Copyright

All photo's are Copyright of Scott Swalling or the tagged Photographer. (Background photo Scott Swalling Photography).

About Me:

24Hr MTBike racer and general bike rider, climber and mountaineer. Good coffee drinker and cake eater (any cake, seriously, don't leave your cake laying around). Also, I like to try new things that challenge me.

Tuesday 6 May 2014

Spoon to a gun fight

So if guns are for show and knives for a pro, what the hell is a spoon any good for in a fight? Alan Rickman, would claim it hurts more. Who though?

Sunday saw the 2014 running of the Gorrick 100, an annual race that is more challenge than a race, yeah right.  But it is great fun, the course always pretty good fun and all the category contestants appear to have fun.

Having felt off all week and not that interested in riding.  A Thursday night climbing session being the only exercise that seemed to lighten my ambivalence to training in the week, I was really struggling with the idea of racing. So I hatched a silly plan that I knew would put a smile on my face and be some good exposure for Cycleworks.co.uk (you have to do your bit).  I decided to race the Fatboy in the Gorrick, a bad idea if there every wise one with the lack of mud, snow and/or sand.

So arriving at the race village, I got registered, chatted to a few folk as ya do, grabbed a spare tube off Big Al (who had come up a bit earlier than he need, top man and congrats on the 5 lap win!) and then I got myself sorted and readied the fatbike.

This was never going to be easy and frankly I still felt at odds with riding let alone racing, but I was on the start line and we were off.  A funny thing happens inside your head when you start a race, you take off like a loon and forget about most things, squeezing past riders on the first tight turn, I thought I would have a crack at seeing how well I can do.  But I was under no illusions, I was on a damn fatbike (the spoon from the Lock Stock-ish quote above) whilst everyone else was on 29er XC machines (the guns, no knives).

Surprisingly though as I pressed on, I made up places, scared people as the 4.6" tyres rumbled up behind them, took off camber lines in the inside of turns to overtake because I could due loads of fat tyre traction and generally had fun.  Lap five would prove to be the one that caused me issues and I decided to reign in a bit.  At this point a fell into a bit of company and shared some work with the eventual female winner Amanda Brooks, a fellow antipodean, but she soon rode me off her wheel and went on to the win. Congrats!

I rolled across the line in a surprising 19th on the tractor that is the Fatboy.  I was broken, the spoon hurt me more than someone else Alan. But as feeling returned, so did the fact that fatbikes are damn cool, but more importantly they are stupid fun.  Cycleworks thanks for getting the Fatboy in for me it really is too much fun. :)

Gorrick team, as always a great course and well organised event. To Chris Noble and Big Al, congrats on great rides and thanks for the heckling, always appreciated. ;)

Thanks to the usual suspect, Weldtite, WTC, Cycleworks and Alpkit.


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