Winning is Fun 
RIP to Aircraft Carrier 
Yep, it completely collapsed so now it’s just a regular double
Grew up just past McKinley on East Bay. Sure miss it.
Funny how life plays out sometimes!
I was racing the European DH series until about 5 years ago, then a few things happened:
- I moved from the mountains with an excellent trail and uplift infrastructure at my doorstep to the flatlands with the nearest track is an hours drive away
- My responsibility at work grew so the risk of being out due to injury weighed into my decisions
- We had our first child.
All this combined meant that spending a full day training in the woods and long weekends racing became very hard, at times impossible. I also lost some of my edge with age and drifted from top 10 finisher with the occasional cat 2 podium to middle of the pack which made it even harder to commit 100% during a race run. On the other hand I’ve always done some road cycling for base condition and running as cross training, especially during winter. So one day I signed up for a local sprint, for fun. Almost drowned, but liked it. Learned to swim, did a 70.3 and this year a full IM. After all I just really enjoy riding bikes. And as it turns out, hammering along on a TT bike can be a lot of fun!
Those Ard Rock pics make me want to MTB!
Sick road gap 
Its designed for “everyone”. There are no un-rollable features. Some of it is tech for sure but nothing too crazy. Of course the faster you go it get wild, I thought I was going to die on multiple occastions 
For a bit of reference it took me approx 6 hours to do the whole loop and only 22 mins to do the times DH sections. I was approx top 25%.
There are shorter versions on the day too.
This is the best thread on the forum!!!
Cold and wet at Malham Cove (2018 Hope Pre-Peaks CX)
Cheers - I see it’s already sold out for 2019!
It was tough wasn’t it - you riding next years? I much preferred 2017 and climbing Col d’Izoard than this year.
It sold out in 1 minute for 2019!! I was lucky and my friends and I all got tickets for the main event on the Saturday. (Did Sunday this year). However, there are generally a few tickets that need moving on nearer the time as people have to drop out for whatever reason!
The middle two climbs really broke me. I think I would have done better with the longer slightly shallower climbs.
I’m giving 2019 a miss to do some riding closer to home but it was a fantastic experience that I will definitely look to do again.
They were steep compared to what you’d normally find in the Alps - I had the wrong gearing which is why I struggled. Lots of climbing in 2019 but back to more traditional gradients for the Alps - but long climbs compared to this year.
I’m lucky enough to know most of next years route so far more prepared in terms of what to expect!