The Hairy Coo Challenge arrives at last

The day arrived at last for our first proper mountain bike race, previously we had only ridden Enduros which are not strictly races. Off at 7 am Clive and I went to Comrie Croft, the venue, near Crieff thinking this would be a relatively easy ride. Boy were we to change our minds about that quickly! It rained fairly heavily on the drive up, not exactly perfect conditions for mountain biking. However it had fair ed up by the time we arrived and after sliding about in the field to park , the van was eventually parked where we had a reasonable chance of getting out the field again.

We decided on a trial run round the 3.5 mile course to see what it was like. Hells teeth, there was a 1.5 mile climb at the start which knocked the stuffing out of me right away! After that it was just one technical stage after another and damned greasy into the bargain!

Our races, my age group did 3 laps (thank god) while Clive's did 4 (sucker!!), started at 1.30 pm and after a reasonable first lap I developed cramp on the second, however I managed to ride through it and carry on while Clive did a striptease after he realised he had too many layers of clothes on, oh for a photo of that! I managed my 3 laps and Clive continued on and finished his 4 laps looking annoyingly fresh. So far we don't know exactly where we finished in our respective races, but it was an excellent day and an added bonus was we came home with no broken bones!! Clive, by the way won a special prize for being nearest guess to the microphone announcers correct age (jammy sod). His prize:- wait for it.............2 nights for two at Comrie Croft Hostel, his wife's gonna love that one, not quite The Paris Ritz, is it?!!!!!!!!