For the before, in between and after ride pint why not check out the beer festival on in town.

http://www.peeblesrfc.org/news/the-borders-beer-festival-1261082.html

Nearly time for the course announcement. 8pm tonight….

Weather looking perfect for race day, cooling with no wind. Not so much for practice tomorrow. 😉

Most of it is taped out now :-), still not sure if it’s fear or excitement I feel, probably a bit of both.

Weather looking perfect for race day, cooling with no wind. Not so much for practice tomorrow

Weather looks grand to me (minus freezing myself in the middle of the night) http://www.yr.no/place/United_Kingdom/Scotland/Glentress_Forest/

Course route

No surprises?

Aparently all is not as it seems up Cademuir……

“Tyres with grip an advantage on Stages One and Two in particular – enjoy!” 🙂

Cademuir is slippy t’is why..

Well obvs, just liked that it was the sole piece of info in the email

good long stages at gt! enjoy y’all

Really enjoyed today, I kinda reversed the order and found I had Glentress almost to myself, heading over to Cademuir later on after the tracks had seen a few wheels. The climb from stg1 to stg2 is nasty!

AND I was back in the house for 1pm, didn’t miss any WC!

Good to see that trail etiquette is totally out of the window at this event! Folk pushing up the trail, folk standing in the trail, bikes left in the trail, groups of riders blocking the way onto fireroads – and none of them making a half decent effort to get out of the way. ****. Definitely worse than I’ve seen at any other race

Course is ok. steep Tweed by numbers, and GT by numbers. Was mostly surprised by how bloomin dark it was on Brown Trout!

STAAAAAAVAAAA!

Should’ve done GT first, it was most chill.

Eh, not Strava when it’s race practise. Just wanting to get a run in without having to stop to move **** out of the way

GT was strangely quiet in the afternoon too. Hardly saw anyone

Big crash for me on stage two at the drop. Head first in to the big tree. Had to walk the final bit and also walked stage three due to the pain. Touch and go for tomorrow’s race.

And thanks to the lady who helped me, whoever you were!

Stage 3 is my favourite, a bit of everything.

The start of stage 1 is a great wake up call. I’d stopped where it meets the fire road (well out the way before you ask), the comments I heard ranged from “it’s nearly unrideable!” to “that’s brilliant!”. My impression probably sat in between those. I’d definitely like to see someone who’s pretty fast doing it to see their technique.

I was coming down stg1 thinking it was much like 3g on the golf course but easier, the gritty top layer had tons of grip.

I thought stage 1 had loads of grip, surprised me and the mates I was with. Was great! Saying it’s ‘it’s nearly unrideable!’ seems a bit much though. Steep and twisty, yeah, but plenty grip.

Well that was an interesting day out! Stage 1, off the line, BANG as my two ride old chain decides it can’t handle my huge torques! Made for an interesting combo of chainless riding, running and overtaking!

Grand day out otherwise 🙂

Argghh Legend – I tried to call you back but you’d gone down the trail – guessing you couldn’t fix the chain then?

What an awesome day!
All stages were great fast and techy.

Big thank you to marshals and all those involved in the event! X

Was quite pleased with my 1 and 2 then 3 was going ok then i cramped up on broon trout and made a right mess of it ! loved 4 but that little climb in the middle was tougher than normal . All in all a great weekend although in hindsight I probably did to much on sat , and apologies to anyone who had to overtake me !

Absolutely wicked day, thanks to all those who organised it. Pleased I manages to ride the whole lot yesterday as a mechanical at the top of stage 1 put me out of the Cadmuir stages. Alpine Bikes were stars and sorted me out so I could slide my way down Broon Trout on 3 and blast out 4. Someone has to come last eh?! Met some very friendly riders too 😀

Diane – Member
Argghh Legend – I tried to call you back but you’d gone down the trail – guessing you couldn’t fix the chain then?

Haha! Ah well! Reverted to DH mode and just thought about getting the bike rideable and smashing on! Finally got your message at the bottom, possibly a little late by then 🙂

Fixed it at the bottom of the stage, was interesting having to paddle through the flat sections, then get off and run up the hill and along the flat bit to the finish!

Like last year, an utterly brilliant day/event/trails. Had a blast, and the weather, wasn’t expecting it to be so sunny!

Results are up here…

Utterly phenomenal weekend all round really. Would’ve liked to have been higher up the leaderboard, I reckon I was going faster than I ever have before at some points, but ultimately lost too much time on the brown trout and the similar stuff in cademuir, and the pedally bits in stages 3 & 4. Loved every minute of it tho…

Who were the official photographers?

Yep I enjoyed that though I did find getting caught behind folk quite frustrating. I was riding broon troot better than ever and ended up losing 10 sec or so behind someone but still got a big strava pr 🙂 The trails were straight forward, fast and flowy. Nothing I felt was steep or very technical but it was all good fun and pretty damn dry/grippy.

I’ll probably enter again!

Yep I enjoyed that though I did find getting caught behind folk quite frustrating

Poor wee lamb, try getting stuck behind folk when you’ve got no chain on 😉

Why would I do that? 🙂 Had a guy in front of me riding stage 2 without a saddle… that could have been sore. I don’t think he did the drop!

Great day out. Comedy falls on first half of Stage 1 (wake up, dummy) I thought might ruin any attempt at comparison with last years efforts, but quickly replaced by some real fun on the rest of Cademuir and GT was a blast.
Need to eat more carrots … the transition to the dark of Betty Blue and Broon Troot was ‘entertaining’.

Cracking event, well organised as ever, how they’ve booked the weather this year has been amazing too.

Thanks to all the marshals and organisers if they’re on this forum.

That’d be the saddle that was handed over at stage 1 start I guess.

Which photographers have pictures by number does anyone know?

Had a great day, Stage 1&2 where interesting to say the least! But I really enjoyed the whole loop, as expected my fitness was the real setback, I’ll be back next year though and firing on all cylinders!

I was down at Glentress yesterday & could have sworn I seen someone (with a race number) whose bike appeared to be held together by the shock linkage as the top tube & part of the seat tube appeared to have snapped clean off 😯 anyone any ideas?

I had stopped near the red route detour round spooky woods & saw someone cycling towards me with a seat post & saddle hanging out of their backpack, thought it was maybe a bent post but when they went past I could have sworn the top tube was flapping in the breeze… normally I would have put it down to hallucinations but my mate swore he seen it too – curious how long it was rideable like this & if any balls were torn off if/when it went.

Some photos on roots and rain but not many yet…

I wanna see some gopro footage too….!?

Has the finishing post 4h15m penalty been added to the results? E.g. #11 finisher Alan Blyth did the course in 4h35m but has a race time of 24m51s.

Finishing post was increased to 4h30mins
Looks like there are a few who will incur time penalties!

I was down at Glentress yesterday and could have sworn I seen someone (with a race number) whose bike appeared to be held together by the shock linkage as the top tube and part of the seat tube appeared to have snapped clean off anyone any ideas?

Yes I passed him on the transition between 3 and 4 – he had snapped the top tube cleanly about 4 inches back from the headset, I assume on Stage 3. He took the seat post and saddle off and continued on. He boosted up the climb pretty fast and I heard he wasn’t hanging about on Stage 4 either! Much respect to him!

Started at 10.10 and had about 50mins of waiting at stage 1 & 2, so the total time should really be out the window (not sure what my total time was, think I was ok anyway)

We were off at 9am, queued behind about ten riders at top of stage one then didn’t queue again! Still only got back with half hour to spare!