23rd June 2007 Aviemore Merida MTB Marathon

After a week working away from home, I decided a night at home and an early start was a better idea than a night in a tent - especially since this event was part of "The Outsider" festival. Promoted as an outdoors/music fest, most of the promo I saw was very much music festival oriented so I was a bit pensive that the dominating theme would be crusty, muddy, insanitary etc.

Arriving at 8am it seemed onsite security was only just waking up and it would probably have been possible to arrive, camp and get into the arena at that time without challenge. Signposting wasn't all that clear for Merida participants and security staff had to be sought out to get directions/info. Most went blank at any mention of Merida, mountain bikes etc.

Anyway, bitching aside ... nice drive up the A9, sunny on arrival, get signed in and set up.

At the start, not a massive turnout and I start near the back. The first few km of tarmac seem to go off at a blistering pace and I'm trying to spin easy to keep cramp and knee pain at bay. result is I'm falling further behind even at this early stage.

Having entered the 75k, it's clear to me at the split that my knee isn't going to welcome an extra 25k so I divert on to the 50k route, getting the damning blue spot on my race number to signify.

At the feeding station, the skies open and from then on it rains and rains and rains for the rest of the day, making everything off a path or road into a very muddy slog.

Last part of the day dominated by 75 and 100k riders coming through on technical sections and not wanting to hold them up - so lots of time lost stepping aside.

Performance still very disappointing at something like 5hrs 30min. Don't get me wrong - delighted to have finished, I finished ahead of some younger and thinner people - but still very far away from where I need to be.

Stuff that worked:

Elete water. Didn't completely fend off cramp, but it was much, much better than Penrith.

Flat pedals. Sure, they're not as efficient as properly-used SPDs, but they're a lot better than riding SPDs but not being clipped in!

DIY Sports Drinks

I'm too mean to pay the money for sports drinks in liquid or powder form, and it didn't take too much research to confirm that the core ingredients and composition of these products isn't that special. Granted, they make have some extra finesse in terms of proportions, ingredients etc at the margin, but it seems possible to get at least 80% of the benefit for less than 20% of the price (I do like my Pareto's Law).

So now I tend to fill my hydration pack with:

• 100ml concentrated orange squash OR 100ml sugar free equivalent plus 5 tablespoons sugar
• 1/3 teaspoon salt OR now - the recommended dose of Elete Water

... made up to 1 litre with water. This makes up to an isotonic drink which provides some calories as well as water and salt (plus other electrolytes if you use Elete) in "body" concentration for optimum absorbtion. You can increase the juice/sugar concentration to get more energy per litre (but may compromise hydration) or reduce it to emphasise hydration.

Caveat: I have seen recipes that claim to be similarly "substitutes for big buck brands" that have much higher and much lower concentrations of both sugar and salt - but the proportions here seem to be the most common agreed. Please make sure you're happy about the makeup of what you're drinking before following any of these recipes.

If you want to get a bit more sophisticated, you may want to look at using calorie sources other than granulated white sugar - glucose, fructose, maltodextrine etc - like this and this.

Cramp

I've had cramp a couple of times after rides - usually driving into the outskirts of Edinburgh after a Glentress trip is the timescale for it kicking in.

But it hasn't affected a ride like it did at the Penrith Merida MTB Marathon where it was a serious limiting factor. Reading up on cramp, it seems it isn't fully understood exactly why it happens, but there are a number of contributory factors:

• Temperature
• Hydration
• Fitness/fatigue
• Electrolyte imbalance

The first two aren't really factors for me, but I'd readily concede that fitness IS - and was almost prepared to accept that until I was fitter, cramp might be a perpetual problem.

Then I found out about Elete Water - mainly because their UK distributor Fine ADC have (had) an office in the same campus as my work office and James there gave me a few of their sample packs.

I used these during training rides over the next few weeks - I knew it wouldn't be a great test because I wouldn't normally get cramp then, but I wanted to be sure it wasn't going to cause any new problems.

... which it didn't. It has a salty-ish taste concentrated (which is not how you use it) but when diluted even in plain water there is no taste. I tended to add it to my DIY sports drink instead of the salt component.

The big trial came at the Merida MTB Marathon in Aviemore. I started to use Elete a couple days before hand in water throughout the day, and added it to the juice and water in my hydration pack on the day. I also took a small runners water bottle with concentarted juice and Elete Water in it so that 100ml of this would make 1litre DIY sports drink when topped up at the water/food refill stations.

I can't pretend that I had absolutely no cramp problems in this event, but they were massively better than at Penrith. My conclusion is that Elete Water dalt with the electrolyte imbalance part of my cramp problem ... now I just need to deal with the fitness part (which includes stretching) to get rid of it altogether.

Confirmation of that came when I did the same route again a couple of weeks later with Neal. Using Elete as before - and with a pace/gear choice that protected a niggling knee problem - I had absolutely no cramp during or after the ride.

It's not an inexpensive product - especially when you start buying the bigger bottles - but you use very little of it per litre of water. I got a couple of the little dropper bottles initially then a big bottle as you can (apparently) refill the droppers from the big bottle which is handy to take out on the trail with you for top-ups. I actually got a good price (esp with £1 P&P) from UK Bike Store but you should check for yourself.

15th May 2007 Penrith Merida MTB Marathon

Is 5+ weeks enough perspective for your first mountain bike marathon?

I'm not sure. Or maybe I'm just a vv lazeee blogger.

Penrith, May 2007 - first ever MTB marathon to be held in Engerland.

Main lesson 2B learned: 7Stanes, tarmac, "mountain bike centres" ... none of them are adequate preparation for real, natural trails. No human being would create roads, tracks or trails with the terrain, inclines, texture, obstacles, etc etc that natural trails present.

My main problem was cramp. After an hour or so of do-able riding (on the 50km route), we hit the big climb. Contours on the map suggested this would be mainly rideable; a slog but rideable. But the texture of the ground - very wet, grassy, muddy after rain - reduced this greatly. Pushing, my muscles obviously cooled down, thought the day's effort was over, and transitioned into post-ride cramp mode. I reckon many of us pushed for 6km or so.

From then on it was a fight for survival - fending off cramp, stopping to stretch and using low gears to avoid anything that meant "pushing" - the cramp trigger. That in turn led to walking bits I would hav expected to ride, and riding parts slowly on low gears that led to instability, lack of momentum, etc etc.

The other big issue was pedals. I've almost become comfortable with my Crank Bros egg-beater style clipless pedals on my regular routes, but spent most of this unfamiliar route unclipped - both uphill and downhill. Between the variability of the terrain and the threat of unclippable-from cramp, I was rarely confident enough to be clipped in. This was the worst of all worlds; not only did I not get the benefit of the clipped pedals, I actually spent most of the ride with my feet in unatural, less than ergonomically perfect positions on top of the clips.

Bottom line = 5 and a half hours of living hell. :)

Lessons learned:

1) Cramp - prevention and cure.

2) Pushing vs carrying. Discuss.

3) Pedals - there has to be a better way.

Merida Bikes MTB Marathon - Penrith Course Profiles

Ordinary not Special

Having now done my first two Merida MTB Marathon events, I realise that not only am I not "special" I may not even be ordinary or average, so this blog (such as it is, and with the usual apologies for infrequent updates etc etc ) now takes a bit of a twist and acknowledges that this kwest is a real tough challenge. Not a "look at me I'm doing the TransRockies" but more of a "holy shit I can't even do 45k offroad without problems how the hell am I going to do several 100k days on the run hahahahahah kinda thing".

Several backlog catchup type updates to follow in that vein.

22 April 2007 Blairadam Forest

I visited Blairadam about a year ago and although it was fun enough a) I knew I'd hardly found any of the half-secret singletrack and b) I wasn't sure just how much there was that was rideable.

So, interested in heading off from home in a new direction, I took the car and parked at Lochore Meadows country park. Over time I hope I can find some tracks and paths that might let me ride most of this off road.

From there I rode across to Kelty and on to Blairadam. I did stick mainly to the tracks and paths but spotted so many side tracks that I'm sure there is tons of stff to do there in future. With this and the link to Lochore it all added up to about 30km; not a lot for me these days but almost all off road except for the big long climb through Kelty.

Blairadam is a bit of a funny place. On one hand it has the potential to be a really great MTB centre in Fife, right beside the North-South motorway. It's big enough, has the right kind of terrain and there has been a lot of good work done already. But it seems to have status that is kinda official, kinda not - yes, the trail building that's going on seems to have Forestry Commission blessing and even support, but there are no waymarkers, no maps etc. They guys who have been building it advertise regular guided rides to ind out what's there - but that isn't ideal for many people.

... and to be honest, it's likely always to have a bit of a problem because it is so close to population.

The path into the forest that is closest to Kelty is a mess - in the tradition of naming MTB trail sections this would have to be either "shit parade" thanks to the vast amount of doggy doo-doo on the path; or "shooting gallery" judging by the number of improvised targets stuck on the branches.

However, the impact of this kind of thing reduces quickly as you get into the forest, and there's a lot of space to expand the MTB trails into in that direction. It's certainly somewhere I will be returning to for longer off road training sessions.

15 April 2007 Foggy Forest Explorations

Started off early morning with the intention of trying to connect some wooded sections with public footpaths, but the fog was so thick I decided I should minimise any time spent on the road.

Instead, I restricted myself to the three closest woods/forest areas in my local loop and worked on exploring anything I saw that looked remotely trail-like. this did reveal some nice little sections of natural singletrack - even if these did often peter out into a wooded bog - which I can use in future to extend my off-road mileage in these areas.

Managed to build this into about 35km of almost all off road.

8 April 2007 Rippin' The Red Run

Return visit to Glentress Red Run with Neal and a couple of MTB newbies from the extended family.

This meant we spent some time in the morning in the skills loop which was quite useful - working up to bigger and bigger things to climb up and fall down. Picnic lunch at the Buzzard's Nest car park then Neal and I took the car down to the bottom to do the Red run.

... and what a grand time we had :)

Firstly, I managed to keep him at least in site until he topped the Buzzard's Nest again as I was at the last bit of climb up to it. Big change from last time when the first climb was a real killer for me. And the whole thing felt pretty do-able, keeping going up the long slow climbs, very few stops and only walking at the stupidly steep switchback climbs.

All of which was reflected in our times; Neal coming in at 1hr 51 min (compared with 2hrs 12 min last time) with me just SIX MINUTES BEHIND!!! at 1hr 57min (compared with 2hrs 22 min last time). It's actually hard to work out just how I managed this, but I'm putting it down to the sprint training on gym bikes, effectively a long warm up in the morning and being highly motivated to catch Neal. And maybe the egg-beater pedals. But cutting 25 minutes off was a big deal - I'm almost afraid to try it again in case it was a complete on-off fluke.

The Great Big All Encompassing Catchup Entry

I'm crap at this blogging business.

It doesn't seem like a big thing at first; I don't blog a ride or something when it happens. Then the next ride is over and I still haven't done the first one, and before I know where I am I'm so far behind that even if I have time to blog something, I don't have the time to do the catchup posts, so it doesn't get done and it just gets worse and worse.

I was going to try and write individual entries to emulate at least what I should have done, but that was getting too complicated, so here I'm going to do a summary of the last couple of months or so - from end of Jan through to early April, then try harder to be better at this.

Training
Has been going quite well, generally can be sumarised as mid week hotel gyms, weekend long rides.

Much of Feb and March was spent in hotels up to 4 nights per week, so I tried to get a couple of sessions a week on a machine, concentrating on things like sprints and high cadence sessions and using my heart rate monitor. I think I did later see the benefit of these and they were easier to do than long grinds in hotel gyms.

Long weekend rides grew gradually to be 50km, mainly or all on tarmac, taking up to 4 hours if especially hilly and windy. Then, last few weeks I have started to do much more off-road on these rides while keeping the distances fairly high. This has to be forest roads and tracks rather than anything especially technical, but goodness knows there's a big difference between that and tarmac.

Places
Two recent trips to Glentress with Neal but only the first one I'll record here - sometime mid March I think. Did the Red run, from the bottom car park, agreeing to ride separately. Neal got back in 2 hrs 12min, and I was very pleased to be only 10 minutes behind him in 2hrs 22 min. Still felt a lot like hard work in the first half especially. See later blogging for the second trip :)

Also around the same time took my bike with me on a trip and managed to get an early morning look at Hamsterley Forest. With a business meeting looming and by myself I only followed a blue route, repeating a section of it as I got back fairly quickly. It was good to be out - and somewhere new, but I don't think I experienced the real appeal of this forest judging by what I've read.


Events
We're both booked up now to do the 50km Merida Marathon at Penrith on 13th May, and I'm booked to do the 65km which is part of the Outsider festival in Aviemore in June. Mixture of trepidation and excitement at both, with the added concern that the Outsider is being promoted much more as a music festival rather than an outdoors event so not especially looking forward to the night before that.

Gear
Neal has been loving his new Viper frame. Ended up with an even better "carbon lite" frame that has carbon fibre seatstays for weight saving and a bit of "give". Don't think he's fallen off it since he got it :)

I have bitten the bullet and am working hard at living with SPDs again - trying Crank Brothers egg-beater style this time round. Chose the Smarty version as they have a small but useful platform. So far, so mediocre ... I have fallen a few times through not disengaging quickly enough, but this is getting better and I think I do see a difference when riding. That's certainly true on the flat, and I am staying clipped in more on downhills and technical bits.

Weight
Have been down as far as 12st 6lb, 12st 7lb seems to be the real sticking point. Would like to be closer to 12st for Penrith, watch this space ...

Heroes and Villains

Long story short (under "Villains") - Neal's brand new Giant XTC SX got dented to b*ggery by a drugged ned whacking it with a metal bar to try and break the U lock.

He fought the law and the law won.

Unfortunately that leaves us with a ruined frame and no practical recourse.

[fanfare] Step up the good people at MTB-Distribution who we were starting to talk to about sponsorship ... and The Bike Chain, Rodney St, Edinburgh - both examples of the successful businesses spinning out of the growing significance of mountain biking in Scotland.

... and in a few days time, the running gear from the Giant should be happily residing on a spanking new - and very lovely - Viper World Cup XC hardtail frame.

This is the first step down the road of us both riding Viper mountain bikes and we're very much looking forward to doing so.

Crane Sports (Aldi) Heart Rate Monitor

Went in to Aldi to see if they had any car seat covers left from last week (thinking ahead to next muddy trip to the Borders). They didn't - but they did have a few HRMs left @ £12.99.

Seem like a bargain - wireless chest strap, preset and custom training zones, time in/out zone reporting, out of training zone alarms, stopwatch, clock, fitness calcs, etc etc - most of the stuff that quite expensive HRMs do at a fraction of the price.

Purchase was justified a few days later when I did a static bike session in a hotel gym while away on business. This is usually quite a heartless, difficult to motivate activity, but the HRM was really useful at making me work harder than I would have done otherwise.

This will also help me make more practical use of the "Mountain Bike Fitness Training" book as much of this is couched in terms of training zones.

21st January 2007 Extension Exploration

A long week in London at a trade show caused an enforced break from training.

Looking for ways to a) extend my longer weekend ride and b) add in more off-road, I looked for a link between Clatto Reservoir (which I can get to from pretty much the furthest away point of my road route) and Clatto Den, which in turn would link into my series of woodland hops.

This just reminded me me of a Burt Lancaster film where he crosses the affluent LA 'burbs by swimming across the pools in garden after garden. At least that's my memory of the film ...

Anyway ... what started off looking like a path from Clatto Reservoir soon started to look more and more like a deer track - a view that was confirmed when I found the skeleton of one in the ditch at the side of the track. Some time since anything omnivorous this way trod methinks.

Eventually I crossed a barbed wire fence and carried the bike up a fairly high steep banking to get onto a very vague track which did take me round to Clatto farm and the Clatto Hill/Edensmuir Forest woods which is the furthest I ever got in my woodland hop.

My intention next time is to do this in reverse: Through Lochmuir, Kirkforthar, Drummy, and Torloisk woods - find the best link across to Clatto reservoir from there, and return by road. This should increase overall distance and off-road proportion.

New Year, New Focus

Now we're in 2007, we start to have some real objectives, dates to work towards that are measurable in weeks rather than months or years.

The first mtb marathon we plan to do is 13th May - so we're talking about making a decent fist of 100km off road in 5 months. Sounds like a long time, but with 2 or (rarely) 3 training opps a week it doesn't feel like long.

Right now, a long ride for me is 40km - but that's mainly on the road. I need to keep extending that distance and add in as much off-tarmac as possible.

Weight Log - Festive Impact

The lowest I got pre-Xmas was 12st 9lb.

Highest at the end of the festive period was 13st.

Turns out that 5lb is the most common weight gain for the period.

I guess it's not too bad - I'm back down to 12st 13lb today so hopefully it will be all off in the next few weeks - though being away in London at a trade exhibition won't help.

3rd January 2007 Kinross the Long Way

It was my Mum's birthday today so I came up with the genius idea of takig her present by bike - and to avoid the main road by going round the north side of the Lomond hills to get to Kinross via Falkland and Strathmiglo.

Most of this was pleasant enough, except for the long, long climb from Strathmiglo round West Lomond. Did I mention it was long? And into a very, very strong wind with gusts that almost stopped me in my tracks if I was crawling up an especially steep bit.

So by the time I got to Kinross and refuelled on Xmas cake and black bun, I took the shorter but busier route back. Still very windy with a few decent climbs, so not a cop out by any stretch.

Longest distance I've done in a day, longest time in saddle, etc. Not sure how to factor in the break in the middle. Yes it was recovery time, but also seizing up time so it worked both for and against me.

Part 1: 29km, 2hrs 15min
Part 2: 19km, 1hr 30min
Total: 48km, 3hrs 45min.

29 December 2006 Glentress Red

Down to Glentress with Neal for an end-of-year ride.

It was very cold, windy and raining so we decided to do the red route (usually we mix and match different parts of Glentress) and just meet back up at the Hub, rather than have Neal keep waiting for me.

It's great how you can keep going back to places like Glentress and make it new. This time we started at the Hub rather then going up to the Buzzard's nest car park - and the Spooky Wood section was open. We seem to have been unlucky with that in the recent past and have had to follow diversions half way up the hill.

I actually caught up with him twice, which was quite gratifying, but discovered later that Neal had taken a tumble on the first bit of downhill. He was ok, but when I caught up with him at the very top of the course it turned out he had buckled his front wheel quite badly.

He'd pressed on as it was ok-ish uphill, but under the circumstances all we could do was to loosen off his v-brakes to clear the buckle. Unfortunately the first bit of Spooky Wood downhill (which I loved) made it clear he didn't have enough stopping power, so we had to teeter all the way back down on the forest tracks - especially frustrating as the stop at the top had turned us from toasty warm to absolutely freezing and now we couldn't get warm again on the way down. Salutory lesson on just how cold you can get and how quickly when you're wet.

So, a bit of a frustrating outing; Neal needs a new bike.

24 December 2006 Frickin' Freezin'

Taking the chance for a last pre-Xmas ride meant a 7.30am start.

Dark, freezing temperature and dense fog.

Intention was to do something like the familiar 40km route but after a short way it was clearly not safe to be on the road in such dense freezing fog so I played around in the first lot of woods for a couple of hours. It was a chance to explore some of the side tracks that have been too soggy recently - as they were hard frozen!

Very spooky with "things" darting around in the lights in the foggy darkness.

Came back with frost in my eyebrows, frosty tyres and shoes. Brrrrrrr.