Race Reports

Wiggle Enduro 6 2012

May 06, 2012

Wiggle Enduro 6 2012

6 Hour Endurance event Solo and Pairs event

Provelo support event Location; As always…Catton park

Report by
Pete Crawforth
After the wettest April since records began I had little hope that the big sponge that is Catton hall would be any fit state to hold a bike race. But I still entered and I’m glad I did.

I really like the format of this race. The closed pit gives what is essentially a ‘sprint’ event another twist, making each rider be a little bit more self sufficient for their own food, drinks, and mechanical issues.

After the sadistic 800m run, which I’m sure is only there  to make a few hundred cyclists look like complete idiots, the race gets underway.

Entering this race I was hoping to get into the top 10 but on getting the news that Pat Higgins had been given an entry slot, the race got a little bit more personal and I had a man to beat. haha sorry Pat!

The last time I entered this event for some reason decided to sprint faster than I had ever ran in my life. This ended horribly and I crashed and burned and it practically took me the whole race to recover from the run. But not this time, in comparison I was very restrained. Starting near the front row minimised the number of places lost and by the time I picked up the bike and hit the first proper bit of singletrack I was ahead of most of the bottlenecks.

Then we hit the mud! classic Catton hall peanut butter mud, the slowest rolling, self braking terrain in the UK. The glorious sunshine brought with it a sting in the tail. Whilst the trails were beginning to dry out, they became even more sticky holding onto everyone’s tyres making every pedal stroke that little bit harder. I’d love to know what tyre combination people where using, since I’m sure mine was a partially bad choice…. that’s the only time I’ll give a wussy excuse.

So to be honest I was not really feeling it for the first couple of hours, I could feel that my legs were strong and they had the endurance but they just didn’t really seem to have the explosive power that I was quite expecting. Pat at this point was well out of sight and I was getting a bit worried that I wasn’t going to be able to claw him back as we neared the end.

Looking like he’s enjoying himself a bit to much!

The track took in all the classic sections which I have now become very familiar too. Over the years of entering events at Catton hall the organizers definitely seem to have there favorite ways of doing things. This race did manage to include one or two new bits and few sections were run in reverse. I wasn’t too overly impressed with the new swamp section around one of the fields but I suppose it did add to the flavor of the event and a lot of time could be made up if you managed to stay upright and riding or just run it.

As soon as we hit 4 hours my legs began to wake up, riding conditions had improved dramatically and my lap times had begun to speed up. After a quick bit of maths also realized that I was annoyingly close to missing out on doing another lap. In the end I was 3 minutes down on my extra lap, which would have pumped me up a fair few places and well within the top 10. But not this time, to be fair I’m pretty happy with 12th and Pat rode a gutsy ride to hold me off by a couple of minutes to get 10th.

So its was definitely great training for Erlestoke which is now only a couple of weeks away. It has highlighted a few bits of training which I need to put in. Intervals will be the key as I’m feeling really happy with my endurance.

Thanks again Provelosupport for another high quality event as always a pleasure to race.

looking forward to Sleepless again this year.. it will hopefully be my last! its going to be epic!

Foxley Long MTBO 28/4/12

Apr 29, 2012

Its a slippery slope…

Foxley 1

Foxley 1

On Saturday we were racing in the British MTBO Long race, which is also one of the selection races for the British team. The race was held in the private estate of Foxley in Herefordshire.

The map was 1:10 000 scale, with a large ‘horseshoe’ of wooded elevation surronding central farmland. The route took us round the horseshoe, and made use of what could  have been fairly bland riding- this was anything but.

The route seemed to go up and then straight back down every hill possible- often climbing about 100m height each time, then storming back down another side. The red-brown soil I was told was clay and I have never raced on anything so slippery, it was awesome! You had to fight for grip on every turn of the pedals up hill, and the downhill was a lesson in body weight positioning and in finding your tires’ grip; with frequent back and even front wheel washouts when turning too sharply.

Everyone who came back in was smiling broadly, covered in mud, with bloodied ankles, and tired legs. I made a couple of mistakes, maybe costing 3 mins, but fortunately did just enough to come in ahead of Ben Plowman by a narrow margin. Everyone found the conditions difficult and made keeping a constant eye on navigation almost impossible, so I think mistakes were commonplace.

All in all it was one of those brilliant races, where conditions were so wet and slippery it made it really quite interesting and exciting. The MTBO races this year have been awesome and I cannot wait until the next round in Pickering, and also Lee and Crag Quarries sprint later in the year.

Results, splits

Foxley 2

Foxley 2

Dark and White Peak District Mountain Bike Marathon/Enduro 22/04/2012

Apr 25, 2012

MUD MUD glorious MUD

Organized by Dark and White this was a trailquest with a difference. 22 check points widely positioned across Derbyshire and the peak district giving a 80Km sportive style race/ride.

For this ride I teamed up with PedalPursuits affiliate Pat Higgins, an experienced trailquester and all round fast rider. His map reading skills proved invaluable to our success. Over such a long distance with some stiff climbs riding in a pair helped keep our focus plus serve as a nice occasional distraction. We managed to cover the first 40Km in a little over 2hours 10minutes, this brought us out at the foot of Mam Tor. By this point we had also managed to cover over half of the routes climbing, but the nature of the route changed with the last 40Km involving much longer and sustained climbs. The weather wasnt too bad… To be fair we were pretty lucky. It did rain but it wasn’t too cold, feeling remained throughout the ride in my fingers and toes! Though the worst bit was easily getting over Mam Tor, that was grim! Puddles soon became totally unavoidable when bridleways became flowing muddy streams, the sun occasionally broke through and this helped keep the core warm.

Great opportunity to cover such a big distance in the peak, and to ride some new tracks.

In the end the Garmin recorded just over 1800m of climbing over 80.7Km in a time of 4hr42 which ended up being the best part of 25 minutes faster than the next rider. A definite feel good result. If the weather had stayed dry we were sure the time would have been much closer to the 4 hour mark.

results

Thanks dark and white for all the effort put into another quality event.

Right so can we start calling it summer yet?



24 hours of Exposure 12/24 2012

Apr 07, 2012

The European & UK Solo MTB championship

Exposure 12 / 24

Riders
Pete Crawforth

I entered this race with a target of gaining a top 10 result; I would achieve this by putting in steady sub 1 hour 30 laps with an absolute minimum time spent stationary in the pits. Stopping and retiring wasn’t going to be an option and if I had time at the end of the race, I would do the extra lap. All these things might seem like an obvious race strategy, which to be fair, they are. Since this was going to be my 6th start of a 24 hour race – experience told me that at 2 in the morning if it doesn’t seem to be going quite to plan, the gremlins come out and self-sabotage almost seems like a reasonable option. Those thoughts have never won before and they sure weren’t this time round.

The event date change move from early May to April had definitely taken an impact on the entry numbers since many will have felt that it was too early. Though I now think it has done me a big favour, making me put in a little bit more in over the winter and has kicked off the season early.

The start took place in typical fashion with a great send off from the little town of Newcastleton, led out by a bagpipe parade. This time I stayed nearer the back to last year since concertina effect of the riders bunching up behind the pace van was a nightmare with it going over the speed bumps up to the race track. This race definitely has the most relaxed feeling starts and it allows a more reasonable warm up for what we have all let ourselves in for.

The track is particularly unique in that there aren’t that many races in the year that are held at established trail centres. So the good bits of the course are really fun, well built, flow well, engaging and fast. But as with many trail centers the transitions from one part of forest to another involves many kilometers on long fire road sections, which when the legs start to get tired can be where the real time is lost/gained.

Pretty much the month before the race the weather in the UK had been absolutely amazing, this definitely helped the training and it even started me thinking that maybe this race wouldn’t be quite the wash out that it was last year. The week before our more typical spring weather arrived bringing with it high winds, freezing conditions and snow. The snow had fortunately cleared from the area by the weekend and for the 24 hours of the race other than a bit of drizzle the weather stayed dry and not too cold. This allowed for the track to actually improve as the race went on, with smooth lines appearing on the fire roads and the mud on the last decent to actually start to dry out!

So my race started pretty well and to plan riding steady lap times, nice and quick on the downs and feeling strong on the ups. After the 90km mark my legs were beginning to feel the 480m of climbing per lap and around this time it had begun to start getting dark. Since this race was being held nice and early according to the BBC weather sun set was at 20.00 and sun rise around 6.00 giving us 10 hours of dark, this being right on the limit of my new Exposure 6 pack  light on its medium setting. I managed to avoid putting my light on until 20.30 when a marshal actually told me to put it on, it had begun to get pretty dark by then in the woods.

Normally when it gets dark this is when I make all my gains during a race. However I became quickly aware of how tired I was starting to feel. The heavy mist that was sitting over the track over higher ground wasn’t helping matters since I was finding it hard to focus of the ground ahead on the climbs. At one point I was sure I lost consciousness for a microsecond. At that point I realized that I literally hadn’t felt so bad on a bike ever in my life, so I thought to myself, what were my options?

What if I pull out now, how would I feel? I’ve definitely achieved something in that I’ve reached a new upper limit of discomfort, but if I do stop, is that actually my limit? I had to find out. So I carried on riding. In reflection (my mind might be blocking bits out) but over the next few night laps the discomfort didn’t really get any worse. I kept asking myself am I enjoying this and the answer was always yes!? The down hill bits of the track stayed fun and I kept looking forward to particular sections.

6 am arrived, I was still riding, it was still dark and my light was now on its lowest setting and the battery level gauge wasn’t looking good. Fortunately the helpful guys at Exposure happily exchanged my light for a nice full one. I needed a bit of full beam!

The race finished for me at approximately 11.15 am. I’m sure we must have had over 11 hours of darkness and it had been mentally the hardest race I’d ever done.

Normally the staying awake bit I find easy but I’ve attributed my performance on the day to a few reasonable factors. Firstly not to seem like I’m making up excuses; it was a tough old course about 1km further than last year and with a little bit more climbing no one was really going to find it easy! But next time I’m going to make sure I get enough sleep and rest in the weeks leading up to the event. Funnily I feel more mentally rested since doing the race than I did on the Friday before, my legs might say something else though!

Animal count

5 mice, 1 frog, 1 mole, 1 rabbit, a few birds of prey, a few other birds, a Stone that really looked like a crab -hallucination induced, and a gorilla in a kayak playing a ukulele – pretty sure that one was real!?

So all in all, pretty happy with finishing 15th in my category and 18th overall. It was definitely a memorable one learning some pretty important lessons. Looking forward to my next event.

Thanks SIP events for another very well organised event that was a ‘pleasure’ to take part in…

all of this wouldn’t be possible if it weren’t for the dedicated PedalPursuit.com support crew who were amazing once again staying awake all night, and staying focused on me making it possible for me to finish what I started.

Dark and White Trailquest- Chesterfield

Mar 25, 2012

Riders
Pete Crawforth
Andy Douglas

2 hour trailquest

round 7/7

What a cracking ride to finish the winter series!

Andy finally got his win of the winter series and the weather has got us in the mood for a summer of racing and riding.
The race had a little twist at the start when they issued us two maps of the same area one 1:50000 map which had points to the north of the start and a 1:25000 which covered the south. I spent an extra minute before setting off and marked the most northern points off the ‘south’ map onto the ‘north’ map. With this little bit of foresight I thought I was going to be in for a good ride and set off with confidence, since the check points where much more closely packed than normal I decided to pick a route which consisted of lots of in and out sections to collect the check points. This was obviously on the organisers minds when they were setting up the course since most of the ‘in and outs’ involved a lot of climbing/descending. The climbs themselves weren’t ever too bad but after 2 hours they definitely starting to sting. Repeating Andy’s style from a previous race I decided to ride straight past one of the points, only to realise to a good 1 Km up the road so was unable to turn back. Finishing on time with only a minute or two to spare always gives you another sence of achievement though looking back after covering 33Km compared to Andy who rode 34 Km and managed to clear it, definitely shows that my route choice wasn’t particularly efficient. ah well

race finished, driven home, showered and at the pub for lunch by 1 o’clock and able to get some sun bathing in. Quality weekend.
cheers Dark and White for another memorable race!

results!