew up after about 10 minutes, tried to carry on but didn't have anything in the tank and could feel my throat getting sore and a dry cough started up. Took a short cut and still came in last but one. Hey ho!

welsh 1000m peaks

Well, 10 days after the event Ive just gotten around to brag about completing the 1000m Peaks race - 22 miles, something like 2700m of ascent, starting on the coast at abergwyngregan and finishing on the summit of Snowdon. A cruel place to finish a race of that nature because when you've 'finished' there's still another 4 miles to get back to the car. Finished in 6 hours dead - and i was dead by the end, could barely speak when I reached the top of the miner's track let alone run.

Probably the hardest thing I've ever done. No, DEFINITELY the hardest thing I've ever done. But having done it, well, it begs the question "what next?" maybe I should concentrate on doing shorter races a bit quicker....