Yeah I’m in for inners and soiling myself a little. Prospacker and the classic looked really heavily ridden last weekend so I reckon they’re in. I think I can figure out what most routes roughly are from the profiles they put on their facebook page today and one does tie in with the minch moor to bottom of prospacker from the altitudes.

I’d just like to apologise now to everyone behind me on those two stages! In fact every stage 🙂

WTF would you enter an Enduro hoping it doesn’t have any nice semi-technical stages?

it’s your money, like.

I’m going to ride in front of you GW

Missing the first (local!) one which is a shame, do post up the stages on saturday so I can see what i’ve missed.

Enjoy!

I’m in, hardtail category 😯

So, how’s everyone feeling today?

I am so very achy, that place beat the crap out of me.

Hope the guy who came off on stage 2 is ok…..plus the bloke nursing a broken wrist at the bottom of 4, casually asking which was the best way down to the carpark.

One of the biggest problems with the current Enduro setup imo – very very limited marshal/medical cover but using the steepest trails available….hhhmmm

I imagine that medical/marshal coverage is one of the major contributing factors towards the UCI refusing to support enduro. Limited practice time, vast area of trails to cover, highly technical DH courses ridden by competitors in XC kit…..it’s unsurprising they’re steering clear.

That said, I had a great day out and only, really, compete in enduro events at the moment.

Just realised, didn’t mean UCI, British Cycling.

I don’t think many folk got down that bit cleanly Bob – other than the special few. I had ridden it before and was feeling ace after Prospacker (who comes up with trail names at Inners???) in practice. So glibly fired into it and smashed my head into a tree about 4 metres into the steep section. Wholly woosed out on the ‘race’ run after that… ho hum 🙂

yeah stage 4 was a stinker for me too, I had bonked and just stopped on the steep lower bit for a bit as I couldn’t hold the brakes on any longer. Had a little rest and let my mate through! It was unrecognisable from the day before even, just choppy mud and roots!

Spent the whole of sunday limping around the house and grumping 🙁 Not crash damage, just blew up my dodgy knee in practice.

Do you think the introduction of enduro lite is also being used as an opportunity to raise the bar for enduro hevy? It didn’t seem that way when it was pitched but that was a pretty full on weekend, in practice i found it harder than the EWS inners/golfy day tbh. That’s not a complaint exactly, just an observation…

It’d have been no fun at all evaccing someone out of the middle of prospacker, good effort from all involved. Quite a nasty combination, higher risk of a crash and terrible access. I helped get a walking wounded guy out of there once, that was hard enough.

@NW, I probably met you on saturday on the top, bad knee chat? If not, you weren’t the only one 😉

will look for that FB page, cheers.

I don’t have any experience with Enduro to really comment, but I can see the enduro ‘lite’ category being there maybe not to ‘up’ the game of the full fat course, but allow more folk in at a lower technical ability to get in on some of the action and actually stand a chance of winning something, not being absolute last on a list of 3-500 competitors?

As for Evac, medic’s were guided to the right place very quickly after the incident, but its remoteness makes communications tricky, though in that instance that wasn’t a factor, getting a casualty down pro-spacker after 300+ riders have been down it twice is an utter mission as all those on hand will have witnessed.

How long, time wise, for each stage roughly?. I only ask, as my local trails are being used for the Largs round. Admitedly, it’s not for another 7 months, but at present, I can’t think of a single descent that would take good riders more than 2 minutes odd.

A lot of work ahead….

Evac of casualties on track is nearly always time consuming, and access to prospacker is probably not any harder than most tracks at Innerleithen. Last casualty I helped to stretcher out of Plora Craig took a couple hours, so a time frame of hours is not uncommon for people unable to walk out.

However there were a couple reports of riders forcing past the casualty before someone finally stopped to help.

Interesting re Largs – I was wondering about that as parents-in-law live in Gourock and I was checking Strava heat maps and segment explorer to see if I could find any trails and there’s not a jot I can see! I assume your local trails are in/around Kelburn? Some good contours in there like…

I assume the guy riding for Knolly who won Lite was staying at Glentress wigwams. I was chatting with them on Saturday evening and they only decided to enter a few days before the event so no full-Enduro spaces left so just went for lite anyways. So not really taking the piss…

And I wasn’t complaining about the time it took to get the casualty out – more the time it took to get organised and ready to get him out including waiting for another half bottle of entonox to be ferried up the hill before we could start to move him. When someone is in fairly extreme pain, white, shaking etc I get a bit anxious to get them to hospital fairly promptly…

That’s actually quite funny, hadn’t considered the sandbagging opportunities 🙂 Although i’d still get whooped anyway

First medic approached from the fire road just below mid-stage, the second attempted from the bottom a fair bit later AFAIK. First medic was there as sharpish as possible on that terrain.
There was a lot of Chinese whispers out of some of the riders, one said there was blood on the trail above where the casualty was, so you have to take hearsay with a pinch of salt sometimes, although almost all riders were very helpful* 🙂

* 2 or 3 slipped through and didn’t’ offer assistance.

Run times, I saw low 3 mins for a few stages for the fast guys. Mostly in the 3.5-6 min mark, stage 2 would have been in the 5-6 min mark for the fast guys?