Glad you enjoyed it THM. Did you do the 50k in the end?

The climb from Shere broke a lot of people!

You’ve put it in the chat forum too – might get more response in the bike forum.

If you will still be 16 on 31st December 2012, then you are eligible for Youth in the 2012 Spring series.

What a great substitute for actually putting in the effort to work up a proper sweat :D

They may not do St M at all! Hope they do though :)

Not sure what the route will be, they used to start towards Winterfold and do St Martha’s near the end, but that was when they used Bramley as the venue rather than Shalford.

You’ll get given a map at the start, and its a good idea to keep an eye on it now and again so you know roughly where you are if you happen to miss a turn. Up to you if you want to stick it on the bars, makes it easy to read if you’re going fast. If you aren’t in a hurry, just put it in a pocket and check it now and again. The signage is intended to be frequent enough that you don’t have to look at the map at all, provided you are reasonably observant!

And yes, people tend to ride in groups, either with friends, or just with random others met on the ride. It’s fairly sociable. They tend to send out a group of riders every 5 mins or so, so if you want you can just stick with the people you start with.

I hope its not just the well-known trails though.

Depends how well you know the public rights of way network in the area really!

Its a waymarked route (25/40/50k options) which is basically on bridleways, byways and a few bits of minor road. Think of it as the MTB equivalent of a sportive.

They tell you your ride time at the finish, and publish riders’ times on the website a couple of days later so you can compare. No prizes though, as you’re not allowed to race on bridleways!

You start when you’re ready, so its not a mass start. There’s a drinks station (possibly unmanned) somewhere on the route, and there’s catering at the end (lovely chilli!).

Are they good? If the format appeals to you, then yes, sociable and well-run. If you’re looking for a full-on gnar-fest, then its probably not for you!

teamhurtmore – which event are you asking about?

:-)

I’ll be at Shalford, see you there if you’re going!

There’s a Trailbreak event this Saturday at Dorking.

I don’t think there is. They are at Shalford (just south of Guildford) on Saturday.

And its a trail ride, rather than competitive orienteering.

Oh yes, I forgot about the Peaslake MTBO – great event :)

In which case you’ll probably be pleased to know that 4 of the 5 venues are pubs! The Flowerpots even puts on a post-race BBQ :)

Gorrick are running a series of 5 Trailtrax events this year. Pretty similar to the old Trailbreak format, but with a wider range of points values for the various checkpoints, and low-tech clippers rather than SI chips.

Friendly events with a decent turnout, there’s a 2 hour category as well as 3 hour, and a family category too. Even so, you’ll need to be pretty good to clear all the checkpoints!

Details here.

Has anyone worked out a way of seeing what all today’s football fixtures are? You used to be able to do it, simply by clicking on “Fixtures”.

Now, you get a big list of all fixtures for the whole week, and while you can filter by competition name, you can’t do it by date.

Obviously, this is only a problem if you’re interested in football :-)

both old and new versions of cricket live update have broken….

All the live updates seem to be broken across the site, even though they keep trying to fix them!

It will probably help if you explain what TCL stands for ;)

Thanks for the info Tony.

I hear starting from Winchester is the easier way to go.

You’re more likely to have the prevailing wind behind you going West-East. But if there’s not much wind then I’ve found East-West easier, getting the most relentless section of climbing done while legs are still fresh.

Cheers Rik. Definitely in a high wear area!

Does anyone know what the difference is between the fabrics on Pawel’s bags (i.e. the SL vs WX), other than the SL is lighter?

I’m sure the link to Dimension Polyant is informative if you know about sailing – but it’s all Greek to me :)

Plan A: Gorrick race at Tunnel Hill
Plan B: Ride round Tunnel Hill

They will grid the top 10 later on in the Spring Series, not sure whether this starts at Rd2 or Rd3. But obviously no gridding for Rd1, and yes the Vets field can be pretty big!

Bear in mind that Grand Vets and Senior Vets will also be lining up at the same time as they go off a minute or two later, followed by the female Masters/Vets/Grand Vets. So try and make sure you’re lined up in front of all of them, or else your race will start but the people in front of you won’t :)

Njee speaks wise words.

Don’t use any new parts or kit on race day that you haven’t tried on a previous ride. Do pre-ride the course.

I’m doing Vets too, I usually arrive around 9, and get my race number and my kit on and then start a practice lap by 9:30 (so that the 9:45 group of races don’t catch me on the way round).

Try and get in a couple of hard efforts on the practice so that you can judge how much clothing you’ll need when running hot. Then put something warm on and chill out for a bit and eat some bananas. Then head to the start line around 10:45.

On the other hand, its easy for me to get there early as I live very close. If its your first race, don’t worry about taking it too seriously, you’ll soon work out what routine works for you!

Good luck :)

Is it really so serious at Hankley? The MOD’s stance doesn’t seem too unreasonable to me. Stop the dog eggs if you want to keep the car park.

Used Aurora[/url] in Ash Vale last summer to get my girlfriend’s Dialled PA stripped and powder-coated and we were pleased with the results. Cost us £50 all in I think. I’d imagine it might be a bit more for a full-sus as they are a bit more complicated.

(Unfortunately I can’t give a view on the durability of the finish, as she injured herself quite badly the following week, and so we haven’t actually rebuilt the bike yet.)

Cheers :)

The Durin Marathon is an excellent fork, but yes, go for the fixed travel rather than FCR.

(Hijack – Any news from Germany about my fork Mike, assuming its you?)

Haha cheers kenni, will be tough to get a trophy but I’ll give it a shot! Are you riding?

Nice bike btw :)

Rode the course this morning and yes, its almost completely dry. Still plenty of time for that to change, but the forecast looks fairly promising.

I’m doing the 4hr as usual, see you there!

P.S. kennio – the bit in your pic isn’t in the race this year!

Ironbike in Italy for me. Ridiculously tough week of riding in breathtaking alpine scenery.

Forced me to get fitter that year than I’ve ever been before, and even then I had to push myself to the limit every day. Awesome sense of achievement at the end. I’ve not really found a focus to replace it since…

Good to see one of your slaves prepping the course today Pants – painstakingly removing each fallen leaf with a pair of tweezers :D

No worries :) The shop that sold me the frame suggested cutting the tool down a bit (the owner also rides one). Hacksaw is best, will take you a while to file it down enough.

Of course you will have to take at least one crank arm off to fully remove the EBB!

Agreed that as supplied, the tool for adjusting the Soloist EBB doesn’t fit over some crank arms (which is a bit odd), but you only have to hacksaw a couple of cm off the tool and then it fits fine and works fine for mid-ride adjustments. No need to take the cranks off at all.

I really rate the EBB and the ride of the Soloist, although I’m sure the Love/Hate is fine too.

If you do get a Soloist, its well worth removing the EBB and liberally applying copperslip to avoid seizing if and when moisture gets in. The same is probably true of any steel frame with an EBB.

Just back from putting out the mile markers. Its basically dry everywhere, but very slightly greasy in a few places. Some slippery leaves around, but the course is being blown again at the moment so they shouldn’t figure too much.

Forecast is showing a possibility of some light rain early tomorrow, so that could make a difference, but its not going to be a mudbath.

I’ll be using a Nobby Nic up front and a Ralph at the back, but then I tend to run that combo in the dry anyway.

Rocks – no.
Loose stones – a couple of sections.
Roots – plenty!

You really won’t need MudX tyres, it doesn’t get gloopy around there even when its really wet – although at the moment its pretty dry and the forecast suggests it will stay that way. Something faster rolling will be better, if you’ve got it.

There’s going to be a pit area, so if you want to stash bottles there then you can pick up a new one each lap rather than carry all your drink for the whole race in a camelbak.

Don’t go off too fast – the quick boys will absolutely hammer it but if you aren’t used to endurance racing then ignore them and set off at a comfortable pace. If you’re finding it too easy, you can always speed up later, but if you go off too fast, 4 hours will seem like a LONG time :-o

Keep eating and drinking, little and often is best. There are plenty of long sections of singletrack where you won’t have hands free, so when you do hit the fireroads, take the chance to eat and drink.

Be courteous to other riders when overtaking and try and let faster riders past when you can. The 2 hour race will start an hour after the 4 hour, when you may be not far into your 2nd lap. So expect a number of faster riders approaching fairly close together at some point.

Keep an eye on the time. 4 hours is the cutoff for starting your final lap, so if you cross the line at, say, 3h50m, you can go round for another lap, and you might be riding for well over 4 hours. Perhaps think of it as a 5 hour race with maybe a bonus early finish, and then you’ll be in the right place mentally :)

And most important of all, remember to have fun! Its a fairly techy course, so enjoy the descents and try to survive the climbs. If its your first try, you probably won’t threaten the podium, but keep going and you’ll beat plenty of people.

I’m also doing 4hr, see you on the start line :)

Mangled the tensioner on my bodged SS within the first two pedalstrokes of a ride I was supposed to be leading on Puttenham Common when a stick leapt into the wheel. Cue a lengthy argument between the two competitive mechanics amongst the group over how best to fix it.

After about 5 minutes of heated debate I managed to reclaim my bike from the fray, simply removed the tensioner completely, and led the ride without further incident.

It didn’t really rain though Nick, it just all melted overnight. The amount of spray coming up from riding through rivers of meltwater felt a lot like rain though :)

All those hours spent a couple of days earlier smashing ice off the racing line with shovels, and we needn’t have bothered :(

Have you been back and ridden the course since though? Its been great all summer and still is!

Rode the lap tonight and its still riding really nicely :)

I like the way my Superlight handles with 100mm Rebas on, have done loads of XC and endurance racing on it over the past 4 years. I also find the suspension tracks the ground superbly on technical climbs.

Having said that, its not the lightest bike around.