It’s ok CP1. Niall and me will just talk amongst ourselves…. Looks like a wet start. Nae luck. 😂
DP
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Hello…? Very quiet out there?? Base to CP1… 😢 Either everyone has decided to sack it and just have a piss up for the next week or phone reception is cack. Izzy made it at least! Our man behind the pretty lines on the graph has just pointed out that that’s the pairs category sewn up! So long as the turn up at. John O’Groats in a weeks time give or take! Minute to go!
Good luck to the riders once more Cheers Chris Not long woken up to see that a lot of riders made it into CP1 through the night. Looks like Izzy will make it in before 8am too, but it’s gonna be tight! C’mon Izzy!! Riders, Pheobe Heveren and Lewis Clark have reported in that they’ll miss the cut off time but still sounding motivated and hoping they’ll continue on? Unconfirmed, but I think Jaimi ‘oops I must have dropped it by accident’ Wilson, is up to her tricks again, as Phoebe has found a bottle canister which she’ll reunite with it’s owner later.
Lee Clark has had a torrid time with punctures, napped and shitty weather so is behind schedule with around 30kms to reach CP1. So unless the last 30kms are tarmac… and downhill… and with a taily…. Further back we still have pairs out on the course that won’t make it in before 8am either. We’ll find out later if they intend to carry on or not? Will get a photo drop of the Stage 2 start posted up when I can. The rider will have again, 3 days to complete the Stage into Garrigill which is only around 460kms and only 6700m or so of ascent. Or as its being dubbed - ‘the easy stage.’ Laterz DP Checking up on my buddies! I’ve grown quite attached to these pixels. 🥱😴 🤞🚴💨 Tick tock. Tick tock. Ride safe folks.
DP Jeezo, I go out for a few hours and come back to a heap of work to do. After my work work. We’ve had an influx of riders reaching CP1 with plenty of time to spare before tomorrow morning cut off. Our fancy, snappily titled ‘Race Trace Analyis’ graph gives as a good indication who are at risk of missing the cut off. The ellipse of doom highlight those on a shoogly peg. They can of course still ride on just that they will not be awarded a GC time on the finishers list. We have also seen another few riders scratch today. Word came through that they were dropping like flies. Liam Yates had an argument with a dog of a decent yesterday and has finally succumbed to his skint knee. Looked like a proper booboo. Both Charlie Holden & Ben Rickaby have decided to call it a day also, as they are enjoying our blog too much and don’t want to miss an episode! THE FALLEN The crew eventually turned up at CP1 today. After missing the riders arring at the pointy end of affairs they have over compensated by flooding me with photos. Cheers guys and gal! So in no particular order. Smelly people in varying degrees inbound! The tree of sweaty chamois. Philippa explaining to a dumbfounded Mark that there are lots of these events on the calendar and that they are completely self supported or self Sufficient in some cases. Mark plotting his next event already. A new world has opened up. Well…when you’ve already cycled round the world what else is there to do on a bike? Sharn Hooper being welcomed into CP1. She’s worn that smile since the start. It’s amazing how young Angus looks when he trims his beard and tramp haircut. Knocks years off him. Angus busted for scoffing all the grub. Leave no trace. Someone tell that to the locals. Just as a recap for the first handful of riders into the checkpoint. 4 of the fastest 7 riders were women by the way. Just saying. 1st - Angus Young - 35h 40m 2nd - Mark Beaumont - 44h 48m 3rd - Ollie Hayworth - 50h 07m 4th - Philippa Battye - 51h 05m 5th - Jaimi Wilson - 51h 23m 6th - Lee Craigie - 54h 28m 7th - Emily Harper - 54h 42m Tomorrow morning we’ll find out who all’s made the 8am cut off time. Nae luck if any riders appear in at 0759hrs as they’ll get punted straight back out the door into Stage 2. Sorry for the short report tonight folks. Life got in the way.
Speak the morn! Nite nite 😘 DP Better deal with house matters and catch up what happened since I last wrote. In the small hours of the morning we had our second rider reach checkpoint 1. Mark Beaumont arrived to the delight of Angus as he’s now got a buddy to speak to. For the statos amongst us, Marks time for the completion of Stage 1 was 44hrs 48mins. Which makes Angus’s time of 35hrs 40min even more mind boggling. Official times will be published in due course, as I only got a C in higher Maths. A eagled eyed dotwatcher mused that he must’ve been in need of a good wash so he's headed on down to the river. A river - what the Welsh refer to as ‘a bath…’ I shouldn’t mock however, as we up here in the Highlands are still awaiting a 4th channel on terrestrial tele. I hear the English have 5 channels now and that the films on it are belters! We can only but wait and hope. The battle for third in looked to be between Philippa and Jaimi as they couldn’t be separated for most of the day. However, in the dark of night Ollie Hayward put in a late charge to fly in under the radar! It was nail biting stuff to see which of our leading women would be next. It was Philippa Battye who managed to wrestle free from Jaimi Wilson reaching the checkpoint shortly before her nemesis for the best part of 2 days. A note to the riders, remember your timestamp thingwy please! So I can keep track! We also had our first scratch of the event unfortunately. Our youngest rider of 19, George Bramwell made the sensible call to call it a day. He started to struggle taking in food and would have done himself even more damage had he tried to push on to make the cut of point at CP1. A wise head on such young shoulders. Every cloud has a silver lining however. He was fundraising for Papyrus - a very worthy cause during the GBDURO21, raising at the time of writing, nearly £3000. Almost £1000 over his target. So head on over to his IG account where you will find a link to his just giving page and a bit of background to the charity. Find him at @georgebramwell_cycling Well done in getting this far George, a lot of riders never even made it to the start line! Will be great to see you back in the future. Rest up, stay strong and thanks for joining us fro GBDURO21. Over on our Race Radio, most of the chat is now resorted to food. Can only mean the riders are now burst. You know the score. Its like at the end of a ride when you start fantasising about what you’ll have when you get in from your 3 hour ride. Now imagine that ten fold… that’ll get you somewhere close to the mindset of our riders. Ride, eat, sleep (for some), poop, then repeat. However, not necessarily in that order. Will update you guys later as we’ll get a flurry of riders finishing Stage 1 throughout the day. I’ll leave you with this picture for now. Adam Colvin didn’t manage to find a Spar for hours so he had to look for an alternative means of sustenance… Catch you later
Deadpool If he hasn’t already, we’re about to have the first rider to roll into Checkpoint 1. The Machine aka Angus ‘nae mates’ Young is about to complete Stage 1. Nae Mates due to the fact he’s going to be hanging about for ages before anyone joins him. Nearest rider to him is over 100km in arrears. I don’t feel so bad now getting pumped by him during this years PanCelticRace. He will have covered the 635km long stage that has a ridiculous 11700m of vert in not a kick in the arse off 1 day and 12 hours. Quicker than a fancy electric jag that the media crew are driving! I doff my casquette sir! Well done you maniac. Here he is. Can’t tell if that’s a smile or a grimace. In true Racing Collective style, no fanfare. Just a lonely time stamped photo by a gate. I’ll likely be in my scratcher by the time the next few riders finish stage 1, so I’ll do them the courtesy of a quick shout out. Mark Beaumont has finally dropped Media Car 1 for the moment but they may have a chance to catch up as Mark is long overdue an interview. However, Media Car 1 will need to stop AGAIN for a recharge. In what is shaping up to be the battle royale, Jaimi Wilson and Philippa Battye are fighting it out for 3rd on the road and they have a comfortable buffer back to the best of the rest. Very difficult to write without sounding like a patronising git, but it’s an astonishing ride from the two of them. The reached out in the early hours and have kept it going throughout the day. I doff one of my many other caps. Will update with pics hopefully!
DP Still waiting on photos from the slackers, so will just crack on in the meantime and maybe by the time I come round to posting they’ll have fed me some content. I’ve trawled IG a bit to see if there’s anything interesting enough for me to rabble on about. Slim pickings… Lee Craigie seems to have a bit of bother through the night by loosing a light and having to navigate via her phone. Something I’m all too familiar with. Saving grace, is she managed to find somewhere that served scramblers on toast. A buddy and myself are in fact scramblers on toast connoisseurs. We have finally set on ‘the Gordon Ramsay method.’ Basically butter and eggs. No salt… Yet. On the heat, stir like buggery, off the heat, stir like buggery. Then repeat until fluffy. Don’t overcook as it’ll finish off cooking on the plate. Add salt afters! We do bang it up a notch every now and again and I have a WhatsApp thread full of us testing and rating different cheeses we add during the stirring like buggery bit. Personal favourite is Burrata cheese! I’ll throw a bit of a curveball at you too. Try adding tablespoon of coleslaw to the scramblers! I’ll claim this as a Pitblado Special! Google ‘Gordon Ramsay’s Scrambled Eggs. You’ll thank me later. Out on the trails we’ve had some tailbacks due to a local blocking the trail. Our leading pair have been hampered by this trail hogger. That could have been a cracker of a play on words if it had been a pig. I’ve been kept entertained by Adam Colvins his UK’s tour of convenience stores. Surprisingly he’s reasonably high up the field considering the amount of video selfies he’s done. I’m beginning to think I know why he took a header last year coming into checkpoint 3. Give him a follow and check out his story as give a good insight into the wonderful world of ultra endurance ‘racing.’ He’s down as ‘airbourneelvis7’ on the ‘gram. Adam Colvin in chipper mood as he made his way through the Quantock Hills. Lover of a Spar or M&S (when he poshes it up) Worried that he won’t find a Spar for the rest of the day, it looks like hes carrying Hal’s the shop on his back. In other rider news, Jim Higgins has thankfully had a second wind after having a torrid time of it yesterday. Suffering from dehydration by the sounds of it couple with a bit of heat stroke. He was at a low ebb, but supportive messages from friends and family have dragged him out of his funk and he’s back at it! Hard as nails! Keep it going Jim! For those of you nerds out there one of TRC stalwarts Niall Iain is doing the Race Trace analysis. That's the fancy graph thing that you see on the other events that goes pear shaped when you try to view it on you mobile phone. I like Niall, but I still cant forgive him for pumping me for the TransScotland18 title. His local knowledge of dodging all the pished weegies as we came through Glasgow towards the finish line still weighs on my mind to this day. That's after I dragged him along the A8 at 40kmh. Cheeky sod. On reflection it was probably closer to 25kmh considering we had just ridden 500km down the length of Scotland. Still. Here’s a link to the flow chart thingy… link is also in our bio over on IG. Elsewhere, we’ve had another mishap as looks like Liam Yates has taken a flyer after hitting a dog on a descent. He’s fine and back up and cycling. I wonder if it was the wee Jack Russell that was taking chunks out of riders earlier? My biggest concern however, is that sock length. That is getting dangerously close mid shin and therefore non-compliance. Can the commissaries please get the tape measure out when he next passes. I’ll hold off issuing a time penalty and further fine. Photo dump inbound! Our photographers must have arrived back in civilisation and phone reception! Some action from the Quantock Hills. Where’s Wally? Or where’s Carl Hopps more accurately. The ginger beard is the giveaway. Horribly clashing with the purple heather. Lee Craigie knows her shit. One of the few riders that has opted for a flat bar machine. Does she know something the others don’t. After have lighting and navigational problems through the night she is carving her way back up the field. Eking out every last bit of traction here. You can’t buy experience! Adam Colvin away in search of another Spar. Could be a lucrative sponsorship on the cards for him. They’ll certainly get a lot of screen time. I’ll be back later on as I’m tasked with the weekly shop. Who knows, by the time I’m done Angus will probably have made it to checkpoint 1. I wonder if he’ll stop or crack on to see if he can have a pop at Lachlan’s time from 2019??
Cheers Chris Morning sports fans. This will be a quick morning update as I do actually have a life… There won’t be many awesome pics from our photographers in this update as they are requiring a decent recharge like their leccy cars. Today’s the day where we’ll get a sneak-peak into the likely tactics of the riders. I’m trying not to focus on the front of the field but upon picking up my phone this morning and opening up the tinterweb, I’ve not only (unsurprisingly) found that Angus is crushing it but Jaimi Wilson and Philippa Battye are currently 2nd and 3rd on the road!! Jaimis’ fly as f@%k tactic of panning off some of her kit to other riders has clearly been a master stroke. Well played! Looks like they’ve both made best use of the twilight hours and pushed on through with little rest. They’ve not long dropped Mark Beaumont as he was hot on their heels a wee while ago. He has maybe pestered by roadside fans and more autograph hunters. Remains to be seen if he has a race-face. Time will tell. Which we have a lot of between now and John O’Groats. FFS, scratch that…. In the time its taken me to write this bit… This is gonna be ace! Separated by a mere bawhair (Scottish unit of measurement) this will be a great battle to follow. We’ll see if the minimal rest will come back to haunt them later today. Elsewhere, Race Radio has been reasonably quiet overnight, I suspect because folk were asleep. Simon Wareing, clearly conscious that he is a rolling cloud of funk has found somewhere to stay for the night… On that note, I should note that even with Covid measures easing across the country we have still asked our riders to maintain a minimum 2m social distance when mingling with normal people as the are gonna reek. Proper bad! On the other hand, cycling for days on end is not a bad thing if it means those eejits that think wearing a mask over just their mouth, leaving their nose hang out acceptable. Just take it off and leave the pretense. Some of our riders appear to have been getting grief from a rogue Jack Russell on course. The warnings have been sent out to avoid this over excitable dotwatcher. Here’s hoping the little shit barks itself knackered!
That’s me for now. I’ll check back in this afternoon to see how the day is progressing. Will send a text to Dan, Ben and Tommy top pull their collective fingers out and get me some photos. TTFN DPonaB Sitting back with a cider watching our riders make their way into the night and beyond. After the initial rush of blood to the head, proceedings have settled as riders get into their own rhythm and groove. Delighted to say we still have a full compliment of riders and they’re all still smiling. However, the commissaires have dished out their first time penalties and fines. For shady ride etiquette, ie. dropping some of her kit to lighten the load hoping another rider would take pity and carry it for her. Jaimi Wilson has been handed a 3 second time penalty on General Classification (GC) and fined a bottle of coke For using un-sanctioned equipment that isn’t available to the general public, Liam Yates will be penalised 4.5 seconds on GC and find a pint of Tennents. Looks like he’s rocking those Green Hornet sunnies that I can’t source for love nor money. Although, if you can hook me up with a pair Liam, I’ll turn a blind eye. I’m open to bribes. At the pointy end, Angus Young looks to have opened a early gap. That warm up on the rollers this morning seems to have don the trick. Newcomer to bunch racing, Mark Beaumont is trailing by roughly 30km at the time of writing, but he’s been pissing about on social media so if he pulls his finger out he may make up some ground. Not much further back, the leading five lass’s are only separated by 8km give or take. In what I reckon will be an exciting battle all the way to the end. Philippa Battye is currently leading the female charge and is sticking it to the blokes to boot, being comfortably in the top 10, as the 7th rider on the road. In the pairs, duo Sofie Joore and Tim van Gemert are well up the road and look to be off route to grab some accommodation for the night. Is Lewis Clark running singlespeed? He’s texted the Race Radio proclaiming “singlespeed suck”. I coulda telt you that mate. James Illman seems to be greetin’ about the brambles and gorse. Must be a roadie, as comes with the territory. [Edit …. James isn’t riding but writing over at dotwatcher… my bad] Tomorrow morning will give us the first indication of the riders tactics for the GBDURO. There will be those who will push on through the night on little or no sleep whilst others will call it a day to get a decent kip for it start over again. This is what I love about these types of events. They attract so many different types of riders all with varying abilities. You could have a seasoned pro on one hand and a weekend warrior on the other. There could be multiple kilometres separating them only for poop stop to turn things on it’s head. You could think you’ve opened up a gap to your nearest rival but quickly nipping into the Spar for a quick Mars bar and can of juice and you’ll hear the buzzing of a freewheel pass outside. Anyway, I’ll keep this one short tonight as I’ve to get in a couple of episodes of ‘The Blacklist’ with the bird. We’re on the episode where the character Katarina Rostova is trying to suss out who Raymond Reddington really is. Exciting times. So, I’ll leave you with some of the action caught on film instead. A picture paints a thousand words an all that! Nite nite peeps, DP Hold the boat….. spoiler alert. Elizabeth Keen has just figured out that the woman that has befriended her is in fact her mother, Katrina Rostova. God bless Sky Boxsets. Dan cursing the age of the smartphone. We’re all photographers now…. The Spar. Lifeline of the ultra endurance athlete. Mark Beaumont on his tod. Reverting to type. See you in a week or two. Rider: Clare Walkenden
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