oneblackdot

Eventually decided on riding the Genesis singlespeed for the Kielder 100 race as the weather was still looking extremely wet and there would be less chance of mechanical ‘issues’.

I took Rich up on his offer of a lift to Kielder and we arrived around an hour before dusk, enough time to register and pitch my tent (on a steep incline to avoid the bog in flat part of the campsite which in retrospect was a mistake).

After a restless night of sliding to the bottom of the tent I woke around 5.30am. After the usual last minute faff and rushing about I rolled up to the start line dead on 6.30. After 5 minutes delay/being eaten for brekkie by midges, we were off following the lead out car out of the Castle.

Reassuringly there seemed to be quite a few other singlespeeders about.  I started eating pretty much straight away and kept that up for the entire race, I also drank alot more than I usually would mixing Torq juice in one bottle and plain water in the other.

Plodding

I wasn’t really sure how to pace myself having never done anything close to 100 off-road miles in one stint before so decided to ‘plod’ (not breathing hard at any point) to start with and see how I felt later on.  At the feed station around 47 miles in (complete with stem deep puddles) to my surprise I was still feeling relatively strong and upped the pace and started to overtake a fair number of other riders.

All continued to go well until about just after the mile 68 marker - there was a long muddy drag along the side of a river and felt the energy suddenly start to drain out of me and noticed I was been caught by a little group of riders this was the one really low point of the race for me. I stopped before been caught, faffed with my seatpost that had been slipping and sucked down another gel - this all took a couple of minutes and the group had passed me. I really thought that was it, I had reached the fabled bonk.  But after getting back on the bike, 5 minutes later I felt loads better and energy returned, I found that I started to pass riders again.

After the last feed station at around mile 88 I had my only (very minor) mechanical the chain started to make an odd sound, I stopped to tighten the very stretched chain and re-lube (thanks to the Muc-Off lube donating rider) - a nice silent bike again.

Having seen the gradient map beforehand I knew that there was a long steep climb from here onwards before a few miles of singletrack descent to the finish.  My knees were now aching but I started to push for the finish (perhaps a bit early as the climbing went on for bloody ages) and for the first time in the race I was breathing hard. The final descent was swoopy, fast, ace stuff (as promised in the rider briefing) and I rolled into the finish in a time of 11.5 hours*.

*I think* as I purposely didn’t wear a watch, results should be out soon but I ‘heard’ out of approx 200 starters less than 50% finished the race.

*UPDATE* The results are now out I came 51st in my category (Open Male) in a time of 11 hours 35 mins. 130 out of the 200 who started completed the race.

What I learned from riding 100 (very wet) miles

• Fitting suspension seat post and forks was a good idea.
• I can consume a surprisingly large amount of food and water in a hundred miles.
• Kenda Small Block 8’s really are an ace tyre.
• I thought that riding this race would be; physically the hardest thing I have done on a bike up to now. It was defiantly hard, but I found other shorter races harder (I suppose due to racing at 100% effort).
• Maybe I shouldn’t ‘plod’ quite as much next time.
• I could spend a lot less time faffing at the food/water stations.

It was an ace event and will be back to attempt a sub 10 hour next year.

Read more about the Kielder 100 2009 race

xcracer.com report by Joolze
Singletrack magazine report by Rich

Genesis IO hides in the bracken, “no more, had enough thanks!”