What’s the course like?
Tough?
technical?
boring?

Also….

Do I need to take food to cook or is the cafe good?
Camping OK and plentiful?

Lumpy. Contains half a lap of Inners and some really good natural riding.

Always seems to be better that the Welsh marathon courses.

There’s a few places to get food in town.

SBZ. You going?

SSStu – Not this year. Having a birthday party for the middle child on the Sunday.

Shame.
I was going to see if you wanted to get a ride in on the friday or saturday.

The course is brilliant – bit of everything.

Ace! course is hilly, and in places technical, but its beautiful. You dont need to be a superman to do the full course, there will be plenty of folk (such as me) going round at a more ‘sedate’ pace. its a marathon not a sprint. Also of course its not a race, its a mass participation cycle event.

Can be tough, but you can pootle up the hills rather than “race” bits are technical bits are not. It is never boring. Hoping camping is plentiful as I won’t be setting up till sturday night. I’m going to suss out the pasta party but will have an alternative planned just in case.

It’s a great course IMO, I’ve not ridden any of the others tho.

Nice techy descents, nice landscapes.

Proper bastid climb near the end, not fun on SS.

yeah, its a kind of everything course and probably like every year they will stick a 20* mile climb in at the beginning. Do the 100 mile sportive the day before as a warm up

*this may not be strictly accurate but feels like it

Did it last year, Pete usually puts on a good course.

Same course as last year (Ragoggair – *that* first descent is still in it), smashing fun.

Definitely better than any of the others I’ve done (Builth and Penrith).

Should we be expecting anything from CRC re: entries or do we do it all at sign-up?

As said – same course as last year… hilly (4000m ascent) but superb bits of singletrack and cracking scenery.

Some options to bail out to only do 50km or 70km if you’re getting knackered.

I’ll be doing the 95 (not quite a hundred) mile sportive on the saturday too, make a weekend of it 🙂

Yup, the course is just about the same as last year. ‘Seemed to work well for all distances. I’ve added a nice new section of singletrack in Black Andrew Wood, not long after ‘The Sheep Encounter’, the twin-track descent to Fastheugh Farm (don’t ask why it’s called that!), but there’s a HUGE wasp nest in a stump bang in the middle of the trail. I’ve been to B&Q for some ‘wasp nest destroyer foam’ so wish me luck for Wednesday evening when me an’ that Kev Murray tackle the wee bad tempered Melrosian b#st#rds………

The 70 return route won’t be featuring the horrible Glen Benna to Minch Crossroads climb this year. I thought it would be better to complete the whole of the Elibank loop then return down the Peel backroad and join the 50 course at Williamhope Farm road end to take in the equally horrible climb up to the Southern Upland way at ‘The Nick’. If I get permission from Elibank Estate, the 70 riders will drop down to the Tweed for a bit of riverside singletrack on the way to Peel, but this might be wishful thinking on my part.

It’s been very wet over the weekend but it does not take much more than a couple of days of decent weather for the singletrack to dry up, and anyway, I’ll be out with my strimmer before Sunday so there should be lots of alternative lines if we get more rain.

The sportive route is the same as last year too. ‘Worth doing the full distance just for the new section of tarmac between Tushielaw and Eskdalemuir….super smooth.

P.

I did this 4 years back and every year since. Cant make it this year and I’m really disappointed 🙂 That there in itself should be enough of a review!

There is a lot of climbing – not as in rolling ups and downs – but bigish up then bigish down. It changed the year before last to have the biggest climb at the start so that the first downhill singletrack was less of a bottleneck. For folk like me (mid fielders) it still is a bit of a bottleneck to be fair. However 4 hours later you can have the course to yourself!

“Whats the course like” – A real mix of borders riding. Some of upland way, some off piste, some Innerleithen XC, some fireroad, lots of singletrack, some technical climbs, some guaranteed mud chutes, great views, very little of the climbs are wasted on boring descents, …..

Two things to note – the 100 (or recently the 85) isnt really the published distance. Secondly there are “unofficial cutoffs” – the feed stations will redirect you to the shorter course if you havent got to 1/2, 2/3 way round within a reasonable pace.

Overall – it’s a great event. Friendly, well organised. You can usually enter on the day.