We have a winner! Singular Cycles’ Aidan Harding rolled into Tyndrum on Tuesday as first finisher of the first Highland Trail. The SPOT leaderboard has his ‘official’ time for the 425-mile route as 3 days, 3 hours and 10 minutes, though according to his Twitter feed you can knock another 50 minutes off that as he was too busy eating his dinner to stop his tracker… 😉
Finished Highland Trail race 20 minutes ago. Already eating curry. Win!
— Aidan Harding (@AidanHarding) May 28, 2013
As of Wednesday morning, two more riders have finished (Ian Barrington, 3.12.46 and Alan Sheldon, 3.14.06), and 11 tracked riders are still on the trail. To put their rides into perspective, 13 of the 27 starters have already scratched due to injury, mechanicals and plain ol’ fatigue. Tough times, but it looks like the sun is currently shining on the Highlands. Keep pedalling, guys…
The inaugural Highland Trail 400 kicked off this weekend, with 28 racers departing Tyndrum at 10.00 on Saturday for a 425-mile tour of the Scottish Highlands. SPOT trackers aren’t mandatory for entrants but have been encouraged, and you can follow the progress of those riders carrying them on the dedicated Trackleaders page:
Plenty of the names on board will be familiar to anyone with an interest in self-supported racing (like bikepacking, but faster). There are several Tour Divide/GDR veterans in there, as well as a few dark horses who could pull who knows what out of the (frame) bag. Bets are on as to what the record pace will be – the organiser’s reccy trip time stands at 5 days, 4 hours & 20 minutes, but we know of at least one racer who’s meant to be back at work first thing this week… 😉
Discuss their apparent tactics/progress/imminent weather events/the cafes-chippies-bothies they should be headed for, over on the forum:
Get info about the event, including GPX files, tempting pictures/write-up of the route and all the rules (including the full definition of what is and isn’t classed as a self-supported ride…) on the event website:
We’ll hopefully be able to bring you a post-event write up, too – assuming our tame racer, Greg May, doesn’t get eaten by marauding haggis…
