Mawddach Goldrush 2010 – Race Report

March 7th 2010, Mawddach Goldrush day. The first MTB event of the year for me.

Last year I did it as part of a 3 man team so only did one lap but this year I had decided I ’should’ be able to do it solo and do all three laps on my own. The weather was gorgeous, blue skies, cool and little wind. I drove up to Coed y Brenin bright and early, registered, had a coffee in the Visitor Centre with Andy, James and the Martyn and then we headed off to get ready.

After the usual indecision about what to wear Martyn and I headed across to the start area. Martyn managed to get a puncture on the way there so we stopped to fix that and while I was waiting for him to do that I realised I had forgotten to put my timing chip on, so I had to make a quick dash back to the visitor centre, up the hill to the car and then all the back across to the start line. At least I was warmed up I suppose.

Mawddach Goldrush Route 2010

Martyn was waiting when I got back to the start line so we set off straight away. Martyn went off ahead of me and I followed him up the first climb. I half expected to see him head off into the distance, but we were both taking it easy and I kept up with him. The first little bit of singletrack downhill felt nice and again I kept up with Martyn. We then had a fire-road climb and Martyn pulled out a little lead over me. The route-markings weren’t that clear much of the time and there didn’t seem to be many marshalls around either so we weren’t entirely sure we were on the right track all the time, and on one corner on the fireroad Martyn carried straight on as there were no signs or marshalls, only to get a few yards down the track and be told it was the wrong way. I managed to avoid this mistake as I saw it happening in front of me and caught Martyn back up.

The course then headed uphill along a long fireroad climb. I stayed with Martyn for a bit but as I got warmed up and into a nice rhythm I left him behind me and continued on my way. At the top of the climb the route took us through the section known as ‘Heart of Darkness’ – which I have never liked, down the fireroad and then into ‘Snap, Crackle and Pop’. I was descending well, my bike felt good and I overtook quite a few people through these sections. We then climb back up to a section known as ‘Al’s Loop’ which felt fine, before going across the top on fireroads and down the descent known as ‘Rocky Horror Show’. I was flying on this descent, in my big gear and sprinting between the corners, then drifting on the loose gravel, jumping off the little rises and having a great time.

The next little climb felt OK, even though it was icey in a few places and then it was just a matter of a fireroad descent and then into the rocky sections of ‘Mantrap’, ‘Pins and Needles’ and the final berms into the start/finish arena. Again, the sign-posting in Pins and Needles wasn’t great and the course not very clear so I overshot a corner at one point, but I was feeling good and still riding fast.

Lap 1 completed in a time of 1hr 4 mins and onto lap 2. The lap was slightly different this time as we also had to do the section known as ‘R74′ in reverse which is a bit of a singletrack climb. I was still feeling good and overtook quite a few people along here, although on the long fireroad climb afterwards I was overtaken myself by the two leaders who were now on their 3rd lap (They had started before me though!).

Heart of Darkness which I never enjoy wasn’t much fun though as I came off on one of the rocky bends. No damage done though so I continued on my way. The sign-posting caught me out again on the climb to Al’s loop. A sign had fallen over and exposed a different sign pointing off to the right. I knew it was wrong but followed it anyway for a hundred yards or so before realising the error of my ways and returning to the proper course. I didn’t loose much time, probably 30 to 1 minute, but the sign-posting and marshalling really wasn’t very good.

By the time I got to Al’s loop which was about the 15 mile point I was beginning to slow down and start feeling it. I guess my normal rides are around 10-15 miles in length, so it was time for the extra distance to make itself felt. I was still OK though and it was mainly downhill from here to the start finish line and once again I was sprinting along the fireroad at the top and flying down the descents.

As I came into the finish area Matt Page overtook me to finish his 3rd and final lap and pulled off to the side just as I was starting my 3rd lap. I was now beginning to suffer and part of me wished I was in he position, but I wasn’t so I continued on my way. Lap two done in a time of 1 hr 13.

As I started the first climb, my legs started to cramp up a little. I could feel my inner thighs just about to cramp on every pedal revolution as if they were getting strange little electric shocks every time I pedalled. I knew it wouldn’t be long before they cramped up completely but pushed on through the pain.

R74 was hard work, but I did catch and overtake a few people on it, so although I was suffering, I figured everyone else was too. I hoped Martyn was as well, as the last thing I needed at the moment was for him to go sailing past me! At the bottom of the long climb I caught up with some guy and had a bit of a chat. he said he was feeling good, I was feeling terrible but we were climbing at the same pace. He did pull away from me at the very top into Heart of Darkness, which I took really cautiously anyway. I manged to catch him (and quite a few others) up on Snap Crackle and Pop though and pulled away from them all on the climb up to Al’s loop.

It was really hurting now. The twinges of cramp were non-stop and there was no power left. Everytime I had to put in a little extra effort to get up over a little rock or something my legs were in agony and I was just thinking about getting to the top and coasting home. If the terrain pointed upwards at all I was grabbing the granny ring just to keep my legs spinning and my bike moving forwards. If my legs had stopped I would never have got them going again. No sprinting on the descents this time, just keep it going to the end.

As I turned into Mantrap there is a little rock that needs some effort to get up over. As I tired to put down the power, my legs cramped up completely. The quad in my left leg locked out so I couldn’t bend that leg and my hamstring in my right leg cramped up meaning I couldn’t straighten that one. I just about managed to get off the bike but couldn’t move and had to stand there for a while trying to get my legs back into motion.

Eventually I got back on and the next few pedal revolutions were agony, but there was only about a mile and half to go and it was all down hill. I wasn’t going to stop now. My legs never really got going again but I managed to cross the line and after a rest waiting for Martyn to some in even managed to ride all the way back to the car.

My 3rd lap was done in a time of 1 hr 20, for a total time of 3hrs 37. I was pleased with that as I was expecting to be over 4 hours. Martyn came in at around the 4 hour mark, so I was pretty surprised to have beaten him as well.

The weather stayed perfect, I was pleased with my performance, although I do need to do some longer rides so that I’m used to the distance and I had a good day out. The course was tough, the organisation could have been better and with only 140 entrants I felt as though I was riding on my own much of the time.

Here’s a graph of the terrain and my heart rate.

Mawddach Goldrush 2010

Here are the stats from my GPS:

• Total Distance: 28.16 miles
• Total Climb: 5,142 feet
• Total Time: 3:37:54
• Average Speed: 7.8 mph
• Max Speed: 25.1 mph
• Average Heart Rate: 157 bpm
• Max Heart Rate: 172 bpm

Ouch!!! – Next up is the Dyfi Enduro.

Entries for the 2010 Dyfi Enduro opened today and soon sold out completely. I managed to get an entry in though, rider number 282. Most of the local riders also got a place so it should be a good year.

The course will be similar to last years – Click here to see the Dyfi Enduro Route from last year. It is a 75km off ride ‘challenge’ around the Dyfi forest with around 800 riders. Last year I did it in a time of 4hrs 13 minutes which wasn’t too bad for my first attempt, you can see my Dyfi Enduro Race Report here. I came 222nd but as there were 35 people who finished before me but did the shorter route, I could say I was 187th,

I guess my aim (after finishing it) should be to get around in a quicker time this year.

Did you manage to get a place? What are your aims for this year?

The first ever trip to Llandegla for an Ystwyth-MTB end of month ride and it was a roaring success.

There were only three of us from Ystwyth-MTB, Dave, John and myself, but we met up with the Bristol contingent of Jay, Brad, Matt, Beale and Woody in the car park and were already looking forward to our bacon baps as we set of around the trail at Llandegla.

The BBC were forecasting atrocious weather, but the forecast I usually use looked much better, cloudy but very little rain, Thankfully the BBC were wrong and my forecast spot on. The first climb had a thin covering of snow, ice and slush which made it a little interesting in places, but it isn’t too steep so it’s a nice warm up ready for the real action. We caught Kev (a kite-buggier that I met through Forces-of-Nature) on the first climb. We were expecting to meet up somewhere and he joined us for a while.

The descents were good, a little muddy in places thanks to all the recent snowmelt but they just keep encouraging you to go faster and faster. Kev left us as we went onto the black-graded trails, and everyone seemed to be having a good time.

We only had one mechanical when I snapped my chain, but thanks to John lending a second pair of hands we soon removed a link re-joined the chain and were back on our way. We even managed to catch-up with the Bristol lot who had continued on as we fixed the chain.

The end came a little too soon, but we had a quick play on the new pump track and in the skills area before washing off the bikes and having a well earned bacon bap in the cafe. All in all a good day out and a good group of people to share it with. I did take a few video clips which you can see below, I really should make an effort to take more as it looks pretty good when put together.

Just a nice photo of a Wooded Knoll in the Dyfi Valley with snow-capped hills behind. Taken from the Ynsyhir RSPB reserve on Sunday.

A Wooded Knoll

Speed Season is here!!!

I’ve just got back from a windsurf session the estuary here at Ynyslas. Ivor, our local katabatic wind was up to his tricks so the wind was ballistic at over 40 knots. The water was a seething mass of white and simply getting out of your car on the beach led to an instant sand blasting.

My new speed kit isn’t here yet so I was forced to go out on wholly inappropriate kit. My board was far too big as was my fin and my sail was far too old. In fact, I didn’t notice this until I was at the water edge but the entire top panel was missing – not ideal. However, with temperatures at just above freezing it wasn’t really a day for messing around on the beach rigging different kit so I went out with the broken sail anyway.

It was hard work hanging on and keeping the board on the water was tough too. Not really perfect conditions for getting a top speed, but I stayed on the water for about an hour and had a few fast, but not very comfortable runs. My top speed was 32.85 knots. Way off my 40 knot target so I’m hoping my new kit will be easier to use as well as faster.

The tracks from my GPS drew some pretty lines though and you can see the speed channel I was ailing in pretty well from this.

My GPS Tracks from todays Speed Session

Morgan and I made use of our new RSPB membership and went for a cold winters walk at Ynyshir this morning.

Lots of Canada Geese about but Morgan was a little cold so we couldn’t sit and look for birds for too long. I did manage a couple of photos of a bird that I think is a juvenile Robin.

Juvenile Robin

Robin

Morgan has always wanted to go on holiday in a caravan. Don’t ask me why he has this ambition, he’s nearly 5 and I have no idea why he does half the things he does!

Me in a box

For example he spends lots of his time running around thinking he’s a Power Ranger, obviously he’s not, he just thinks he is! If I did that people would think I was mad. He can also spend hours on end sat in a cardboard box talking to himself. Again, even if I wanted to do that I couldn’t get away with it without people thinking there was something wrong. Although, come to think of it I am currently sat in my little office blogging, which isn’t far from sitting in a cardboard box talking to myself!

Anyway, we haven’t had a proper holiday this year and whilst my parents were here at the weekend they wanted me to book a holiday online for them. It was a caravan holiday in South Wales at Trecco Bay, booked through some vouchers in the newspaper that looked pretty good value for money. Not wanting to be outdone I decided to book one for ourselves as well.

4 nights in a caravan at Trecco Bay. The cost of which with service charges came to £64, plus an additional £25 for the use of the pool and leisure complex on the park. Not too bad really and it should keep Morgan happy as he finally gets to stay in a caravan.

There is plenty to do in that part of thew world as well. Windsurfing, Surfing and Mountain-Biking, Swimming Pools, Theme parks and ‘Techni-Quest; for the family and some nice bits of scenery and walks along the coast too. Not a very exotic holiday but it’ll be nice to get a way for a few days.

OK, time for a moan about our Broadband Speeds again!

As part of my job as a freelance website designer I’m often being called on to help people with their computers, set up e-mail accounts, sort out their broadband connections and generally teach them how to do certain things on their computers. Living in rural West Wales, many of these people live outside of Aberystwyth in little villages or in houses miles from anywhere. Because of this, conversation often turns to the speed of the broadband connections in these area and the fact that it is the people who live ‘out in the stick’ that need a decent connection more so than the people living in bigger towns.

Broadband has become an essential commodity these days, just like water or electricity and some of us are getting left behind. Mind you, most of the places I go to, however remote seem to have a better connection than I do. 2-3Mb per second is common in most places, whereas the most I can get is a 1Mb per second connection.

Bits and Bytes

When I do a speedtest (I usually use this real world checker) I get a download speed of around 900-950kbps and an upload speed of 200-230kbps.

Now, connection speeds such as this are measured in kilobites (or megabits) per second as opposed to kilobytes (or megabytes). Note the lower case ‘kb’ and ‘mb’ which denotes bits rather than ‘KB’ or ‘MB’ which denotes bytes. There are 8 bits in a byte so in real terms, my 950kbps download speed enables me to download data at approximately 120KBps. Not exactly great so it can take me a while to download videos and such like and it does sometimes mean that streaming things such as BBC iPlayer isn’t that successful.

Upload Speeds

Upload speeds are usually much slower – The ‘A’ in ADSL stands for Asymmetric meaning that the data transfer into the house is faster than the data transfer out of the house. This is usually fine as most people download more than they upload. However, I do quite a lot of uploading and recently I’ve been really pushing my upload limits.

As part of my backup strategy I’ve started using Carbonite as an offsite backup. The first thing I needed to do in order to use this was to upload all of my files to their server. Obviously I didn’t back up everything, but by the time I added all of my documents (letters, e-mails, financial records, spreadsheets, databases etc.) and all of my photos my upload queue had hit around 50GB. I have yet to add my music, movies or even the websites I’ve built to the queue as that would add another 30GB. I started the upload of the 50GB of data of December 22nd 2009 and it has been running almost continuously night and day since then. It finally finished the upload on Monday, 6 weeks or thereabouts of uploading!…. Oh for a faster broadband connection.

Windsurfing in the estuary at Ynyslas

I’ve just got back from a nice little windsurf session in the estuary here at Ynyslas. Ivor, our local katabatic wind was up to his usual tricks with a decent NE wind funbelling down through the valley at up to 25 knots. And this was  despite the fact that the forecast was for winds of 5-6 knots. Lovely.

The wind wasn’t quite up to its usual strength, but it is still pretty early in the year so I think Ovir was just warming up. Hopefully we’ll get some really good winds in the spring.

With the sun shining it was pretty warm out there as well. I had my 5/3mm wetsuit on and boots and a hood but if anything I was a little too hot whilst on the water.

There was something going on at the visitor centre car park though. Four police cras were in attendance and the car park was closed off with ‘Crime Scene’ tape all around it and a police officer at either end preventing anyone from entering it. Anyone know what’s happened?

We had a good Ystwyth-MTB end of month ride today, even if I was the only person from Ystwyth MTB club.

We had planned to meet at the Bryngwm car park for 10am, so I set off from Aberystwyth at around 8:45 with Dave and John just behind me. The journey there was just as exciting as the ride itself. By the time I got to Llanrhystud there was quite a bit of snow on the ground, but I just made it up and over the hill. A car in front of slid off the road and into the bank a couple of times and gave up and as I pressed on I spotted a few other abandoned cars as well.

Dave and John couldn’t make it up over the hills because of the snow so gave up and headed back to Nant yr Arian for a ride there. I eventually made it and only about 6 minutes late too. Jay, Brad, Matt and Beale were there (from Bristol) getting ready and Kelvin, Jim and another guy from South Wales were there as promised as well.

We pfaffed for a bit and waited in case Dave and John turned up but in the end went off without them for a spin around the Raven Trail. I’d forgotten my phone so couldn’t contact Dave and John to make sure they were OK.

Despite the snow the trail was riding well. They’ve done some work on it and it is holding up well. It was a little sketchy in places but there was plenty of grip and the trail was easy to see most of the time. The climbs were just as hard as ever but it was a good ride. It snowed pretty heavily whilst we were out now and then as well, but it didn’t get too deep.

All in all a good day out and the journey back wasn’t too bad as I took a detour so that I could stay on ‘A’ roads. It’s a shame Dave and John didn’t make it but they had a nice ride at Nant yr Arian anyway and Brechfa will be there another day.

My photos aren’t great, as I’m not really used to my little compact camera and it keeps defaulting to program mode, but here they are anyway as the riders out there today will want to see them.