[Closed] WTF am I doing?

Balls. If I hadn't been otherwise occupied on Sunday I'd have joined you for a couple.

Good luck. What's your total mileage looking like??

Good luck, take jelly beans or something to keep energy levels up and I'm sure you'll be fine. Enjoy!

Keep tweeting. Should make entertaining reading.

Battery permitting, Twitter is an excellent idea. You'll get to see the gradual breaking of a(*) middle aged man, step by step. (-: @ukcougar, pop pickers. OH will be tweeting as @mtbgirly, everyone else in the team are protected Twitterers.

Mileage is circa 70-80km depending whether we do the extensions etc or not. We're planning to skip the Doon Hill extension at Kirroughtree, and wing the Upper Loop at Glentress (our final centre) depending on how ruined we are and how much light we have left. Including travelling, "daylight hours" is our biggest enemy we reckon.

Cheers for the nice messages.

(* - almost, ahem)

Fat see-you-next-Tues attempting all the Stanes in a day ?

No chance.

😉

If he's going to fail, I'm ****ed.

[i]What's your total mileage looking like?? [/i]

A whole 40 is my guess.

edit: oops, sorry, cougar did say that.

I think you are going to have a good time! enjoy 🙂

Mate. I hope you and Lou have a great time. Its not about the quantity, its about the quality and that applies to company too.

Take deet and tick extractors and you will have a great time.

I'm assuming it's the scots that are quietly filling your lycra, right?

Sounds like an awesome plan though. Certainly the distance is doable but as you say, daylight hours may well be the limiting factor. Best of luck to you.

For balance, I'm off to North Walez on Sunday, and will be riding all the gnar on a hardtail XC bike. Without long travel forks, an uppy-downy seatpost, body armour or any of that crap.

And I'll be looking great the whole time.

So there you go.

You should get enough daylight up until 8pm, although it'll be dark in them thar woods. The fast blue descent from Buzzards is pretty obvious though, so you shouldn't take any wrong turns 😉

Take deet and tick extractors

That's a bloody good point, I parted company with my first aid kit on a spot of hurtle-y downhill a couple of weeks ago (I heard it go but was having too much fun to stop for it) and my tick tool was in it. I need to replace that, thank you.

A whole 40 is my guess.

It's 43-50; you say that like it's nowt, but it's a factor of seven further than I've ridden XC in a day. It's double what I've ridden on road (on a HT) in a day.

I'm assuming it's the scots that are quietly filling your lycra, right?

So long as they're filling it with scotch, we're good.

Wearing one of these Effin?
[img] [/img]

EDIT: Oops: that possibly looks too big on a proper screen?

I'm off to North Walez on Sunday

Llandegla? Have fun, it's a giggle.

[img] [/img]

just remember in scotlandshire the above toilet signs are for men and men in kilts as the women folk aren't let out of the caves 😉

I reckon the most time will be wasted, getting the bikes on and off the cars! Reckon by number 6 they could be lashed on to the rack by a small piece of discarded bale twine!! 😯

Sound like a great idea. Ride gently to conserve your energy and muscles, keep eating and drinking. Best of luck to you!

Good Luck... Any plan like this that challanges "You" is awesome!

Betis-y-Coed? I like that one...
And enjoy it Cougar.

Have fun i might see you as will be going out in the afternoon tomorrow probably to Mabie (10min drive) for me.

Why not try all the reds next summer in a day, a nice challenge for someone. Dont know if anyone has done that.

You haven't thought this through. Who's going to respond when someone posts an inane query about computers on here?

So long as it's still on the first page by Monday...

might see you as will be going out in the afternoon tomorrow probably to Mabie

If you see a bloke with a ponytale on a black Rockhopper and a lass on a white Marin, that'll be us. If you don't, that'll still be us.

We're planning to skip the Doon Hill extension at Kirroughtree,

Cougar, it was closed anyway a couple of weeks ago when we were up there - forestry work apparantly.

Have a great time, very jealous!

Some guy rode all of the 7 stanes in one go, and rode between them as well... think he did it in under 24 hrs.

Can't find the story though 🙁

it was closed anyway a couple of weeks ago when we were up there

Oh, well, of course, we were [i]definitely [/i]going to do it, but now we can't due to circumstances beyond our control. I'm gutted.

Some guy rode all of the 7 stanes in one go, and rode between them as well...

Come back with my thunder.

Cougar - Member

it was closed anyway a couple of weeks ago when we were up there

Oh, well, of course, we were definitely going to do it, but now we can't due to circumstances beyond our control. I'm gutted.

Have a go at the Glentrool Purple instead, it's a perfect alternative 😀

My cat hates you.

Me? Please say it's me...

[img] [/img]

Just out of interest, which Stanes are you riding?

Glentress
Ae
Mabie
Dalbeattie
Kirroughtree
Newcastleton
Glentrool

Innerleithen doesn't have a blue yeah?

Mabie and Dalbeattie are very rideable with mainly double track, so you should be fine there. Nothing terrible.

I don't think I have ridden much of Kirroughtree blue, but Glentrool is just a blast, although not many people remember this Stane. It's mainly a simply climb to the top then lots of fab twisty berms to the bottom.

Are you on Twitter? It would be great to follow your progress. Good luck!

Just out of interest, which Stanes are you riding?

With apologies to Eric Morecambe, you've got all the right Stanes, but not necessarily in the right order. We're doing,

Newcastleton
Mabie
Dalbeattie
Kirroughtree
Glentrool
Ae
Glentress

Twitter accounts are ^^ in my second post.

Some guy rode all of the 7 stanes in one go, and rode between them as well... think he did it in under 24 hrs.

Can't find the story though

Probably because its not true. Must be close to 200 road miles just between them all. And about 14 hrs of off road ridding.

Cadel Evans on roids couldnt do that.

It was done in a weekend I think. Maybe.

Rob Lee?

http://frazerwaller.com/blog/?p=239

Ah doesnt count didnt use the same bike!!!!!

****in fit bastid.

Forty.

Well, I'm back.

As those on Twitter may know already, we didn't quite make it all the way. It became clear by the end of Dalbeattie (#3) that time was our biggest enemy and our estimated finish time was looking to be around midnight. All other things aside, we had a B&B to try and check in to, the rest of our team had work to go to on Monday so couldn't really be leaving Scotland in the wee small hours.

So, we made the executive decision to drop the two Western-most trails, Glentrool and Kirroughtree, and carry on to Glentress via Ae. That way we could make the most of the hours we had left and finish up on a trial close to our accommodation that we knew we were going to enjoy.

We'd came off Glentress at about 9-9:30ish (I was noting times but it'd gone out of the window by this point), having lost daylight and running close to empty on the riding lights we'd been donated by our Team Mum.

We toyed with the idea of snagging the other two on the way home tomorrow (ie, today) but, after getting hosed down and cleaned up last night, we'd kinda fallen out of the zone. Ironically, if we'd stayed grubby in a tent last night we'd probably have gone for it. Maybe. (-:

To anyone else thinking of doing this, these are the lessons we learned:

[list][*]We need to be at the first trailhead at first light, not leaving the campsite.[/*]

[*]Our pace could improve. Taking a few minutes to warm up in the car park before hitting the climbs might actually give us a shorter overall time at the park.[/*]

[*]Less faff between rides. We need to be out and riding, then back and driving. Any feeding, bottle refilling, and post-mortem discussion needs to happen whilst in transit.[/*]

[*]I'm not convinced that our route was optimal. At the time, starting at Newcastleton and ending at Glentress seemed like a great idea; Newcastleton is short and relatively easy, and as such a good warm-up. Glentress is a known quantity and a fun way of finishing. Both are reasonably close to each other, meaning we can pick a central point to camp.[/*][/list]

Having a single base camp to start and finish might well have been our ultimate downfall, which is doubly annoying when we later second-guessed the second night of camping in favour of a B&B. Having separate start and finish points causes various logistical problems but could well be the key to doing it.

Still. Five out of seven Stanes in a day, which is four more than we've managed previously. We feel achieved, even if it didn't quite go according to plan. We feel reasonably fresh today if a bit stiff, so I reckon that we would have made it round but for sub-optimal use of time.

Sounds like a great day though. There's always another time. You're still all AWESOME 🙂

We're not, but bless you (-: It kinda drove it home when we explained what we were trying to do to a couple of groups we met at various points, and got the reaction "are you mad?!"

But, yeah. It was a great day, we were very lucky with the weather and even luckier to have a very lovely and patient 'pit crew' on hand to manhandle bikes, dispense advice and encouragement, and generally look after us.

Yeah, but, y'know, life is about having adventures like that. I'd be one of the people saying "You're all mad" while secretly wishing I was in on the plan. 🙂

In honesty, I think it's why my OH and I make a good team. She's stupid enough to come up with ideas like this, and I'm stupid enough to go along with it. (-: Individually, neither of us would've done it.

Oh yeah,

Total ascent was apparently 2200ft (670m in real money). I've jumped out of aeroplanes at that height. It's 100ft higher than the relative height of [url= http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cross_Fell ]Cross Fell[/url].

Ow.

Fair play to you.

I've done Innerleithen Red followed by GT red a couple of times and I'd love to try doing something like this. Trouble is the Scottish borders is quite a big place (as you no doubt found out) Glentress is nearly 100 miles from Kirroughtree so even with lots of planning you would be doing a lot of riding in the dark if you wanted to try and complete it in a day

As ever, my OH puts it better than I do.

http://loulouk.co.uk/2011/09/05/had-you-thought-about-the-ascent-total/

the Scottish borders is quite a big place

Well yes, this. And it's haymaking season. ..oO

Just been informed, the ascent is wrong.

We gained 3084ft / 940m.

Ow.