@Captain_Sponge – It’s not the overall distances that have changed, but the amount that falls into the timed racing stages. The original blurb said 40-50% of the riding will be timed, but in fact it is going to be 10-20%, probably closer to 10%. That’s probably a bit harsh – it is likely around 10-20%

This won’t bother many people, but the race was billed as two races in one – an xc/’up and down’ race, and a gravity biased race. Make your choice, and go for it. I was hoping for a longer distance xc race (40-50% of the riding being timed) with fun downhill sections, and selected kit for that.

Now that there is going to be much less xc racing and more pootling between timed stages, I need to look at the stages in detail to see if it’s worth taking the bigger bike. I just hope it’s not going to be a 5 day Enduro – that’s not really what I signed up for – but whatever, it will still be fun, and better than sitting in the office!

chum3 so have the dropped the Timed XC sections and kept the Timed DH Sections?

http://www.epiccymru.com/event-info/timing/

Really wish I had the annual leave to do this, it sounds like fun and something that could, with the right management and organisation, become a classic. Hope it works out well for the racers and organisers.

I don’t think they’ve dropped the XC sections, they’re just shorter than first suggested. The maps released don’t make it explicit where the XC and DH are, but there is a ‘Stage Split’ marked, which is likely to be the XC/DH split, but I’m guessing.

chum3 so have the dropped the Timed XC sections and kept the Timed DH Sections?

I’ve not read the info in detail, but there appears to be a mix still, but the portion counting towards “trail king” seems high so it seems a bit biased towards the downhill side.

No stage looked, from a scan, like it would have the 20km timed (40% ish) that the link above suggests, but I took that as a maximum rather than an average anyway.

Looking forward to seeing how it all works out on the ground. As above, will be nice to be riding and not in the office 🙂

Sounds great, keen to know for next year.

Still looking forward to it, the transitions are still excellent riding terrain, but chum3 has summed it up perfectly. Seems to be more dh orinentated than originally billed. Enduro bias in an endurance event. Having said that this is only in terms of the number of times stages. In terms of elapsed time the xc stages will definitely account for the vast majority of the timed ‘time’, as i’m guessing they are mostly uphill. Overall i think you will gain more time in a swift uphill than a banzie ‘short’ downhill.

Can’t wait to get there.

Getting excited too- I think I’m going with the more XC bike, it was fine for the Dyfi, and I’d appreciate the lighter weight and gearing! If anyone is taking multiple vehicles, it’d be good to know, and I reckon petrol money could be saved!? I’d like to have access to my car in the later stages, just to go and source extra food…!

I unpicked most of the stages last night, and I’m sticking with the Anthem 29 rather than swapping to the bigger bike. I was leaning towards the xc anyway, and a spin around BPW last weekend proved it pretty capable.

Life has done its usual thing of getting in the way of biking!!

Not had a chance to look at the route, not ridden for over a week and struggling to get stuff packed/checked etc….

None of the above really matter… still excited and a touch nervous.

Roll on Saturday.

getting excited…..

bike fettled – new headset bearing, chain, cassette, chain ring, pedals tweaked and greased, reverb bled,

will call in on chipps – have you got the electric fat bike again? I’ll be a big bloke on with no mates on a Pyga ……

Just deciding what/how many spares/bits to bring…

Bit nervous now – I havent ridden MTB for 4 weeks and am carrying excess croissant/camemebert from holidays.

Pivot went on bike a few weeks ago and and no spares available until at least next week. Fortunately shop have lent me a “5” for the event but only picking it up Saturday AM so first time riding it will be Saturday prologue. I will dream up a few more excuses for slowness as we go but that will do for now !

Will there be any beers available at the 2 sites or do I need to get rid of some energy gel ballast/clothes and pack the real essentials ?

I am guessing i’ll be getting to know you over the course of the week Tex…. god I hope there is beer!!

http://www.actionsportstiming.co.uk/live/epic-cymru-live/#0_E3118A

I don’t know about anyone else, but I’m officially cheering for Mo Man Fai from here onwards. Such a solid foundation to improve from, I’m raising a beer to him now.

Joe Murray racing !!!

And doddy doing well !

I thought Mark Weir was supposed to be there?

That’s not Doddy – it’s Andy Dodds – Scottish Trek rep.

Aahh, was expecting some epic endurance/enduro gurning on the photos

Does that make chips fastest MTB journo?

Oh no, mate bust his lefty, no one could fix it had to pull out !

Your mate was lucky – at least he got a ride – I had to pull out before I even started – lifted up my race bag to load into the van to get to the event and something went in my lower back. I can just about walk properly now.

To say I am gutted is a bit of an understatement. Hoping the event is a big success and is on next year since I have some unstarted business !

Tex – sorry to hear that, terrible luck. We can both give it a decent crack next year!

Well yesterday’s 6km prologue was ‘kin hard work with about 450m climbing packed in

Today much better. 3 times stages, first was about 1km up then the penhydd descent – I think it was about 11 mins ish. Second was the wall climb up to where the bunkhouse are and was a killer – 15 ish mins. Third was the wall descent. 52kms with 1500 m climbing

Tomorrow promises a 13km uphill stage (yikes) but it’s okay because team “oh alright then” including me and chipps have just won the tug of war competition – only thing either of us are going to come close to winning….

I mean 6 mile ish prologue!

As someone that would be more interested in the DH sections than the timed ups, is there much queuing/follow the train on the DH bits?

Watching the Vids there looks like a bit but not as much as an XC race.

Scott, Joel and Harny have gone out each day ~ 20mins after the official start, focused on the trail king & queen rather than overall. That way they’re getting clean (well nearly) runs.

I like the sound of that!

In the middle of the field it was fairly easy to queue at the timing start points and leave a reasonable gap before heading into sections. Still caught a fair few people on longer runs but on the whole passing worked out OK, there were only a couple of times I was held up a bit.

Scott- as Ben said, it’s easy to hang back and focus on the trail king sections; after the first day we took a steady pace on the neutral stuff and rode the timed sections with no hold-ups. We took the appearance of the Bird contingent at the end of a run as a signal to get moving!

It was properly wet today though, so keeping the pace up was a better idea- pretty cold otherwise.

However, the whole event has been fantastic, real total riding challenge! Epic/Enduro in all senses! (A few more pure descent stages would have been good though!)

Check out this slideshow from yesterday