UKC

For those of an armchair persuasion I'm doing the Yorkshire Dales 300 this weekend. It's a 300Km mountain bike ride around the, well, Dales. More info at http://riderscyclecentre.com/?page_id=2568 which explains the basic rules.

I'm carrying a tracker and you can follow my progress (or lack thereof) at http://maps.opentracking.co.uk/15yorkshire300.cfm There are one or two slight variations in the final route from that displayed - the main one is at Newby Head where the road is followed rather than the Pennine Bridleway and Arten Gill down to Stonehouses.

First target is to get round, I've no idea what time is likely to be set by the first riders back so any guess as to what a secondary target might be is likely to be wildly inaccurate. I know what pace I can maintain for half the distance but whether I can do that for the full 300Km ...

Better get to bed

In reply to Bob:

Blimey, that sounds seriously hard work. What time do you set off? Good luck with the ride!!

In reply to Bob:

Stuart Rider was telling me about this the other day. Sounds ace. Good luck!

In reply to Bob:

I'll put this in my calendar for next year!
How much of it is road?
Looks like an epic, have done dales on road bike but I quite fancy a bike packing trip

In reply to climbingpixie:

8am start

Pesda potato: I did a rough calculation and there's about 120Km of the route on road. Linking up bridleways for a public event like this has to be legal so no "cheeky" usage of footpaths even if they are normally OK to ride by one or two riders having 40 or more head through at potentially awkward times isn't on.

It's an ITT self supported route so you can do it at any time you want but Stuart's looking at having an annual group start in the same way that the Highland Trail 550 and the Cairngorm Loop do. He's also looking at a 200Km ride in the autumn.

Right. Breakfast then down in to town.

In reply to Bob:

Good luck !

In reply to Bob:

Good luck Bob!

In reply to Bob:

Enjoy, not something you can do every weekend

In reply to John Simpson:

Well that was one of the hardest things I've ever done! A war of attrition on the body. Provisional final time of 34:55. Note that this includes food stops and bivvying - the clock runs all the time. 8AM start

Saturday AM was really warm, got to Fremington in Swaledale in 7hrs20. Heading up Great Pinseat I got a cramp attack that was so bad I had to walk the flats, the wind was also increasing in strength at this time. Got a meal in Gunnerside then rode over Buttertubs and up Cam Road to bivvy at the top of the descent to Newby Head at about 2345. Up at 4am having had maybe 3hrs sleep and away by 0435, rain started about an hour later and the wind got even stronger. Breakfast at Feizor. Sun eventually made an appearance when I was at Malham. By this time I was walking just about anything that resembled a hill. Finished just before 1900.

Despite stuffing my face at any opportunity (the full breakfast at Feizor is something else again) I lost 4Kg.

If you are on Strava - here's the activity: https://app.strava.com/activities/335029417

Beer and food (lots of) are in order methinks.

In reply to Bob:

Great effort!

In reply to Bob:

Amazing effort! That's a seriously impressive achievement! I enjoyed watching the tracker yesterday - it was good to keep checking in and to see you were still going.

In reply to climbingpixie:

The cramps were so bad I was seriously thinking of scratching when I got down to the valley. Really glad I didn't. 12 out of 20 starters have finished with one still out on the course.

In reply to Bob:

Jeepers, well done Bob, the after glow after that one must be quite intense. I feel a bit weary just reading about it. Fantastic.

In reply to Bob:

"Nobody does it normally anymore" - David Mamet, sexual perversity in chicago

Jeez, Ambleside today is full of runners walking round with their 110km finisher t-shirts. I remember talking to a petite woman in her mid-fifties at at party. I was feeling quite good when she said she been told I finished the kielder 100 ( 100 miles of off-road cycling), then she mentioned she had done just done her first ironman triathlon.....

People at work think I'm a nutter, but I know I'm sane and pretty feeble compared to some of you

STOP MAKING ME FEEL INADEQUATE!!!

P.S bloody well done, especially if the rain that hit the lakes reached the dales this morning

In reply to Bob:

Seriously impressive!

In reply to Chris the Tall:
That rain hit just as I was about a mile before heading up and over Great Wold to Ribblehead and lasted on and off until Feizor, made some of the limestone tracks a bit slippy. I passed one rider going up Great Wold, let's just say she was in a dark place.

I'm feeling a little beaten up this morning - perhaps an understatement, on something like this there is no respite the tracks aren't hugely technical (apart from the descent in to Gunnerside Gill which I still haven't managed to get the right line on) they are just relentless. You also have to be prepared to be on your own for long periods of time - I one person (the above woman rider) from the bivvy on Fleet Moss until the cafe in Feizor and then it was just that I was having a second pot of tea that meant that rider caught me up.

The winning time was around 28hrs I think.

In reply to Bob:

After I did Gunnerside Gill - twice - a couple of years ago I came to the conclusion that ther was no right line. But apparently there had just been a big rockfall, so maybe it has smoothed out since. But nonetheless the fact that I got a hole in my sidewall was testament to the sharp rock, so pretty impressive if you rode much of it on this ride. Certainly nothing that technical/risky on kielder - I crashed once but ended up in a deep mud hole !

In reply to Chris the Tall:

The gills are actually old mining hushes (streambeds scoured out by deliberate dam bursts to expose the veins of ore). The route was meant to go down the right hand one (from the top) then at about half height there's a track that cuts across it and you head right. I started heading down the next natural gully to the right, by the time I realised I was wrong it was "easier" to walk down than go back up.

What I found rather odd was that short tricky sections on various tracks that I've not been able to get through even sessioning them I rode straight through!

In reply to Bob:

Blimey, that's a spikey Strava! I saw someone else I know was doing something tagged yd300 - surely that can't be the distance, I thought? It was! Goodness. Chapeau!

In reply to Bob:
Good work! Iain entered but various shufflings meant we had the kids this weekend instead. I think he's planning on giving it a go next year though.

For the record, you're all mad.

In reply to SteveRi:
Quite a high attrition rate: Stuart had planned for 60 riders, that filled up and when people dropped out he filled it with reserves. In the event just 20 riders started and 13 finished.

Clare: It's an open route/challenge though Stuart had wanted an inaugural group start/ride to get it going.

In reply to Bob:

I guess it would be an interesting choice between a fast carbon 29er versus a probably heavier but more comfortable XC full sus for this sort of event. A carbon hardtail is going to be pretty brutal on the body after a while even if it's helping you eat up the miles.

In reply to Escher:
Everyone was on rigid or hardtail this year with a couple on singlespeed (one scratched at Bainbridge after 145Km though he is only 17) and one on a cross bike. A couple had 27.5+ or 29+ wheel/tyre combos which help a bit with absorbing the chatter due to the larger tyre volume. The winner was on a rigid carbon frame and fork. On the Highland Trail 550 last month there was a mixture of rigid, HT & FS. The leader for most of the ride was on a FS until the shock bushings packed in and he decided to call it a day before the frame broke. The eventual winner was on a rigid.

I was on my steel hardtail. Other than the cadence sensor coming loose when one of the retaining straps was cut by a stone the bike was flawless, I could have done with better handlebar grips and possibly carbon handlebars, even good quality ODIs can't protect you and the pads at the base of my thumb and palm on both hands are still tender this morning. On quite a few descents I'd forget to unlock the forks so things were often a little lively.

Anyway a blog post - http://bobwightman.blogspot.co.uk/2015/06/on-itt-no-one-can-hear-you-scream... General thoughts, kit list, strategy and the like.


Sadly, just doing some idle searching through the Strava stats for this. I think we were going for it: with over 90Km done nine of the top thirteen slots on one segment were done by YD300 riders. Also the local riders amongst us were getting PBs on some of the last of the off-road sections with nearly 290Km done. It's not a race. Yeah Right!

In reply to Bob:
That's seriously mental, well done!!

In reply to Bob:

Sounds like a nice couple of days out on the bike.