Why are so many mountain bike race / events being cancelled this year?
The Bearded man — cancelled
Sleepless in the saddle — cancelled
Ritchey trail masters enduro — cancelled

I was going to do all of these ! Entry money was promptly returned for the enduro.
Is it expense , lack of interest , routing permission ?

It’s the shit conditions

People worry about the weather being cack so leave it till the last minute to enter.However there is a point at which the organisers must commit to run the event and if they hav’nt got enough entries at that point to cover the costs then they must either put their own money up front and hope the entries fill up or pull the plug.
Given the weather of late you can hardly blame them for being pessimistic.Much better to run a sportive at £50 a head with tiny overheads which will sell out quickly 😉

There’s also the cost of repairing the trails after there’s been a few thousand wheels over them.

I think the bearded man was a planned year out this year.
The Ritchly trailmasters announcement sounds like it might be a problem with local permissions (reading between the lines).

If you want an alternative, I am doing this one.

http://www.trans-schwarzwald.com/

the whinlatter challenge has just been postponed aswell,but i personally think it is fair enough with the weather at the minute.think they left it a day or two late to tell everyone though because i bet loads of people travelled up on the friday.Can someone let me know if there are any more mtb events coming up that are worth doing.cheers

More races to do here
http://www.xcracer.com/UK-Mountain-Bike-Event-Calendar.php

….and yet the mtb sportives such as the wiggle super series and evans events still sell out or reach capacity. i think there is also an element of change going on too, maybe we are getting bored with riding round a 4 mile curcuit for 2-3 hours? the future lies with multi day events or races like the kielder 100 or bucks off road sportive where there is also an element of adventure and discovery?

I agree with you there andypaul99 , multi day and large wilderness type rides are so much more of an adventure.
Heading off on a 100 mile loop is so much better than riding round in circles.
I just wish there were more in the Peak District area .

I agree with you there andypaul99 , multi day and large wilderness type rides are so much more of an adventure.
Heading off on a 100 mile loop is so much better than riding round in circles.

May I suggest the WRT … last weekend in May

WRT details

I just wish there were more in the Peak District area

Keep Sep 28th/29th free 😉

kielder 100 or bucks off road sportive where there is also an element of adventure and discovery?

the K100 doesn’t go very far at all from the start point, it just wiggles around a lot. Discovery? adventure? It’s all signposted and marshalled.

how is that better than racing 10 mile laps?

We stopped doing Dusk till Dawn partly because it was getting too congested on the course when they upped the entries to 1000 places (even with a slightly longer lap to compensate), and partly because the novelty of it all wore off after 3 or 4 years of doing it.

Stuff like the Evans, Enduro etc all start out like as a bit of fun. 😀
Then along come the super serious ‘racers’ demanding ever bigger prizes, more difficult, challenging courses/routes etc and then the circle starts all over again 🙄 Bit like boxing with all it’s different “world” champions.

Just the other day I was reading about “uproar” surrounding a “fun” 5k run. The course turned out to be around 1/2k short. Some entrants(racers)were there to get a time to some ranking system ❓ On a FUN RUN

Some events seem to lose track of what they started out as and who they want to appeal to.

[quotehow is that better than racing 10 mile laps?[/quote]

Only the very long events have 10 mile laps and having done many in my time after 4 or 5 the only thing you notice are the mile markers stuck to the trees

If you want a 12hr night race then try the Bedgebury Insomnia ride:

Bedgebury Insomnia

Not very informed opinion- I think the reason the endurance XC race scene has fallen apart is that it used to be something us knobbers did because we wanted to do some racing and couldn’t do anything else- it was the closest thing to just riding our bikes. Enduro racing gave a good alternative, better for many, which partly drew away entrants but also made people look again at what they were entering- I would have been the target market for your 10UTBs etc, now I’m not.

I preferred the k100 to multi-lap events for the simple reason that I wasn’t thinking “not this bit again”. It also feels more epic because it feels more remote. Much prefer the enduro’s though. Just as challenging, but more fun.

Bedgebury Insomnia, hmmm sounds interesting, I think I’ll give this one a go, quite near to me as well. I like a challenge!

Read THIS ref. Sleepless…

Erlestoke12

You’re all welcome to come and do our event! The only race where the medics had to treat riders for sun-stroke last year 😀