Thanks Sam. It’s good that you all finished and didn’t get scooped up by the broom wagon. What happened on that road bit where they were talking about having to keep up some minimum speed to get through while the road was closed? (something like 15mph wasn’t it?)
I’ll have to make sure I can make it next year (is it an annual thing?)
When is somebody going to invent a teleport? Or an automatic toddler minder.
Hopefully Tue will still be nice and tired for next weekend (we’re doing a 60k off-road Audax in Cornwall) - I may have some hope of keeping up then
Should be much less techy than the Dyfi though.
That was the start - from the centre of Machynlleth up to Corris. It wasn’t as bad as it sounds, as the congestion of bikes from the start made it quite slow, and those starting at the back were several minutes later at getting going. The road was thick with bikes gradually passing us, but I think 15mph would be exaggerating.
The three of us on unis started at the front. I was trying to spin fairly fast and still most of the bikes had passed me by the time we got off the road. I think Steve had a harder time on his 26", and said he ended up with just the rolling road block for company, but they didn’t stop him riding.
A 29" Shlumpf may have been nice, mainly for this bit, but it was OK without.
Yes, this has been an annual event for six year now, so we expect it to happen again next spring.
My GPS says we kept a fairly even 12/13mph pace along the first road section. I presume the speed was faster near the front, but even so it’s not a million miles from 29er speed.
Awesome seems to be the way we’ve all described this ride - and rightly so. The fire roads were perfect for us to tick off the two-wheeled ones one by one. I stopped counting after I had overtaken 50 of them within the first 1 1/2 hours. I suppose some of them were the same riders though, as they tend to go a little faster on the down bits.
The best part for myself was the ‘awesome’ technical downhill sections, of which there were so many. The faster riders were well ahead of myself so I wasn’t so pressurised while negotiating the steep, rocky sections.
I chose to ride my 26 x 3 muni with long (170) cranks as I wanted to have some serious fun on the downhill bits. I didn’t really have any problems on the long ascents either, just a little slower than I would have been if I’d rode my 29er.
My real downer was the road section at the start. Sam, Tue & myself started at the front of the bike pack. After 15 mins the last bike passed me, leaving me feeling extremely guilty holding up the traffic for a further 15 mins before I turned off the main road. My poor legs didn’t really want to go any faster than they were going on those long cranks. I soon forgot about feeling guilty when I caught up that first bike on that first very, very, very long uphill section. Then the second, third, fourth, … You’d think some of these bikers had never ridden uphill before. I suppose I was overtaking the slower ones, but neverless a bike is a bike and it felt so good, especially as I came from the back.
I would certainly recommend this ride to others. It was quite a strenuous ride so the riders would certainly need to be fit and would definitely need to be competent at technical downhill. I’ll be there next year (same date - first bank holiday in May).
I came in at the end with Joe McLean (complete with training wheel) at the 5 hours 40 mins mark. I had stopped far too long for a break 1/2 way round though.
26 x 3 ?? I was still pleased I opted for the bigger tyre, as I had so much fun going downhill on it.
