It was ‘orrible.

The mud was vile 🙁

Must get mud tyres and a slightly more XC race orientated bike me thinks.

Results are up. 24th for me. Pleased as I could barely keep the bike in a straight line!

Well done to everyone who took part. It would have been so easy to stay home and eat Sunday roast!

Got 16/7 in the 2 hr vets. Quite pleased with that! Wouldn’t of wanted to do any more than the 3 I did.

I had roast Muntjac for supper- polished off the lot and seconds 😀

Jason – it just seemed a shame to have her get so close to the end of the lap and have to DNF while leading. It’s a shame it is such a heavy bike with gearing that didn’t suit her.

It was a pleasure by the way

@DT78 That wasn’t you on the Spark 910 was it??

Yep, that was a wet one…
Course held up pretty well considering but fair play to the 4 hr riders. I was done by 3 laps.
Close to the podium in the 2 hr race so looks like I’ll be giving the other rounds a go, they can’t all be that muddy, surely…

I did say that with the forecast, my preride report was going to be of no relevance. But if anyone made their tyre choice based on it – apologies!

Scale not a spark. All in black gore kit, not that you could tell as I was covered head to toe in mud.

Ah, just wondered if it was you I too’d and fro’d with for half the race. He may have been a vet….
I finished one place behind you.

Benji & Crosshair – great chatting to you both today – we all had a nice little race passing and re-passing each other multiple times through the race

Crosshair – how can you be so cheerful every time you came past me?

Benji – apologies about the lycra comments – pisstaking with a team mate who wears lycra at races 🙂

Quality day out today = probably the muddiest race i’ve ever done – proper race of attrition

Great course – even with the mud chucked in – the Gorrick guys pulled a blinder

Yep, the conditions were tough but considering it’s late November, it wasn’t to cold 🙂

Pretty pleased with my result – 28th from 50 starters

However, today i learnt that a Fatbike isn’t the best option in all situations – bloody good fun though 🙂

See you all in December

I enjoyed that. I did start to get very cold after about 3hrs though; so much so that my legs didn’t really want to work. No way I could hold off a fast catching George at that point.

I thought the course was fun, the lap seem to pass quickly, even in the mud.

Low pressure in the rocket rons (18 psi) seem to be a good choice as I didn’t really suffer for traction anywhere. in fact I probably would have preferred them to leave some of the worse bits in. They seemed to be the only places where I could take time out of George…

saying that, I still hope that next round is sunnier and dustier!

@Boltonjon- Oops sorry I spelled your name wrong earlier. I was cheery because this as my favourite hobby ever lol! And you’re a total Ledge too- you’re so perfect for that bike, I bet you have a Fatbike screensaver 😉 😀

Cheers Crosshair – i’ll take that as a compliment 🙂

Or maybe even a suggestion that my ‘less than smooth technique’ is somewhat masked by the ability of being able to bounce up & over everything!!

One thing i do need is bigger mudguards!! The state of me today was ridiculous!

[url=https://flic.kr/p/pdVmc4]Brass Monkey Nov14[/url] by boltonjon, on Flickr

Definitely a compliment! I was genuinely LOL’ing at how handy it was to follow your massive track 😀 I knew how close I was getting by how many people had ridden over your wheel marks 😉

I wonder how many #Svenness fans were shouting “COMMIT TO THE RUT!!” to themselves 😀
Or just me perhaps 😳

Ha ha – quality!! The banter between the competitors is what makes these events for me 🙂

Crosshair – how can you be so cheerful every time you came past me?

I don’t know what you mean anyway, I’m never happy when I’m riding 😀 😳

some pics up on Kevin Sheldrake’s flickr
https://www.flickr.com/photos/kevinsheldrake/sets/72157647107205713/

I get why folk watermark photos, but I always think Kevin overdoes it a bit, I can barely tell who’s in the photo, let alone if it’s any good or not, must be doing himself a disservice 😕

There you go again Crosshair – grinning like the town idiot 🙂

That bit in the picture was just leaves until you rode through there 😀

I’m now home and clean 🙂

Nice to see you today BoltonJon, no offence taken by the baggies/lycra comments. The noise that Puffin made coming down sponge bob was awesome. Did chuckle when you went for a roll in the mud in the car park.

Ran out of rear brake pads by the end of my second lap, and after four laps, the front brake was also out, whoops.

Crosshairs, you were not the only one thinking commit to the rut.

Pleased I went for Nic on front and Ron on the back, it was still slidey, but at least it was a bit more rideable.

Thanks as well to all the riders who asked if I was ok, when I was trying to get salty water and mud out of my eyes. The rain was washing all the salt out of the helmet pads into my eyes, couldn’t see so had to stop.

I must confess to driving past and thinking ‘rather them than me’. Good work on the fatty though Jon.

Rather stupidly did a full practice lap which gave me an idea of what was to come but took an hour 😯

Started in grand vets. Felt pretty strong until I got near hypothermic, changed, started my bonus 4th lap but had to bin it 20mins in with no rear brake and not able to touch the front. 9th in grand vets.

Strangely rather enjoyed it. Front tyre was a Continental Trail King which was amazing. Saw a few punctures – seemed to be Schwalbes.

Yeah I’d not do a full practice lap at any of them, irrespective of conditions!

Re punctures – there was a series of 3 metal things sticking up out of the ground just after you cross the fireroad after the singletrack following the bridge area. (not a great description). On lap 1 someone pointed it out – thank-you.

I did note that the kind fella who pointed it out was then booting it repeatedly to remove it. Only later did I think MOD land/ metal object…. 😯

I think that is where my wife ripped her tyre, she said it was about 2miles from the finish. A Specialized tyre in her case, but I am sure any tyre would have torn there.

Lou punctured on that little gully section where you went in and out of the small bombholes alongside what was the camping field at TORQ. In the TORQ race it was where you turned up the fireroad before the mattress climb.

I didn’t see what caused it but it looked and sounded pretty terminal

Yeah I spotted those. An old iron fence I reckon. It was near the start of last years Autumn Classic 2 I think.

Twas a bit grim!

I bailed pretty early in my 2nd lap to save my dodgy Achilles (not to mention bike parts) – and don’t regret it at all! Was hard enough pedalling downhill by then and was only going to get worse.

Big respect to all who persisted!

Saw a clip on FB this morning of the 2hr Vets winner standing in the heated marquee later, spilling tea all over himself as he was shivering so much 😯

Sounds grim.. I’m glad I never got round to entering!
I was laid up on the sofa, feeling ill, watching the Batman movies!
Could barely manage that – I don’t think an hours trip to slog around a field for 5 hours would have sat well with me!

Well done those braver, stronger, and dafter than I!

DrP

I think you proved you can do it in the last BM series DrP – definitely not worth leaving your sick-bed!

So out of interest, what did everyone eat/drink?

I ate a kitkat, a Marsbar and the free gel (they were lush!) and drank 500ml of flat fat-coke diluted with 250ml of water.
I reckon if I’d made the fifth lap cut-off and had to ride for 4:50 then I’d have been cutting it a bit fine but otherwise it was about right.

2 Mule bars
3 Mule gels
4 bottles of Torq with a few drops of Elete water

I ate a kitkat, a Marsbar and the free gel (they were lush!) and drank 500ml of flat fat-coke diluted with 250ml of water.

And no additional water? Doesn’t sound like much for 4 hours!

For 2 laps I drank 750ml of High 5 and a Torq gel. Quite honestly I’d probably have been ok not taking anything though!

3 x 750ml bottles of torq, but didn’t finish any of them – so about 1.5l in total consumed.

and 3 torq gels and the freebee chocolate mule gel – tasty.

4 laps / 4:08

1 x 750ml SIS go
1 x 750ml water with electroyltes

3 SIS gels (1 before start)
handful of jelly babies.

I had a bottle of xtreme ready to go if I felt rubbish and needed a pep. Normally I would have stopped for another bottle but realised with my lap times I wasn’t going to make the cutoff for a 5th so didn’t bother.

Finished with a headache a sign I didn’t drink enough

4.5 laps

3x partial 750ml Torq
1x torq energy bar
6x torq gels