Hope you are OK Steve! Not just because I don’t want to be the only muggins showing up one wheel short.
Our gentle muni ride was pretty gnarly (just ask Norry), but we didn’t pick up any nasty stains.
I’m planning to get the train up to Mach with the 29er and this map from last year this coming Saturday to have a practice.
I don’t know the campsites around Machynlleth, though I think there are a couple. I’m not averse to using the provided site by the leisure centre (it’s hardly urban round these parts wherever you go) - as I may well come and camp Sat/Sun nights if other uni types are around.
Yes, let’s go to Nant-yr-Arian on Saturday! (or Monday… Bank holiday after a bike event, shouldn’t be busy :D)
I am stuck in the dark ages (internet-wise) - bummer. You need to ring me when these things happen you know.
Anyway - I thought that I would chance a late entry still not knowing where in Wales it is, how to get there or what my girlfriend is going to say. And, believe or not I am rider number 643. According to my calculations there will be -43 places left by now…please hurry.
Tue, that’s ace that you were able to get in! Before I read your second paragraph I was going to suggest the forum at www.singletrackworld.com as probably the best place to pick up a last-minute entry, but if you’re sorted that’s great.
Normally I’d offer to give you a lift from Malvern if you’re not keen on driving up, but as I’ll already have my brother, two bikes and two munis I suspect you’d have to be towed along behind…
Sam, thanks for that map - nice to know the kind of thing we’re in for. Have you ever ridden the ClimachX trail? It looks like the south-west part of that course uses it, and it includes an absolutely fantastic tight-and-twisty descent that is excellent fun on one wheel and two.
Incidentally I’ve stayed at the campsite at the very top left of that map; the facilities are pretty basic but it’s nice enough…
Even though I’m doing the ride on a two-wheeled-luddite-mobile I’m really looking forward to it…
I’m considering the ‘2 wheeled luddite’ approach as well. 2 sequential accidents on my new road bike, each with week long recoveries, followed by a 2 week ‘flat out’ illness have dented my training plans quite substantially. I’ve managed a few short rides over the last week, but feel very out of condition (not to mention skittish around traffic!). I suspect I’ll manage it by cheating and using the bike, but 60km on the uni right now suggests retirement in shame
Tue! If you weren’t so blonde you’d be a dark horse - good to hear you’ve signed up (Though it’s a bit scary to think of racing you and Steve on real muni).
Phil - I have done the ClimachX once on a 29er, it was brilliant. There were some rocky bits in the black section of downhill at the end which I didn’t quite ride. Burmed zig-zags though
Will you guys be coming up on Saturday moring - for some riding after lunch?
At present the earliest I could leave work is 5 on friday but I’m planning on swapping stuff around, in which case I could leave anytime on friday. Failing that I could probably just get a late-ish train on friday anyway.
We’ll be arriving Saturday morning (Wendy and the boys), as will Steve Robertson and family.
There’s a campsite at Plas Llwyngwern which is about 2.5miles North of Machynlleth on the A487 (very close to the Centre for Alternative Technology - CAT).
I’ve had a word with the site and we don’t need to book in advance. I’ve checked to make sure they have hot showers as well.
We’ll take the barbie just in case people would like one on the Sunday evening. We can sort food out Saturday for the barbie with a little bit of shopping in Mach.
Great to hear you’re coming along Tue. Looking forward to seeing you next weekend. I’m assuming you’ll be riding a uni like Sam and myself and not one of those poncey two wheeled things Phil, John, Joe and Steve R will be riding?
I’m certainly still limping around at the moment, but hopefully my foot will be OK by next weekend.
[QUOTE=steve.colligan]
I’m assuming you’ll be riding a uni like Sam and myself and not one of those poncey two wheeled things Phil, John, Joe and Steve R will be riding?
[QUOTE]
Some things are just too complicated for me - so I’ll have to stick with just the one wheel. (highly unlikely that I would miss a good muni-race with you two…)
I’m catching a train to Joe’s for Saturday PM but we will probably first be in Machynlleth Sunday morning.
Right, doesn’t seem like it matters now but I can get there on friday. Which at least means Phil and I will be there in time for a ride on saturday, whenever that may be.
It seems my Saturday plans have been cancelled, so I’m free all day. I think I’ll come up on the train Sat morning and camp.
The Plas Llwyngwern site Steve mentioned looks very nice from riding past it - is everyone heading there? By a river, so anti-bug stuff might be a plan.
Attached are some pics of my 40km ride around some of last year’s route of the Enduro last night. It seems to have a lot of very easy forestry roads/tracks, and only a small proportion of downhill/singletrack. I expect it to be at least 90% non-technical. Highly tempting to go for the coker, but for the downhill bits it would be a bit silly. I spent some time chasing sheep over open country, but they will probably have made themselves scarce before the unis reach them on Sunday. But man, sheep are fast runners!
Phil - yes, it seems to use the ClimachX downhill trail at the end… possibly the finest and funnest singletrack for a 29er muni ever found on the surface of this planet! A couple of ‘stupid unridable’ spots (see pictures), but 99% increadible.
Right then, it looks like John and I will be arriving on Saturday lunchtime / early afternoon, albeit possibly not at the same time as he’s going by train and I’m driving. We’ll be camping on the Saturday and Sunday.
What about the other 20km Sam? At the moment I’ll be riding my 26" muni (long cranks), but maybe I should switch to my 29er (shorter cranks) if its almost all non-technical???
BTW, you have far too much spare time on your hands:p .
I think 29’ers is a good choise for a day out in Wales. Steve, you might save a kilogram changing from 26 to 29 witch could keep you smiling all the way. Cokers are very nice Sam but we risk winning the race and making ca 640 bikers feel bad about themselves
Well, when I said 40km, that wasn’t really two-thirds of the actual course. I went out 20km, got lost into a dead-end in the woods, and came back largely the same way. Also, this was last year’s course, so the actual one this time may be different. I’m extrapolating from the kind of stuff I could find - a lot of the route on the map from last year was on paths which the OS marks with double dashes, which look to be easy gravel. I certainly couldn’t bear to grind around on less than a 29er (150s)!
Tue - good point, we want to keep up good uni/bike relations!
Normally I’d do a brief report of the weekend but as I lugged a spare wheel all around the course I’d feel a bit of a fraud doing so…
Nevertheless it was an awesome weekend; I was definitely not expecting so much proper technical singletrack and the atmosphere was awesome. All climbs everywhere should have live bands half way up and cheerleaders at the top!
I took a smattering of photos, mainly on the “short warm up ride” (harhar!) the day before, which can be found here.
Apparently there were actually three variations of the course; as well as closing the loop immediately after the food stop later on, the first 200 riders did a short extra loop about 4 miles from the end.
Cool. Are we allowed to know how the unicyclists got on? I suspected the lack of posts probably mean that it’s top secret (because of plans to publish in uni mag?)
I’ll see Tue next weekend anyway, so I’ll find out then, unless he’s sworn to secrecy as well
The unicyclists did surprisingly well, actually… they started ahead of us bike types, and I was amazed at how far we’d gone before we caught Sam and Tue; it was a good 10k or more, most of that on a fairly flat road, before we saw them.
Then at the food stop about 20 miles in I was joking to John about seeing Sam zoom past, then I turned round and he was standing there! On the fireroad climbs, of which there were an awful lot, he was flying past everyone.
Woo, yes, it was an awesome day. The 29er/150s was an ideal tool for me, and made going up endless fireroad climbs quite fun (for a while anyway). The bikes were just not trying hard enough. There’s nothing like a 250m solid climb at the start to pass some bikes and get you going! We all got to join the Mile High Club - 1600 meters of climbing in one day
There was a good atmosphere all round, and the downhill sections had loads of brilliant gnarly singletrack and rocky stuff. Towards the end there were a couple of steeper hills which I walked up, the obligatory spot of cramp, and things were getting much slower. But the rain held off and it was not too hot.
I asked for results, and Summit Cycles said they would be posting them online last week - may neeed to ask again. They should appear at some point. Phil’s GPS shows time of 4h 13m - I think John was around then too? I finished with Steve Robertson (with training wheel, caught me at the ‘1km to go’ mark) at about 4h 55m, and Tue about 10 - 15 mins later. I think Steve and Joe McLean were around 6h? I think there were a good number of bikes behind everyone.
Everyone seemed to conclude that it’s an ideal thing for unis - lots of climbing to overtake bikes on, and fun downhill, with the fastest bikes staying out of the way in front. And the stunning Welsh views thoughout. Lots more unicycle entries next year I hope!
