On the up side, the wind didn’t get up until later. On the down side, it was raining at the start, had been raining for some time, and there was mud, mud and more mud. This didn’t deter 24 of us from turning up at Reasty Bank carpark to slither around the forest.

It was a staggered start, with the first 10 off, then the next bunch, and then the latecomers. There was a bit of fireroad (mostly at the start), some singletrack with slidey mud, some with boggy mud, some that you could skim along, some that you did powerslides on, some with muddy puddles, some where the line choice was anything but obvious, some where heather flicked at your ankles, some where you could big ring it, much where you had to little ring it - especially that climb. Even Coach Mark walked part of that climb, he admitted.

It was a challenging but fun course. And the main theme was mud. When I caught up with Orange Five Matt after a mechanical, I thought he was taking the wrong route and pointed it out. ‘There’s a way up this way,’ he said. ‘I don’t want to get muddy going that way!’ When I bumped into Matt the Camera at an evil boggy spot later on, he accused me of being too clean. ‘Some are coming through absolutely black,’ he said. Up until then, I thought my crudguards had been doing nothing…

As with most mountain bike rides, the groups spread out quite a bit. I hardly saw anyone apart from lapcounters Helen and Sally at the big yellow Landrover, a few who overhauled me on lap two after a mechanical, and Young Mike, who lapped me, going quick enough that I didn’t just feel like I was standing still but like I was actually going backwards.

There were a few wrong turns taken. (Hackness Mike blames Coach Mark. Coach Mark blames Hackness Mike. There’s only one way to settle this!) Several mechancials, the worst of which was Brendan’s knackered derailleur. Someone got a puncture. I snapped a chain and had to fix it the old-fashioned way. No one got hurt, as far as I know, and a muddy good time was had by all.

You could do as many laps as you fancied, up to the four hour time limit. You can see how everyone did in the results listings, which Too Tall Tom did. I’ve attached them as an Excel file (in case you want to sort it yourself by average lap time or something like that) and as a PDF for those that don’t have Excel.

Well done to Debbie and the course markers, and thanks to Sally and Helen for time keeping. Matt the Camera got some shots so expect those in the gallery shortly.

All in all, a cracking morning. My bike’s kind of clean. And I think it needs new disc brake pads. Yours?

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