Monthly Archives: May 2012

Caledonia Etape

Lara and I have been wanting to do this ride for ages.  It is 130km long Road sportive.  What makes it special is it is the only closed road event in the whole of the UK.  Yup, that’s right, the whole route all the roads are closed for us cyclists,  cool huh!

There are a fair few who do this – this year the entries were capped at 5200.

We had arranged for Granny and Grumpsie Tadeusz to come up and baby sat whilst we did this together.  I had told Lara that we will ride it together and that I would stay with her and not leave her – oh how naive was I!

On the Friday before the race (the race was on Sunday)  I am not sure what I ate, but it certainly didn’t agree with me.  I spent all night hugging the toilet and completely emptying myself. It was horrible.  I spent all day on Saturday feeling awful and not being able to eat anything.  Riding 130kms having not eaten anything is not the best idea, but Lara said that if I was not going to do it then she wouldn’t.  No pressure there then, I had better get on with it as I knew she was really excited about doing it.  Oh god this was going to hurt.

We went and slept in the van (something we haven’t done for ages and it was great to do it again) in Pitlochery where the start was as the start was horribly early.  We got up at 6am and I forced all I could down me to try and put some energy inside me.

Above is Lara (bottom right) heading up towards the start line, as you can see – there was the odd biker there.

We got into our allotted start time and head off. We started quite late so had no real bunches or packs of riders who knew how to ride in bunches to join forces with, so we were pretty much by ourselves.

About 10km into it I soon came to realise that my stupid words of ” don’t worry dear I wont leave you” were really , well stupid.  As I was drained from being ill the last few days, it was up to Lara to drag my sorry ass around and I had to beg her not to leave me!

Lara did a brilliant job, she rode really strong in all sorts of horrible weather, we had massive winds, rain of biblical proportions and hail.  All in a good day of Scottish weather!

We finally crossed the line in 4hours and 41 minutes.  Not bad as we were alone and Lara dragged me around.  We will want to do it again next year but this time without the illness the day before.  I think the picture of me finishing says it all.

Skiing in May?!?!?!?

As always the Scottish weather does not conform to the normal seasonal patterns, and a whole heap of snow has fallen.  Never one to miss a chance to ski a group of us headed over to Aviemore to go skiing.

We loaded our skis and boots onto our backs for the long walk up, above is us passing through the Chalamain Gap and could at last see the snow and where we were headed- Braerich.  Once we had climbed half way up Sron na Lairige we could finally get the weight off our backs and get the skis on, a lovely feeling to have a light load on your back again.

Above is us climbing the shoulder of Coire Bhrochain to where we wanted to see if we could ski West Gully.  When we got to it we were disappointed to see that it was too full of snow and the entry was an extremely steep 6m cornice and the build up below that was just too steep for us to ski.

Pondering what to do we headed down a south facing face that gave great but short lived skiing on good sprig snow

Scott showed us that although he hasn’t had much time on the skis, he still has the skills to pay the bills.  from here we crossed the Coire and climbed back up the steep snow back up to the saddle, at first skinning, and then later when it got too steep we had to put the skis on our backs and climb up it by foot.

It was then a simple matter of going back out the way we came.  It felt like forever walking out.  None the less a great day out skiing and was even better as I thought that my skiing was done for the season.  With this new snow I think there will be a couple of ski days left!!!!!

Organising MTB races in local area

Rich and I decided to try and organise a few local races for the mountain bikers around here. There are loads of bikers here in Aberdeen, and surprised that nothing like this exists.

so after a few weeks of searching locations and working out a few tracks, we had our first race on Thursday. We had tried to get the word out through various channels and amazingly 22 people turned up to race, not bad seeing that we only emailed people 5 days before it.

the first stage was a mass start from the tower at Kirhill. we decided to try and break up the pack by having a Le Mans start with them holding their front wheel in their hands. Very funny watching people trying to put their fornt wheels in at double time.

The second and third stages were all timed runs with people hammering after each other with the look of evil possession in their eyes.

Overall it was a great success, everyone wanting more. We have decided to do a summer series and will do 4 races each on the first Thursday of the month. Watch this space!