For me it would have to be the Hells 500 Old Dirty. Plain silly.
All rideable on a road bike with 28mm tyres(MTB is cheating)the flyer suggested.
71K and 1800metres of climbing on a cross bike over terrain that was more suited to a decent trail bike.I have never seen so many punctures, square wheels and full on mincing down a decent.
Today I am a broken man. Broken but smiling.

What you got?

School sports day, maybe 1972?
Slow bicycle race. Who can get to the finish last without a foot down.
I won.

Megavalanche – second row start for the main race was a bit of an eye opener.

EWS Whistler 2014 – the Crankzilla year. 75km, 3500m climbing & about 90 degrees. That was a tough day out.

Anything with cobbles.

I was basically a climber.
Suppose it serves me right for living in Belgium.

Hell of the East this year. 190km with 55km of pave. Loved every bone shaking minute of it! 😈

London to Paris in 24 hours. Some dark, dark times riding into a 30mph head wind at 4am. I was adamant all of northern France was up hill.

The Rapha Manchester to London ride was also nuts, though that was less the ride and more about how badly prepared I was.

the one down Huntingdon Rd Cambridge to get a Gardi Burger before the heavenly fast food enterprise closed at 2am. Rode into a lampost and had to detour to Addenbrookes A&E instead. No Gardi burger for me that night.

For me it was probably trying to do the Tour of Flanders sportive and the Megavalanche in the same year. Although both are quite silly.

The Fort William endurance downhill- I love it, can’t wait til it returns next year but I don’t think anything really prepares you for the wear and tear… Forget about the bike, I was absolutely rubbed raw, ripped up hands you can see coming but I didn’t expect to wear through the skin on my thighs 😯

Not so much the event that was ridiculous, but the fact that I was entering it.

Apparently I’m not a national level enduro rider….

Rovaniemi 150 – 150km on a fat bike, in arctic lapland, in February.

Couple of strathpuffers

Grand raid (although only the 90-odd km, 3500m climbing version)

Never need to do any of them again.

Megavalanche for me too. Although I never even made it to the start line of the qualification race 😳 Had a silly little otb crash in practice and smashed my thumb to bits.

Klunker Klassic. Drunken downhill race on inappropriate bikes. One crash, one embedded brake lever, two ambulances, two ticks and several hours in A&E.

Fortunately we’d had a few jars at the bottom and some more spirits at the top, so I was on top form for the paramedics.

PMJ beat me to it! Maybe start line Tequila’s were not the best plan.

BMF Moped Enduro

Having never before ridden a moped/motorcycle/scooter of any kind before 😮

London-Edinburgh-London 2013

1400km in 100 hours? Fine.
Lots of epic rides before-hand to train? Fine
Never seeing my family for 6 months before-hand due to training? Not so good.
Proceeding to give my entire extended family a nasty D&V bug due to my body being broken immediately afterwards? Still paying for it…

Entering the Megavalanche next year 🙂

ssboggy – Member

BMF Moped Enduro

Having never before ridden a moped/motorcycle/scooter of any kind before

You should meet my dad’s mate Ludo, he was part of the Lambretta team that did the Scottish Six Day Trial in the 1950s

Kinlochleven Enduro.
Megavelanche is not even close in terms of ridiculousness.
Only event I didn’t finish…Endured the practice somehow despite the freezing rain, gale force winds and suicidal track.
On race day I went over the bars in the middle of a freezing river (part of a timed stage by the way) and decided to call it a day since my hands were too numb to pull the brakes.
Made of stern stuff those Scottish types!!!!

I guess the 3 Peaks CX.

Why would you enter a bike race where you get to carry your bike up 3 mountains, and then mince down, on a bike that really isn’t that appropriate.

Best race I have ever done though 😆

^^^^
Editing to say that’s weird! I’d just posted…

3 Peaks is all I’ve got.

I can only imagine what it’s like for any spectators up on the so steep it’s overhanging Simon Fell (for all I know there could be loads of folk watching. Hard to tell with your nose rubbing a furrow in the ground). I picture a scene from the Walking Dead where an army of zombies lurches over the horizon and advances, clutching crossbikes.

Yes 3 peaks, I did it the year the conditions were terrible. Bike blowing sideways and waist high puddles.

A few Puffers too but they were all of the mild variety.

For ridiculous in a different sense then SSUK and SSWC are fairly ridiculous.

I done the very first Kinlochleven Enduro and was thinking to myself during practice wtf I am seriously out of my depth,after practice I was in my bed for 7pm completely done in. On race day I crashed more times then I was on the bike but managed to finish it, when I crossed the finishing line the sense of relief and accomplishment that I had managed to finish this bonkers race was to much for me that I burst into tears while talking to my wife on the phone

Pretty much any event I enter feels ridiculous at some point. The inevitability of me going “What the **** did you think you were doing entering this?” at about 60% distance is a given really. I usually get a second wind a little bit later on.

Every CX race I’ve ever done. Or Ironbike

Erm, I vowed very early on in my riding ‘career’ that I would never race as it’s the opposite of everything I wanted from it. My competitiveness is, far, far, far in excess of what my limited ability and flabby body can produce – so mostly I’ve avoided it, I’ve done a few ‘fun’ events like Passportes (which isn’t much fun IMHO, frankly it’s rubbish) and a few ‘fun’ races like The Kona Mashups which were lightweight Endruo events before Enduro was much of a thing in the UK.

But then I entered an Urban DH Race, a proper, timed, serious race which was broadcast on Freecaster (I think) and had real pro riders and a final jump that involved a wood take-off that was still being built as we pushed to the start and was big enough they parked a pick-up length ways in the middle of it (and more importantly a chicken run that was just ‘the way’ as far as I was concerned). I had an advantage over most of the field as it happened to be in my home town and I rode ‘the course’ dozens of times as a kid on BMXs and all sorts AND I knew that whilst it was called a DH race, the course was really tight and a shorter bike would be much better. Still, I turned up on my DH bike, because I’m an idiot, crashed twice, came pretty much last, hated it.

Not for length or technical difficulty as such but for conditions, there are 2. The 2002 Kona 100 in Builth was 100k of mud. Absolute torture. Slogging through 3-6″ of slop for 6.5 hours wasn’t something I’d rush to repeat.
The 2015 summer enduro at QECP was the wettest I’ve ever been apart from actual swimming. Riding up and down chalky rooty streams wasn’t what I’d hoped enduro would be!

Salzkammergut A course. 211km, 7000+m climbing on a MTB in a day.

London Nocturn fixed wheel criterium. No brakes, no coasting, no banking. No guts, no glory. So mad I rode it twice.

Not mad enough to sign up for the Red Hook.
[video]https://youtu.be/D3wR4pOUWFY[/video]

Last year’s puffer.

Did them back at the beginning and they were great BUT it’s too big for the venue and everyone else has massive wagons meaning we were camped up by the damn.

ndthornton – Member

Kinlochleven Enduro.

I love these 😆 Never completed the weekend without a broken bone or bike mind, we were like lambs to the slaughter the first year. But the riding, my god… It is too good. And hlding it in November is just proof if it were still needed that No Fuss are all mental.

(they did hold a race there in summer one time, it was rubbish. Too warm.)

Probably the load-carrying quadricycle race at Cyclefest years ago:

[url=https://flic.kr/p/78dL1a]Brox Race[/url] by Ben Cooper, on Flickr

Never completed the weekend without a broken bone or bike mind

Im really not surprised!

The uniquely ridiculous thing I found about the race (apart from the location and time of year) was that there appeared to be things on the timed stages that were genuinely unridable…and I don’t mean unridable by me. There is plenty of stuff I cant ride but I stood for 30 minutes at what can only be described as a large, steep waterfall and did not see a single rider get down it successfully.

I can imagine many super talented riders not familiar with No fuss events would not expect to encounter anything they couldn’t handle in a gravity enduro, and therefore sail to oblivion down this thing.

I guess that is what makes it what it is 🙂

2012 WORLD chainless championship at Crested Butte , fancy dress the order of the day . Saw a Winnie The Pooh bean bag outside the thrift store , gutted it of all it’s stuffing and wore that , head big enough to fit over helmet eye holes cut out job done . Sharing the uplift with all manner of burly blokes dressed as ballerinas etc ! Got out to the strains of Welcome To The Jungle blasting out ! Start was Le Mans style , hard to run in that outfit bloody hot . Remember people shouting Go Winnie as I cruised past on my Spicy thinking is this really happening ? 🙂
If I didn’t have pictures I’d be inclined to think it didn’t happen 🙂

Big Bike Bash Pint to Pint race with the hidden extra lap

A Penny Farthing race round a crit circuit in Maidstone years ago whilst the juveniles were doing their crit race. Bloody ridiculous!

ndthornton – Member

There is plenty of stuff I cant ride but I stood for 30 minutes at what can only be described as a large, steep waterfall and did not see a single rider get down it successfully.

I promise, it all rides. In practice at least 😆 Then on race day you arrive at the same bits knackered and it’s suddenly horrific. GOOD TIMES.

Hit the North.

Massively inclusive.
Flares and bagpipes.
Music and always a brilliant course – walk, slither or ride?
Challenging, changed every lap, techy bits, fun.

Macavalance.

Amazing but completely ridiculous.

Now looking forward to the kinlochliven enduro 🙂

The Kington Rough Ride , when it rained in Old Testament proportions and we all got hypothermia* and they closed the long route.
& the Kielder 100 when it rained for 12 hours and I ran out of brake pads(3 times!).

*it was very cold last weekend in May -wtf!. 😀

Hmm, in no particular order:
Relentless 24
Raid Pyrenean
Raid Alpine