The wise man does at once what the fool does finally.
Niccolo Machiavelli
Niccolo Machiavelli
I'd be chauffeured there by Gringo Jimi in his recently pimped-out van, this was another first, Mid-Wales, unladen bike and no Bivi either!
Prep for the event meant a new chain, PF30 BB and Jagwire gear cables for the Spearfish. My last marathon outing in Wales led to a significant walk of shame from Crychan Forest to Llanwrtyd Wells as my well used Nobby Nics were fatally and repeatedly punctured by slate chippings. The Onza Canis fitted to the Spearfish were only a couple of rides old so a quick once over and they were cleared for take-off. Any signs of wear and I'd have binned them, it's not worth the gamble.
Leaving my final packing to the last minute *again* meant I couldn't lay my hands on a mini-pump or any drink mix. Luckily we were dropping by C6 Bikes to pick up a Park work stand so I was able to get my missing items.
Doing my best to avoid the tempting Santa Cruz display I chose myself a Birzman Mini-Apogee, it looks to be the smallest useful pump I've seen. Weighs nowt, feels sturdy considering the size and best of all fits in my tiny seat pack.....I felt 70km of Welsh off-roading was certain to lead to a lost pump from a jersey back pocket. I can't comment on it's performance just yet as I didn't suffer any punctures!
Birzman Mini-Apogee 14cm tall, 2.5cm diameter and 4cm across at the head. 80g and good for 120psi!
I took a gamble on the drink mix by opting for Skratch Labs . I'd not tried any before but had heard good things and C6 had a handy trial kit that comprised of a bottle and 6 different sachets.
Skratch Labs Taster pack: Specialized 500ml bottle with 6 different flavour drink sachets
The Lemon sachet, when mixed with 500ml of water had just enough flavour without the artificial excessive sweetness that is often typical of powered mixes. Like the pump I'll reserve judgement until I've tried the rest but it was certainly nicer than the Torq lime mix given out by the Scott Marathon feed station.
It would have been so pointless to kill himself that, even if he had wanted to, the pointlessness would have made him unable.
Franz Kafka
"Reckon we could fit that in the van?"
So on to the event. You might have guessed I like going on long rides, I'll happily do closed course rides but if I can go out for a few hours and not cover the same trail twice that's even better. The marathon series then should be perfect, it's on public trails so it's not a race and it's a (25, 40 or in our case) 70km lap.
The event was based at Rhayader Rugby ground and for £35 the facilities, live band, pasta meal and decent event T-Shirt are good VFM.
Camp site the night before
With 600+ entrants leaving through a small market town it was never going to be a smooth departure but I think some sort of seeding would've been sensible as it was a bit of bun fight.
There was a pace car but everyone seemed perfectly able to keep pace so the bun fight continued for a good few miles.
The evening before I saw the route map and it looked suspiciously like it spent a lot of time in commercial forest plantations, unfortunately this proved to be true. I'd say the route was probably 60% fire roads, 10% fall line arrow straight single track, 10% muddy land rover tracks, and 20% Tarmac. There was some of the gotta catch 'em feeling from regular XC races but a lot of the time was spent thinking oh, another fire road climb.
Still, look for the positives, it lashed down in Suffolk while Wales had glorious sunshine and racking up some height gain can't be all bad.
Getting back to the van the rider parked next to us was impressed we'd done the 70k ride and had thoroughly enjoyed his day so the organisers are obviously doing something right, for me (and Gringo Jimi) it was 70k of very samey trails.
Gringo Jimi's Santa Cruz Highball CC XTR *swoon* and Britney Spearfish
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