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No Fuss yet again put on a sterling event for the 2009 edition of 10 Under the Ben at Fort William. And they got the weather right, with 30C heat beating down on the riders in the middle of the day.
I was riding with Allan ‘The Love Machine’ Love, taking it easy, and generally having some fun. This didn’t stop me having a go at the fastest lap. I thought I had it in the bag, even though on my first and fastest lap my front mech cable slipped leaving me unable to get into the big ring. No worries really, it possibly stopped me from pushing to big a gear. It looked to be in the bag, until Mr Andy Barlow popped in to do solo, and pushed out some of the quickest laps of the day, beating my times be a few minutes. Not to worry, it’s all a bit of fun.
Like last year I felt the event was slightly over-subscribed, with far too many people on the course at any one time. Despite the good humour of those I passed, I did have one crash when someone stopped right in front of me at a water trough. I expect a little inexperience from people, but it was so busy it was feeling almost dangerous at points.
The course was a cracker though, definitely the best so far, with some of the World Champs descent used as a climb, and lots of nice natural stuff thrown in.
I wasn’t on my own for the weekend; Emma came up for a mini-holiday, along with Magnus (who got lost briefly when he went to insect the sausages cooking across the carpark). Murray and Vo were riding solo, with Dawn and Tracey supporting them respectively. Murray did six laps, which was mightily impressive since he underwent brain surgery less than a year ago. Vo beasted it up for eight laps, resplendent in his Molteni top.
Photos from the weekend can be seen on Flickr.
Last night I went out on the bike, up the Pentlands, in the snow! It was brilliant! It wasn’t very deep, but it was falling fast enough to make seeing difficult at times.
A few ice patches under the snow made things interesting, if a little unpredicatble! The picture says it all really. A great night’s riding.
h3. A Note To Spammers
Just to let all you spammers know that I am now automatically deleting comments if Akismet deems them to be spam. I’m fed up of looking through all the spam, and the number of false positives I have had recently has been zero, so I’ve pretty much just been deleting them all without looking.
Had a cracking ride up the Pentlands yesterday evening, good to see so many other bikers out enjoying the dry conditions.
Did one of my favourite loops up over Maidens Cleuch (Drainage Ditches/Rocky Mountain 1) from the Ranges Road singletrack, up Back Glen, then down Beach Avenue (Exponential), then down the long woodsy singletrack to Balerno. Near the bottom of this last piece of singletrack there is a muddy patch that is impossible to avoid, and slows your speed down from about 20, to 5mph.
I spied a new line yesterday, so decided to give it a go. Towards the left there is a pile of small rocks and big branches, and I thought I could scoot straight across the top of them. I misjudged it, and having not slowed like I normally wood, I ended up being ejected over the bars to land on my feet. The front wheel was totally stuck in the mud, and the frame had swiveled round so the rear wheel was touching the ground on the non-driveside.
I was laughing, and took a picture to laugh at later. Then I went to move off…the back wheel wouldn’t go round, it was locked solid. I could move it backwards some of the way, but it would always jam at the same point. Turns out that my rear brake rotor had been smashed against one of the aforementioned rocks, and had split on the outer edge (see pic above). Not having a 4mm allen key to remove my pads, I had to bend the rotor back by hand to get it in a rideable state.
All the rubbing was creating lots of extra work for me, so thanks to Murray and Vo who I met at Bonaly, and who gave me a loan of an allen key to remove the pads and allow my wheel to run freely.
I’ve now ordered a pair of Hope floating rotors, so hopefully no more rotor troubles for a while.
