Al's Big Birthday Bluegrass Enduro

I woke up this morning to celebrate 50 years on planet earth and fully expecting mid life crisis to have taken hold of me overnight. It hadn't, nothing had changed, and it appeared to be just another day, so with bikes in the van already we headed down the road to Glencoe for  
the Bluegrass Enduro organised by No Fuss Events.
As usual Bluegrass and No Fuss Events did not disappoint with their flair for putting on casual and fun events. I carried the number 50 plate for the event in celebration, hell, they even gave me a cake at the end.

Booom! 50 years on planet earth.

The event was split into 2 timed stages followed by a mass start race for the final fling, all ridden blind with no practice allowed.

Stage 1 started downhill on open hill side followed by a boggy ish rock strewn flat section which led into a climb to the top of a summit before the rapid descent on a mixture of rocky loose stuff and hard packed earth and then joined the red route down to finish. It was a lung busting stage and brilliant fun.

Stage 2 was a sprint down the hill skipping over rocks and boggy drops before diving head first into a large snow field, I took a massive stack here and slammed my old ribs into the hard packed white stuff. Breath back and some angry pedaling and I was back up to speed with minimum time lost and battered on to the finish far below.

Stage 3 was the mass start up in the snow line with a nice steep start on the snow onto a flat plateau and then another dreaded climb before more awesome descending and bar to bar racing down yet again more rock, bog and open hill sections.

So in the end I managed to take a convincing win in Vets and came 7th overall which I was pretty chuffed with.

Team MTB Ride Guide also took over the podium in the Junior category with Keir taking the win, Al 2nd and Ewan 3rd (modeling last years race top!)

I woke up this morning Sore, battered and bruised with great memories of the weekend. Awesome riding and fun coupled with superb organisation and the most enthusiastic marshals you will ever come across at any event.

Big thanks to Nukeproof for keeping me rolling through my Golden years!