Selkirk Merida is no more.

I see they’ve cancelled the 2013 running of that event.

Tweedlove people are talking about running a replacement event.

Shame cos that was always the best

What reason(s) is/are cited G?

shame as I loved that one, might have to go up and have a ride around there anyway

Was always a good day out, but numbers had shrunk in receint years 🙁

Due to rising costs and smaller fields of riders the Scotland round simply doesn’t pay for itself. We are however running 4 our rounds in fantastic locations but I assume that they might be too far away for you.

Sorry about that.

Regards,

Michael Wilkens
MTB-Marathon Team

It’ll be good to see what Tweedlove come up with if they fill the gap. A new course nearer to Peebles has the potential to be immense.

and miss out the highlights of Yair / Elibank?

Selkirk was an excellent event.. A real shame.

I was never really all that stuck on Yair and the Elibank climb can happily die a death, plus the descents were wrecked permanently.

A shame, one of my favourite events of the year and a great course.

Hmmm national marathon champs?

Hmmm national marathon champs?

What about them?

They were at Selkirk this season…next season?

It was the first time they’d been at Selkirk for a long time. Not linked to the meridas.

Same problem as the Trans-Scotland. Awesome event, but the organiser coming all the way from Wales costs a lot of money.

2013 Marathon Champs are Builth Wells IIRC.

Even though i’d given up on Merida events i always found time for the Selkirk round.
Was the only course worth riding.

Numbers were going down when I last did it and that was probably as far back as 2008 or 2009, need to check my t shirt collection.

Do Welsh / English organised events held in Scotland qualify for local tourist board / EventScotland funding?

maybe one of the reasons its cancelled is everone still calls it the Merida, instead of the “Chain Reaction”

2006 922 finishers
2011 470 finishers

🙁

maybe one of the reasons its cancelled is everone still calls it the Merida, instead of the “Chain Reaction”

I liked it betterer when it was called the Kona 100 and there was only one distance which was actualy 100k .
None of this short route stuff. 😉

A tweedlove alternative would be good, the GT7 is good but I prefer one big loop to 9 laps (or Ten if you are Grieg) of the same thing.

Problem with that is cramming them all into the week? I already miss out on some of these that I would otherwise do as I can’t handle racing the GT7 and then riding afterwards.

That’s a real shame. Done it for the last five years now. Hopefully tweedlove can do something similar!

Shame – done it a few times and the course is/was ace.

The Selkirk Merida/CRC Marathon is dead, long live the Selkirk MTB Marathon[/url]

Woop woop.
Looks good. Think i’ll have to get my entry in for this.

Not to jump onto a thread for blatant promotion reason (although that’s exactly what I’m doing) but I’m part of a group in Langholm, nearish to Selkirk, who are organising a weekend in May the we’re calling The Muckle Toon Adventure Festival. We’ve got Evans coming to do one of their Ride It events. I think these have previously been quite tame bridle way rides but they have asked us to give them a more challenging route. We’ve got 25miles planned and although that’s not an extreme distance we think it’s a challenging route and certainly should be fun. Plenty of hills and natural trails, lots of exposed countryside and some woodland. I’m not suggesting this could take the place of the Merida (chain reaction) event but I thought you guys on this thread might be interested.

We’ve got a FB page here and a site should be live within a week

https://www.facebook.com/pages/Muckle-Toon-Adventure-Festival/136779566472747

As well as the mtb routes we’ve got a sportif road event, trail running and walking. Mark Beaumont of round the world fame will be on hand in the evening to deliver a talk and we’ve got other ideas ‘on the boil’.

Sorry to butt in but I saw an opportunity and went for it