[Closed] European 24hr - Finale Ligure

Thanks for all the blogs on XCRacer, nice to have something a bit more tangential than a colourless race report!

I particularly enjoyed "Nearly Enough Tent Pegs" 🙂

By the way, was the overall 24 solo winner really over 50 as the official race updates seemed to suggest?

Thanks Mr Brakes. Nice to know it's worth the effort of writing them.
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And yes, we were all beaten quite convincingly by an old man! Being a European event the Aussie and Canadian big hitters were absent, but there were still plenty of fast guys there, it wasn't a 'win by default' by any stretch of the imagination.

Well done on your result, inspiring stuff, sounds like an excellent event and if I was ever going to do a solo 24 (unlikely), I would love it to be at Finale! Having raced in Italy once, I agree that age doesn't appear to be a barrier...the veterans are scary fast...

How do you manage the comms side of blogging at foreign races? I am hoping to go back to Italy next year (was supposed to be this year) and want to blog while I'm there.

Do you just put it all on a phone with roaming enabled and hope there's 3G to upload it? Or did you rely on local wi-fi hot-spots?

Last time I did this was 2008 when hardly anyone had smartphones, so I pretty much texted home to say I was done each day, and that was that.

Not going to the Worlds but my mate from Ludlow is.

Are you doing Mayhem? Looks like it's going to be dry. Crikey. I did great prep all winter and spring, then caught flu and ear infection 10 days ago. 4 days in bed, and no riding since and feeling much better. We shall see.

Ashley Green

Great result, by the way.

You'll see me at WEMBO. 🙂

Brakes, it's not that long since I was saying I would never do a 24. I agree they do seem a bit mental at first but they are surprisingly good fun, give one a go and see what happens (Finale would a good stat actually, far more likely to get nice weather than, for example, The Strathpuffer) Everyone is lovely at them, it's very much a case of all us against the course and weather rather than against each other if you know what I mean.
The comms side wasn't too bad. I have a little laptop, I would write on that and could connect my camera to it, and then whenever I found wifi I would upload things. The blogs didn't quite go up once a day although they were written like that, I would post two every couple of days. there is wifi at the venue which was very useful, and most French service stations have it too. I don't have a smartphone and no 3G for the laptop either, 3G abroad is properly expensive, especially for uploading large picture files, but I'm guessing phones wouldn't be up to the job of writing blogs. I guess you could write it and email it someone with a proper computer to upload with pictures and things, it's stuff like the hyperlinks I struggle with if I'm not on a proper computer.
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Are you doing Mayhem Cakefest? 4 days in bed should leave you well rested! Going to miss that one I'm afraid, doing a 24hr time trial that day instead. Fairly sure I've not recovered enough but we'll see what happens...
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I know you'll be at the WEMBO Michael. you must be in with a shout of a good result, you beat me by quite a way at Exposure last year.

andrewh - Member
...Anyone here going to the Worlds in Fort Bill in October?

Me - or I'm supposed to be. Bit anxious about fitness though - had a few wee problems, so need to up the long miles.

However, if the organisers need a slow moving chicane, I'm their man. 🙂

Cheers Andrew, thanks for the info 🙂

Good luck with the 24hr TT!