Whinlatter, my oh my!
Well that was an experience! a mere 31 miles with just about 5500 feet of ascent, pah, how hard can it be? mistake number one.
so we set off bright and early sunday morning heading up hill towards Whinlatter from sunny Pickering, and it was a sunny Pickering that morning, so we were hoping for the same in the lakes and pleasantly it was. as we drove through the mountains i kept re-assuring mark we had to ride up all of them, and that he was going to love it, which went down quite well. We arrived at Whinlatter and parked up on a rather steep hill and went to registration, back to the bikes and get them all ready and race plates on! Get the biking kit on and off to the start to see what was going on. After chatting to people we knew and a couple of people we didnt know, it was time to head to the start line and get ready for the off!
After a quick briefing, the klaxon went and we were off! and this is where we made mistake number 2, turns out it did matter that we werent near the front, as we were now boxed in up the first climb and consequently stuck at the first section of singletrack for 10 -15 minutes as it all bottlenecked and we chuckled at fraying tempers and lycra flying everywhere. eventually it got flowing, and we could enjoy the singletrack, until i went and threw myself over the bars and had a nice drop onto my shoulder and side, but good ol' adrenaline told me it didnt hurt! so straight back on and off again! on from here it was up and up and sometimes down for a bit, but seemed like mostly up! I also soon discovered that the loose shale when combined with mud and water, was actually quite slippery! time for some fun so we carried on moving, up and down and around with my first split time being 39 minutes closely followed by mark with 46 minutes, and eventually into whinlatter pass, where it became apparent we were sided by two very large hills... oh lordy. And so ensued a 30 minute climb which even required the granny ring for 80% of it, ouchie! but we now descended back into the forest and began lap two. After several miles i had to stop and stretch out some cramp and take it easy a few miles, where mark got passed gosh darnit, so after a bit more stretching i was good to go again! off into the woods on some tasty singletrack, mark in my sights, some good ol' competition between mates set in and then disaster... they always tell you not to drive right up behind someone, well this applies to bikes too! before i knew what was happening, the rider i was following hopped over a nice sharp rock which made a good bang as it put a hole in my tubeless tyre. So faced with the choice of getting tubeless sealant all over myself in the process of putting a tube in with only 4 miles left, or coming back for revenge next year, i decided that revenge was always the best move and headed towards the finish to congratulate Mark! Well, overall a very tough event, but enjoyed it and will be back next year! my advice can only be to get some long rides in with the biggest/longest hills you can find!
