I bailed from the Scottish Champs this weekend (what? Glencoe scares me ok!) and headed for the No Fuss, 10 at Kirroughtree event instead. After 10 Under the Ben I wasn’t going to be going solo again, and after a last minute injury from one of the Edinburgh Uni CC riders opened up a place in the mixed pair category, I grabbed my bike and headed south.
After a slightly misdirected 3 hours in a van I got there late Friday afternoon and went for a quick lap of the track. The course was great, no question about it, and it just begged to be ridden at speed. Rocky, technical and flat out fun in some places, with probably 95% of it on singletrack.
My team mate Emma and I managed to bag 10 laps in the 10 hours which was enough to take us onto the third step of the podium. The really impressive rides for me came from the solo categories, Ant White completed a mamouth 12 laps to take the win for the men and Helen Findlay managed 9 in the womens cat. As always at No Fuss events everything ran like clockwork and everyone appeared to have a good time. (Possibly not the folk that camped in Saturday nights epic rain, though we wont blame No Fuss for that). Thanks to all the riders out on course who I spoke to/raced with/passed on the downs to be overtaken by on the climbs!
Stu has already got his video from the race up on the NoFuss site. Thanks go out to Oliver Coats for the above photo. He was on hand snapping folk for most of the day and should have his collection online soon. Check out olivercoats.co.uk.
Further north it sounds like the Scottish Champs podium was a complete MTBCut/CycleJersey whitewash. 1,2,3 for Cathro, Barnes and Hutchens, while James Scott took the Junior win. Hopefully we’ll get a proper repo’ from one of the boys soon.
Steve.
