Ten Under The Ben.... the race itself

Here's a picture of the podium which Baz and myself had hoped to be standing on but sadly we missed out, beaten into third place by fitter competitors (or was it local favouritism) we'll never know! It was a fantastic experience, from the journey up to Fort William (I refuse to refer to it as Fort Bill as most bikers do!) through Glencoe on a magnificent sunny evening and then the registration for the event that night in the Snowgoose restaurant which sits at about two and a half thousand feet up Annoch Mor and is reached by gondola/cable car. The race itself started at 9.30 am on Saturday morning and Baz did the first lap which had an extended 6 mile bit at the beginning to stretch the field out and hopefully prevent a bottleneck at the first technical section. By the time he had completed the first lap he'd done over 18 miles and was looking a little the worse for wear! I set off on my first lap and within half a mile took a technical drop down a bit too fast (and not very well!) and ended up careering through some small trees, slicing some skin off my forearm before coming to rest by head butting a tree. However the rest of the lap was relatively uneventful and I managed to patch up the cut, and my self esteem, when Baz did his next lap.

We managed 8 laps all together between the two of us, the winners in our class managing 9 laps and another couple of riders beating our time by 10 minutes or so. Unfortunately there was only a prize awarded to the winners of our class so our moment of glory on the podium was denied, but there's always another time. Now we know that to gain that elusive first place there's more training to be done, but I'll have to get rid of the aches and pains from the cramp in my legs before that starts!!

Edit to post- I've checked the web-site and we were beaten into third place by only 2 minutes 44 seconds!!! Grrrrrr............