So how did you do in the ardrock? And what a great event!

Beano68, best place will roots and rain dot com. There’s a few from the Saturday up but nothing from Sunday yet

colournoise, timings for Enduro are always a bit Mleh… in my experience, unless your troubling the leader-board, then essentially over a course like ‘Ard Rock it’s 7-800 people squeezed into a 10 minute time difference from Average but fast, through average but average, to average but slower.

Top normal riders are doing 18:30 slowest normal riders are doing 28:30, with so many riders; 30 seconds either way will effect your position by hundreds of places!!

You pretty much have to measure it by how much fun you had. 😀

Cheers buddy @slim

Can i enter next years now please? everything about it was superb the organisation,the stages,event village,catering and little milo with the high fives.Big thanks to organisation team, marshalls,medics,sponsors and of course the Dales Bike Centre. My time was 19.56 not sure of position, but i won the big race of bragging rights over my mates. Well done to everyone who competed over the weekend.

Pretty much agree with everything slordy says up there.

I’ll definitely be back next year, everything is so well organised and a really chilled crowd too. Best things are the trails though, absolutely fantastic, I couldn’t possibly say which stage was best as they were all so bloody good. Stage 5 possibly, but that was just because I was riding really well (for me) and was within touching distance of my mate. Endorphintastic!.

I even didn’t mind the big transition from 4 to 5, some nice riding there.

Edit – 20.51 for me. 305th all in, pretty satisfied with that.

Well done Liam Moynihan too btw.

23 minutes, and I was riding pretty much on the limit (well, as much as you can when you know you have to drive home) how in the world are those guys doing 17mins!!

what? really? 😯

Watching Liam’s lines through the bottom of 2 was something to behold. Even if the course is the same as last 2 years, being able to do that blind-ish is something else.

Mind you, Guy and his daughter’s line wasn’t far off, through wheelbase-necessity!

I had a great weekend marshalling, top banter from the riders , but it killed me not to be riding this year. My own fault for being tardy with entries. A mistake I’ll not repeat next year!

Lots of people praising the organisation. Having seen first-hand how much Joe and the team put into it, it is no fluke!

Road the rock bridge and most of the rocks out of Stage 4 until it got too steep after the second stream crossing.

That was the point of the event wasn’t it?

Opted for the sport on the saturday as ive never done anything like it before, had a poor finish overall due to a crash but really enjoyed the event and will be back next year.

Stage 2 – 3.20 (28th)
Stage 3 – 15.54 (99th) crash = punture/bent rear mech
Stage 5 – 3.07 (37th)

Photos – http://gallery.eventphotos.co.uk/ard-rock-enduro-photos-2015

Seems like an old riding mate won the masters, well done Dave.

They didn’t impose the 5:15hr embargo I’m glad to say.
I went out with 3 mates who all had problems on the route which ended up with us doing a 5:45hr lap, even though actual ride time was only 3:40, but I still got a podium 😀

i did apallingly..!

lower back gave up on climb 2.. foot gave up on climb 3.. 😯

and trudged round like a snail and got passed by the worlds population (including the awesome nicolai tandem!) on every climb..!

i heard a few people talking about the cut off time..

I don’t think it meant 5:15 hours.. i think it meant 5:15PM? given that in the description it said ‘you can expect to spend about 5 hours riding’ or something like that?

and the prizes etc where supposed to be given out at 5:30?

despite it nearly killing me im already thinking about entering again next year… and hopefully my mate wont dislocate his shoulder just before the event next time and ill have someone to ride/suffer with!

Looks like the majority of the Phots are from the grassy bank on stage 5.

I was hoping to see myself launching that slab drop on Stage 5

There was a photographer right on it who must have take. Some impressive stills of the fast riders winching that.

Are there any more Phots to go up or is that the lot?

Great event this really enjoyed the sections. I did manage to use my face as a brake on S1 which ended up taking me nearly 10 minutes by the time I had a few minutes to re compose. Effectively ruined me for posting a time (that’s my excuse)

Will give it another go next year.

There’s a steady stream of photos being uploaded on Roots and Rain, Bob.

I don’t think it meant 5:15 hours.. i think it meant 5:15PM? given that in the description it said ‘you can expect to spend about 5 hours riding’ or something like that?

I think that’s A) to make it clear the level of fitness needed, and B) so they can do the presentation without waiting for the last man back.

That said last person back always gets my admiration. It’s got to be a hard slog, but each year they haven’t abandoned but dug deep and made it round. Should be a special prize for them IMO. This year no exception.

I thought it was a great event again. The trails seem to flow better every year and the weather this year was good. I do feel a bit short changed that you could only practice 2 of the 5 stages on Saturday. It meant racing the 3 stages ‘blind’ on Sunday. Granted they weren’t too different to last year’s stages. I know it makes it physically tougher to practice the whole thing and then race it the next day but I’d have enjoyed the ‘blind’ stages more if I’d know where and when you can commit to blind drops/crests etc.

Saying that, the only place I crashed on Sunday was stage 4 which I’d ridden 3 practice runs on Saturday!

Us sport riders didn’t get a chance to practice anything! I still managed to post the 19th quickest time of the day on stage 2 though. However I think it was through fear of touching the brakes and sliding into oblivion mote than owt else 8O.
Highlight of my weekend may have been winning one of the spot prizes 8)

It meant racing the 3 stages ‘blind’ on Sunday

I just accept that reading terrain and racing blind is one of the skillets being tested in and Enduro event. Likewise the ability race when tired from pedalling round a big loop.

It was probably a bigger advantage if you rode them last year so would have a vague idea at what was coming up!

Loved it, gave me a taste of how difficult these things can be. Fitness wise I felt happy with my performance in sunday. However my stages were shocking. Worst being built bottling one of the long steep chutes for a good 5 minutes before going down. Left me 779th overall…..at least it’s easy to improve on.

Sorry, I wasn’t complaining about the lack of Saturday practice thing, it was a comment about how it had left me feeling. I hadn’t really realised how much I enjoy the practice part and picking and trying different lines….then trying to remember all the lines and putting it all together in a race run after cycling a big loop. I accept that riding a stage ‘blind’ is just another challenge to throw into the ‘enduro’ mix, I just don’t think I enjoy it as much as the ‘usual’ practice first type events. That make sense?

The only thing I didn’t like was the bottleneck the the beginning of the All Mountain race. It was a bit of a pain having to wait for it to all clear and having practice riders joining in the scrum for position. I could have been better if they asked the practice riders to avoid that bit of the course to ease the congestion at the beginning of the race. In last years All Mountain event I think it was a staggered start? I cannot really remember but it worked better than the 13.30 mass start anyways.

Surely if you start 20 mins after the first group its not a race is it? staggering it would then make it a solo effort, and the whole point of being in a race is to get in front?

If everyone has a chip its a race, everyone will have individual times. Hence no need for a mass start. The start can be spread out over 30 mins or whatever to avoid a bottle neck.

I really enjoyed this event. I drove up from Brighton and it was defiantly worth while.

I clocked up a time of 18:44.10 on the Sunday. A double lap of the practice loop and a good helping of beer the night before might have hindered my performance a little… or helped.

I was surprised about the amount of pushing going on the hills! I can understand a few strategic pushes on the link stages in the race… but people were pushing on anything and everything that went vaguely uphill! I thought you northern folk were supposed to be hard as nails and used to riding in terrain with ‘real hills’ 😉

The only thing I didn’t like was the bottleneck the the beginning of the All Mountain race.

That would be the challenge then that isn’t a race, that was mentioned time and time again in the briefing before they sent us all on our way. Yes it was a slight inconvenience to wait for the bottle neck to clear but an ard rock steward was soon in there sorting it.

smatkins1 – Member
I was surprised about the amount of pushing going on the hills! I can understand a few strategic pushes on the link stages in the race… but people were pushing on anything and everything that went vaguely uphill! I thought you northern folk were supposed to be hard as nails and used to riding in terrain with ‘real hills’

Without sounding like a nob, it surprised me as well. I rode past one chap pushing and he made some sarcastic comment about ‘being in a **** rush’. Not really, I was on a bike ride, hence riding my bike.

Again not meaning to sound like a knob there was loads of pushing. Even on the first climb I was called a “**** hero” for peddling. I genuinely couldn’t believe people were pushing on the tarmac bits.

meh, the tarmac bits were steeper than the trail itself to be fair, going up to stage 4 before the right to the trail up to the start quite a few folk were suffeing quite badly with cramp.

Fremington edge up to S1 was an absolute bastid, i pushed that.
Admittedly the push out of the gully after S4 was emotional but if you cleared that you require sponsoring.

I rode with a chap for a while along the dirt track to S4 from the Tarmac and he had recently had major abdominal surgery, he was struggling a bit. But he was there and he was taking part.

I guess you do what you need to do to get round a 25 mile loop with some pretty challenging techy downs and some grinding, loose, steep ups. Some people were walking the chutes and drops. No need for the sarcy comments though if they were meant to be derogatory. I thought most ‘banter’ on the way round was pretty good natured and fun.

My mate and me had a great weekend Marshaling the top of Section 3 for 2 days
The banter from all the riders was fantastic even after the 2.5 mile inverted downhill to get there
Must try harder to get an entry next year

Was it your birthday Trout??

Trout: Were you drinking beer with a big ’60’ birthday badge on, whilst standing near the the S3 start gate?

I was a bit jealous of the beer, I might have said I thought you were a dwarf, but it was just the hole you were stood in….

Great event.

Yep that was this old bastardo
the dwarf comment was cracking I was just hiding from the wind
Fathomer Yep 🙂

Best bike related weekend with out riding one Though did get to ride a few of the sections on the sat evening

was better weather on the sat

and the awesome rainbow on the sat night

I did say yesterday, as I guess most others did, but many happy returns 😀

thanks for the Drink of your beer Trout.. got me down the stage that did!

(I was the second cheeky person to ask.. 😆 )

I said it on Sunday but I’ll say it again Trout, many thanks and top marks for marshalling the windiest, bleakest bit of the entire course. And happy birthday too! 🙂

Dwarf? What Dwarf?

…Happy Birthday Trout and thanks for your part in a great day!

Ha Ha great piccy and thanks to every one for the lifetimes worth of birthday greeting