Yep, agreed Mol. I’d rather stop and have a cake 🙂

Stop? Pah!

The Southern Yeti – Member

dave.. I was going to do it on a hardtail but have jsut bought a Covert… feels ideal and is sub 30lb.
It’s more about the angles than the travel. In my opinion the majority of the terrain is not stupidly technical, a lot is flowy. It’s more about having a bike that feels stable when pointed downhill than a bike that can soak up huge hits. A hard tail would be ok (but you’ll take a bit more of a battering) if it has a head angle of less than 68deg and about 150mm forks. A mate of mine did it on a Dialled Alpine in 2009 and I couldn’t match him using a full suspension. Ashes recent advice about which bike to take is really spot on.

See… as I said… I’m just not that serious Mol… except about cake. I take cake very seriously. More to the point I don’t ride competitively on things that require me not to stop every now and again… Afan Monster could be an exception.

Covert is 66 or 67… I think it’s perfect though not properly ridden it yet.

Yeah that’s what slow people usually say Yeti.. 😉

That tickled me Molly!

As Dave suggests, a long travel hardtail will work well (I did it in 2009 on a Blue Pig) but you do take a pounding over the duration of the 7 days. A full sus that you can carry would be a much better all rounder for the event. It also depends a little if you’re doing it for the experience or to compete at the sharp end – something more bouncy will be better for many of the timed stages, which are predominantly down, but not always.

You will however be going uphill a lot of the time – the word ‘updulating’ was coined to re-define Ash’s use of rolling or undulating as a description of the days riding.

Practice walking/climbing with your bike before you go, and build up some leg muscles for walking too. Take comfortable shoes, and if using SPD’s make sure you’ve got flexible, grippy soles and not race shoes.

Swinley is not a great place to train for the event no matter how much you may try to convince yourself. It didn’t work for a number of us who went in 2009!

Well I’ve already put in a bit of time riding in Scotland.
Hiked up and down Scafell Pike in 4 hours the other week and planning on a walking weekend in Snowdonia soon too.

Started up tabata again this morning… the 4 min warm down was still really hard but allowed me to recover enough to go and do more intervals… feeling pretty shattered now though 🙁

Any other T-P riders reading this… are you interested in a hardout long weekend of riding in about 6 weeks time??

Tabata on foot or on the bike?

Rowing machine… then intervals on a spinning bike.