7ds2

My mate, Rob, is going to hit The 7 Stanes on Monday and will be joining them all up on his bike in true 7ds style.

You can follow his progress on The 7DS from 10am on Monday 30/03/09

Good luck, Rob!

Quick Report

On Sunday the 22/03/09 Dave Buchanan of the IronHorse-Extreme and The 7 Deadly Spins team completed the first Welsh Coast 2 Coast offroad ride.

In line with the latest attempts at other long distance rides, this one was done in an alpine style. That means that there was no support, and he was carrying everything required for the ride. This ride was also tracked live on the internet via the clever little Spot Satellite Messenger system, everyone could watch what was happening at 10 minute intervals.

Starting at Caernarfon Castle, it winds it's way through stunning countryside and multiple tourist attractions, all the way down to Cardiff Bay. The original idea of the 7DS was, and is, to open up mountain biking and the challenges it can hold for everybody, so the Welsh Coast 2 Coast (and 7DS4) was designed to attract tourist riders as well as hardened endurance athletes. Lots of attractions means lots of pubs and plenty of accomodation.

Dave didn't bother with stopping though, and completed the route which stands at 328km and 11178m of ascent in 22hrs 24mins and 49secs- in the winter.

Conditions were good on Saturday when Dave started, but as it got dark the cold from the river crossings started to take affect. By the end of the night he was walking through partially frozen bogs and ice covered moon grass before descending to Brecon to follow the Taff Trail tourist attraction to Cardiff. Two days later and he still can't feel his right foot.



Highlights of the route are visits to some of the world reknowned Welsh trail centres. Dropping into Coed Y Brennin, ClimachX, Machynlleth and Nant Yr Arian helps spice the ride up and make sure it can only really be done on a mountain bike.

His diet was a simple one. After years of stomach trouble Dave has resorted to a liquid only diet. Generally he will use 500-750ml of sports drink and a gel every hour depending on the temperature and sweat rates. Caffeine works a treat in his gels since he normally abstains from it during the week. It's a bit boring, but it works.



Skins are his base layer of choice for legs and torso since he feels great benefits from using them to help protect his arms, for instance, from the rattling shocks that you experience on a harsh downhill. It really does make a difference.

Tyre choice was easy. At the moment, he uses Maxxis Crossmark tyres for every thing except mud. They roll quickly and grip dependably on most things, especially on his super strong 3 bolt hope wheels.

The route is approximately 70% off road where legal access allows it and is a lot of fun!

Ride Statistics

Route Length 328Km

Ascent 11178m

The above are taken directly from the Satmap Active10

Ride time 22hrs 24mins 49secs.

And I still can't feel my right foot.

It is done.

Just a quick note to thank everybody for the kind comments, and for watching things unfold on the web.
I did it!!
I am the pioneering rider of The Welsh Coast 2 Coast!
Stats to follow, when I recover a bit.

Spot Tracking Link

For you guys that haven't seen the link for racking my progress on the Website yet, here it is.

It updates every 10mins.

Tracking Link

Remember that I start at 10am on Saturday 20/03/09.

Gulp!

Christmas Pudding

I have packed, packed again and repacked. If I pack it again, it'll start to wear out from all of the handling.

Nothing to report here except for the perfect preparation I've had for this event.

Just finished preparing my shorts in a christmas pudding stylee: Instead of pouring alchohol, I have been adding chamois cream every day for the past few. It is well and truly moisturised.

For future reference, I have my spares list herewith:

2 tubes- not lightweight for reliability.
Loads of patches, glueless and glued.
2 spokes and nipples.
Rear Hanger.
Spare XTR rear derailleur (I have snapped these, usually before damaging the hanger, in the past).
Spare 8 links of chain.
2 full Sram Quicklinks.
1 set of hope pads, in case I lose the backing off of one. (It's never happened with hope pads, but has done with other makes on different brakes, so better safe than sorry).
1 Duct Tape tyre boot.

The time is nigh

I am proud to be involved in this 7Deadly Spins project and the resulting WC2C ride that has emerged from it.

It wouldn't have been possible to get this far without the team, never mind rolling up to the start line on Saturday morning. But if it hadn't been for the help of a good few contributors then I wouldn't be in nearly as good a position as I am now.

So...

Rob Lee and the team: Thanks for the help, the encouragement and the mickey taking. It helps.

Sean Wratten (Bertie Maffoons): Thanks for supporting me so infallibly, and for keeping forgetting to take my credit card details. :)

Jim Calder (Powerspike): You set my website up and helped people find out what I, and my friends are doing. Give him a try, he's very, very good at his job.

Spot Satellite Tracker Systems : Thank you for stepping in so quickly and providing us with your invaluable service and equipment.

And to all of the sponsors on the web page, thanks for your belief in me and the 7DS Team.

Time will tell!

Keep a look out on my website or The 7DS site and you will see a link where you can follow my progress as I ride. You can post comments as I go, on Twitter by looking me up as Daveblanche and also via RSS. Who knows, I might get to hear some of the comments as I ride past our photographer time and again. There are direct links at the bottom of the menu bar on my web page to save you faffing about. The map link is to follow, but will be there.

Wish me luck, and if you live local to Cardiff, you will be able to judge my arrival time at "The Celtic Ring".

I may buy a few beers, but will probably not ride with my mates that day!

Bike build

So, next weekend I plan on doing my WC2C ride from Caernarfon to Cardiff.

As a reminder, it uses route 8 in North Wales, before diving onto Black runs and Skull and Crossbone sections at Coed Y Brennin. Next "stop" is the ClimachX Final downhill, after a big climb and river crossing. From there on in is some Mach routage and all of the "connecting" Nant Yr Arian singletrack leading down to the main road.

You get the gist, but it finishes inside "The Celtic Ring" in Cardiff Bay.



At 214 miles and loads of climbing, I have my work cut out.



I can't wait.

Talking about weight...

... My bike has been fitted out with all of my hope kit and new running gear.

I started with a bare frame and forks, and then added the wheels. On these were my tubeless converted Maxxis Crossmark exception tyres. They are quick rolling and can be ridden surprisingly aggressively.

Supervision was enforced upon me, all day.



Next, I put my new crankset from KCNC, xtr changers and derailleurs, a titanium seatpost and scandium stem. Add to that my Hope mono mini Pro brakes, and you have one seriously bling bike.



I have no idea what it weighs, or how much weight I have saved. But the bike rides better, and it fits me like a glove now.

It should have been built and run in 3 weeks ago, but supply problems rule all of our plans.

If it hadn't been for Bertie Maffoons , I wouldn't have gotten any of this stuff. Meeting Sean, the owner, is like meeting an encyclopaedia of cycling. He knows everything about bikes and components and bends over backwards to help. He's just that kind of guy!

Right, that's enough for now.

Wish me luck on the WC2C. It's happening this weekend!

Tune up #3

All the tune ups are done.

There are definitely no photos for this weekend- The weather was awful. I took my camera, but I didn't dare to take it out.

Saturday was cold and sleeting, with low cloud and a howling wind. It was horrible, but I'm good at toughing this stuff out now.

After the re-route, I think we saved around 3km of road, but in it's place we have some nice, scenic little bits of bridleway around a Tumulus in Brecon. Well, it's nearly all nice and scenic...

...Except for the 2km that the National Park Authority is revamping with drainage and a new go faster flat surface. It will probably be go faster when the un-rideable mud has dried out, and the grass has regrown. It was such a quagmire that I got bogged down and had to carry a bike with mud-locked wheels.

I'm hoping that it is dry and ready for early April. If not, I'll just "ride it" in whatever state it is in and lose some time. It would be selfish of me to cut it out just because it was newly done and a bit slippy for me. It will be a nice little track when it's finished and bedded in so it stays, for the future of WC2C.

Get me!

I also managed to find a route through Brecon and alongside the weir, that I hadn't had time to sort out previously. That's a wee bit more cut off of the road. I'm hoping that there is an ice-cream van there when I get there during the route (at 4 in the morning).

My climb and ride continued so I could extend my training time. Up and into the Beacons on the Taff Trail, I went. This is part of the route, but it had a different character today. The higher I got, the more cold and wet accompanied me on my passage.

By the time I got to The Gap, the Beacons were hidden in a thick veil of clag. I could have sworn they were there previously. Navigating through next to zero visibility using my Satmap I started on my way down to the bottom. About 40mins later I was in Brecon again, and I was absolutely freezing. All of my clothes had migrated from my bag onto my body, but it made no difference.

Even my hill efforts didn't warm me up.

Back home, for tea and medals.

Sunday was more of the same. I rode for miles and got even colder than yesterday. I hadn't learned anything from yesterday and dressed in the wrong clobber. I didn't have enough clothes.

Coach Chris had labelled my ride today as one with "minimal stops". Too right it would be! If I even stopped for a pee I got almost irrecoverably cold. So I kept going.

The next few weeks are just training rides. The WC2C is ready!

Distances and ascent remain as posted a couple of weeks ago.

The rules will be posted in the next week or two.

Bring it on!

Trail Tune-up #2

This was the end of my recovery week. So I did 3 1/2 hrs on Saturday and 4 1/2 on Sunday. This was after a particularly satisfying fitness test on Friday night.

Before my ride on Saturday, I picked my bike up and decided that the rebound definitely wasn't working properly on the forks. They had felt like they were "packing down" last weekend and my arms and hands were getting sore. I never get arm pump, but I did last week.

I'd ordered the stuff I needed, but hadn't been sure if I was going to service them for a few weeks- Spare time being a rare commodity and all that. Tim Flookes had sent the stuff out the previous day. He must have been holding onto the postman by the neck as I phone him at 5 to 5pm, as I got the bits the next day! Awesome.

2hrs later and I had stripped the forks off of the bike and partially serviced them with new oils and lockout cable.

So I rode from my pad to Cwmcarn and did a couple of laps. I then rode home for tea and medals.

It was strange having forks that work, and work properly. It was heaven!

No arm pump or hand pain.

Result!

Today (Sunday) was trail tune-up day #2.

I went to Machynlleth and tried to rid myself of 3km of road. Well, that was the plan but it didn't quite work out that way.

The route I had worked on was going to be harder because it had a lot more climbing in it. But it was climbing on boggy Bridleway and extended puddles of sheep poo on the various feeding stations. This was not fun. It was really slow going and very smelly in places.

I then realised my mistake in not spending enough time perusing the map properly, which is not like me.

The mistake?

I ended up at the BOTTOM of the chute. This is a huge and fun downhill, which runs on a bridleway and on loose slate. It's a great downhill, but a seriously bad choice for a climb. It took me about 20mins (I think) to carry and ride to the top. it wasn't fun.

Of course, I still had to get to my turnaround point for the day, and it was miles away.

Lesson 1. learned: 3km of unwanted road, is well worth it in this area.

I got a spurt on so that I could get over to Nant-yr-Arian and change a part of the route. This would save me 2Km of road.

The change of route actually provided a much better trail which proved to be much more exciting. The only problem is the big puddles which take a fair bit of navigating around, or riding straight through.

But let's go back a bit...

...The ride, wound up and over towards the top of Mach and where it becomes Nant-yr-Arian. It's more of a concept than a geographical point, but I'm sure everyone would have a similar idea if they were at the same place and going the same way.

This is where we have a bit of scary singletrack, and it's on the originally planned route. You are riding along a valley side on a rutted trail with a drop off on one side. It was all fine today, until I caught my pedal, stopped dead, and teetered on the edge of losing my balance in the direction of the valley floor.

The valley seemed huge and steep!



I survived.

Next was the first of 3 river crossings, which all see the water reaching well above the axles. This is the one that I carried my bike through about 5 weeks ago.



I got just as wet riding it, as I did when I walked it.

Lesson 2. Your feet will get wet and you WILL enjoy it.

Each river crossing was done twice, out and return. Although the others were narrower, they were just as deep.

The weather has been good, with no rain for the past week, so these are the water levels that I can expect from Mid-April to Mid-May when I plan to do the WC2C. I just need to decide if it's worth riding through them, or walking; with respect to maintaining the bike as serviceable for the whole route.

Hmmm?

So, by the end of today's ride I had gotten myself covered in sheep muck and mud, and washed it off (6 times). I had also managed to wipe 2Km of road off of the route around Nant.

The 3km of road around Mach is staying. That's enough trail tuning for this area.

A good weekend.

It's back to full training loads again, tomorrow.