Velo29 Cycling Team

Two years ago a Scottish friend encouraged me to ride a mountain bike marathon event in the Scottish Borders, roughly an 85km route with some serious amounts of height gain. It was rather wet and muddy, I snapped a chain and went the wrong way twice (don’t ask) so I had a personal score to settle with this course. Last year was a no starter for my racing so I entered the 2010 event on the back of some good form and results. It’s a 5 round series and the Selkirk course is regarded as the best of the series, lots of moorland single and bouble-track, rock and root infested descents, 30 minute climbs up to 400m above sea level and a final descent where you can literally scare yourself silly………which I did.

Me, Tom and Nick arrived at Kev’s house on the Saturday afternoon where we met Neal and Jo who were also staying over for the event. We headed out for an easy mountain bike ride on the sweet, tree lined, snaking singletrack before ordering a curry and a few beers to finish off the evening and relax the nerves. The marathon series attracts a wide variety of mountain biker from serious (leg shaving) racer to the chilled out, relaxed weekend riders there for the fun and social aspect, giving the event a really great atmosphere. The extra bonus was the weather behaving itself giving us perfect riding conditions. After the nuetralised start a group of about 10 riders formed at the front pushing the pace and I let myself drift off not wanting to go too hard early on and blow after 40k. After the first descent I caught a Pedal Power rider (James Fraser-Moodie I’m told) and we worked together for about 60k, James pulling away on the climbs and me catching on the descents. We caught a Belgian rider who had legs the size of tree trunks (literally) and we worked together going through-and-off on the road sections. We were in 5th, 6th and 7th position. Me and James dropped the Belgian on the descent at Innerleithen and James attacked on the climb to Minch moor, an attack I couldn’t respond to. I was really pleased with my ride so far but I had made my mistake 2 hours before the start when I decided to use the energy drink at the feed stations instead of a camelbak. An important rule of thumb when racing is never try an energy product in a race when you haven’t tried it in training. This resulted in some quite bad cramps over the last 15km forcing me to stop a couple of times and stretch my muscles out. After dropping 5-10 minutes and 4 places I was able to continue at a slower pace. Luckily I was close to the final descent and tried to make up for lost time by braking as little as possible and scaring myself silly in the process. I finished 10th in a time of 4 hours 15 minutes, 30 minutes off the winner Nick Craig, a (super fast) legend in our sport. Tom claimed 3rd in the middle Marathon and Nick finished the big one in a personal best time. I think many riders will agree that the Selkirk Marathon is one of the best events on the mtb calendar and I will certainly be returning next year.

The 2010 Radar Ride. It was truly an ‘epic’. We arrived at Wanlockhead at about 8.15 am. Driving up the M74 from Brampton it went from grey to dark grey to light black with the camper van being buffeted by the wind. There were three of us in Andy’s camper van and conversation was subdued. I’d wished I’d had a few drinks the night before, at least then I’d have an excuse for feeling crap. Wanlockhead could be a one-horse town if it had a horse! We rolled out at about 9.20 in driving wind and heavy rain with poor visibility, the group didn’t so much split up as was blown apart! I don’t remember too much about the first few miles other than avoiding potholes and compensating for gusts of wind. We got to the first pass, ‘Dalveen’, not so steep, stayed in the big ring. Andy wasn’t feeling well and decided to drop out so we parted company on the descent. I joined up with a guy from Teesdale CC and continued toward Moffat on a fast descent with heavy rain and a tail wind, made the feed station at 66km and decided to put my waterproof on. It was shortly after this I joined up with a couple of lads to form a mini group that would stay together for the rest of the ride. Climbed up the Devils Beeftub (bit like the Hole of Horcum) and raced down to Talla Reservoir, still in the rain and still at this point with a tail wind. Every now and then the road twisted into the wind and we were reminded that for every kilometre with the wind behind us was another to fight on the way back. We were joined at this point by a guy from Dumfries who new all about road racing and advised on the next section which was about 20%. I really needed a pee break and stopped at the bottom of the 20% Wall of Talla, it was a good group and I thought if I climbed well and didn’t lose to much ground I could catch them on the descent, the plan worked and we joined up again. Long fast downhill on a narrow windy road to Meggat Reservoir. There was a rider down being tended to, one of two needing hospital treatment. Still fast down to St Mary’s Loch, and then turned back into the wind. It was gusting to about 45mph, we worked really well as a group with everyone taking a turn on the front although, despite waiting, we dropped a couple of riders, including the road racer from Dumfries. We crested the climb up The Grey Mares Tail and if anything had to work harder on the way down, picking up a couple of more riders, still in the rain which by this time was starting to ease although the wind had increased. We made it to the next and last feed station stopping for long enough to top up with water and grab another banana. By this time we were an established group and set off together without having to agree and slotted back into the chain gang. We passed riders who tried to stay on, it’s not that we were going fast, we weren’t, we just had a good rhythm and kept it going. After about 50k of this we finally turned back onto the road leading up to Wanlockhead with 16K of up to 15% left to go to the finish, (the final section up to the radar station had been closed due to severe gales!), and crossed the line together. I came in at 6:30:4, 48th out of 127 finishers after 106 miles of exhilarating hard riding.

My bike racing this year has been approached from a slightly different angle to previous years, for a start I’m a lot more relaxed and have more fun and as I love all areas of cycling I try to ride a wide variety of events, from flat crit races, to hilly road races, to short xc races, to cross races, to endurance mtb races. The 2 ten hour endurance mtb races that I’ve done are part of the ‘10 series’ organised by no fuss events. The main goal is for everyone to have fun and there is a category to suit almost every type of rider. The format follows a common theme, pick a team of 1, 2, 3 or for and do as many laps as possible in ten hours……..simples. As I’ve yet to convince my Velo 29 team mates of the immense fun you can have on fat tyres off-road my good friend and mtb training partner Jason Hynd stepped in to pair up with me for ’10 at Kiroughtree’. Having raced the event 2 years ago Jason knew what he was letting himself in for.

We arrived on the Friday to heavy rain and set up camp with local North East riders and good friends ‘Treadhunters’. A course pre-ride revealed an 8.5 mile course with 1200ft of climbing, steep, muddy descents with off-camber roots, fast, snaking, rocky, super fun singletrack pieced together with short fireroad sections. A good challenging course made more technical by the rain and mud. After sign-on we all settled down in our mini-race village for tea and a chat about the event to come. As the rain came down on the Saturday morning I decided on a fairly short warm-up before sneaking in behind the lead-out car. I knew that getting into the singletrack near the front was important to avoid the bottlenecks, so I latched onto Ian Nimmos wheel and stayed there. I knew there was a potential to ride 6 laps each so I chose a pace that would allow me to do just that. I came into transition 1 minute behind the leader, whipped the transponder off my ankle and onto Jason’s for him to head out. Our friend Kev had come over from Selkirk to help us out which made a hugh difference. Kev would clean and lube the bike whilst we got clean, changed, fed and stretched ready to go out again. This was the set-up for ten hours of racing. The rain fell for most of the day making the course very muddy while we focussed on riding consistent laps and not making mistakes. Our mini-race village was great as there was always someone to talk to between laps. I must say that Clair’s banana bread is one of the best pick-me-ups for a long race, I will be putting an order in for more when I’m heading to a long race. I decided not to check the leader board when I heard the mc announce that we were in the lead by some 12 minutes. When I asked Kev he was rather sheepish and came out with his trademark saying for the weekend ‘anything can happen’. After hearing about his experiences and misfortunes (broken bikes, snapped seatposts, dead night lights, unreliable team-mates) in long endurance races I would definitely say that I agree. After my 5^th lap I was especially tired and heard the news that due to the conditions of the course and the fading light the event was being shortened by 1 hour. Relief flooded through me and then I realised that if Jason had no problems on his final lap we would win. We headed over to greet him joking that we might strap my head with a bandage and send him out on another lap…….evil I know J Like a deer in the headlights he didn’t know what was going on, looking around confused before we could get the message across that it was all over. The prize presentation was completed after some ‘music artist’ had destroyed some well-liked songs. We stoked up the bbq and sat under the e-z-up sheltering from the wind and rain and downed a few well deserved beers.

Big thanks to no fuss for an excellent course and event, a great ride from my team-mate Jason and flawless support from Big Kev (he’s 6 foot 7).

Only 2 weeks to go before the Velo29 Martyn Dobson Memorial Series kicks off at Croft… I hope you will all turn up to ride or to cheer on your buddies. First race is on Thursday 29th July. Here’s the race flyer to remind you of all the important details!

Not long after the dust had settled from round 2 of the Nutcracker race and it was all go again from Round 3 at Dalby forest on the weekend of my 29th birthday. The Dalby XC course is fantastic and has been designed to test the worlds best, the whole course it technically demanding with some killer climbs and sketchy descents, XC mountain bike racing at it’s best. The rain was coming down hard as we drove over, a big contrast to the heat of the previous round. I was soon lining up with the biggest expert turn out of the series, 7 riders! I started well leading into the first section of singletrack and opening a gap on the technical descents to be caught on the climbs by guys who weighed about 15kgs less than me. Come the long climb on the back of the course I mentally popped, not able to hold my pace. I rode the rest of the lap at a steady pace and tried to pick it up again but I just couldn’t hold the speed so decided to call it a day. My friend in the master category had a bad mechanical 2 miles in with Jason the only one of my friends finishing, he claimed 6th in the veterans category.

The title might suggest that I’ve only been training at 25% but this isn’t the case. A lot of my training has been in the North York Moors over the last few weeks and I’ve lost count of the amount of 25% gradient signs I’ve seen. Last week was a 50 mile Mountain Bike epic out to Blakey Ridge and back via Danby and Commondale. You may think that 50 miles isn’t very far, but off road with 6800 feet of climbing is certainly enough for an all day ride. I’ve done this route several times and it’s a cracker, the singletrack is sublime! The week after I opted for the road bike and headed out to Rosedale then onto Goathland (yes, that’s where they filmed heartbeat). It was this route where the hills really started to bite, climbing these hills on mountain bike gearing is a lot easier than using road bike gearing. With an mtb you can set a fair tempo and tap it out, on a road bike with 39×25 you have to push hard. Some of the descents were great fun but the grin was soon wiped from my face when I realised I had to gain the height back. Goathland was a welcome sight and a quick re-fuelling of cake and coffee and I was on my way again. Lythe bank was on the list of hills to climb but my legs had other ideas so I opted for the A171 back to Guisborough. I certainly wont be forgetting that route in a hurry.