84 miles, plenty of climbing and rain. Loads of rain. I arrived to find a car park full of faffing roadies and expensive carbon machinery…leg warmers on…legwarmers off. You know what I mean. I had fun at the start playing “spot the mountain biker” – easy to spot though with the Camelbaks and peaked helmets 😉

Apart from one guy at the bottom of the first descent slamming into a barrier and literally flying over it, nothing much happened apart from pedalling and hurtin’. Only got passed once, on the way up Holme Moss a young slim, fast-looking lad on a Bianchi asked me if I wanted to grab onto his back wheel. I did – and that worked for about half a mile until I could cope no longer and got dropped. I caught him up on the next hill though and dropped him back. Didn’t see the cheeky bugger again after that.

I need to take more gels when I do the Fred Whitton in 2 weeks. The last 10 miles were a bit of a haze…

finished in 4:45, putting me in 10th overall out of 296 (I think), 10 mins or so behind the lead rider. Chuffed!

route