Spirit of Girona / L’Esperit de Girona (SOG / LEdG?)

I'm using the very same bladder on the bike.

The colour never left the bag.

Swap Juice ftw

Man havin a tough day

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Just checking to see how it was going, saw the 'dnf', pleased to see (on your twitter) nothing serious. Take it easy hippy :)

Yeah, I always wanted to be 1st on one of these races...

1st scratch it is!

I'm fine. Just cream crackered.

Probs overcooked it coming in to this as I was worried about my MTBing in general. Probs not enough harder efforts like what you need on this and maybe I should've started on the salt tabs sooner and drank more. Dunno. I've been fine in hotter weather with less water.
The whole year has been pretty silly though (~13,000km/200,000m just in audax, collecting AAAs).

I did run out of water a bit after this photo and started filtering puddles and fuck me that's a slow process. My Sawyer Mini is near new and takes a lot of work for a few mouthfuls. Handy though.

Katadyn be free

I'd want to see it in use.

Oh, well, lookie here...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xjnlBwJ21s4

https://youtu.be/dEZWre0YKjg?t=1056

There's no way my Mini was doing 0.5L per minute, let alone 1.25L. I'm going to time it with tap water later.

EDIT: Mine is the Micro Squeeze, not Mini so it's more like 0.25L per minute. That might be more accurate.

Sorry to hear about dnf, enjoy Girona!
How much MTBing did you do manage to do with all that audaxing?
Offroad is a surprisingly different kind of effort to road, at least for me.

This is 1min of pretty hard squeezing (harder than I'd manage mid-ride, given the state of my hands) with clean tap water through my Micro Squeeze...

Even after backflushing it a few times it got maybe "half a finger" more water and my hands hurt squeezing the bag.

I get a bit in. Not enough though, really. The problem with this year is I've been chasing AAA points to win the AAA trophy along with the missus. Lots of LSD, not much threshold or above.

I'd also maybe panicked a bit and done too much too late. ie. thanks to Queenie I got 2x10hr MTB days in last month as well as some shorter rides. I'd heat acclimated but it was quite warm (32C on my Garmin) but I normally handle that ok. Maybe with the loaded bike I was getting far less cooling and that played a part? 2.5L of my fluids was just plain water so maybe I was too late taking in salt with it? I dunno. I don't often have to deal with cramps but my calves, quads, hamstrings, even hip flexors were going. I was using the dropper just to get on and off the bike with minimal movement. In the pizza joint I stopped at before getting a hotel, my fingers were curling around while I was on the phone. I've had that in TABR before but not with all the rest of the cramp.

I might have a day off then go ride a little more of the route that's close to town. Make the most of the bike. There's always next year, right @skinny :)

Sounds really unpleasant, cramping all over.
Going slow(ly) for 600km is such a different thing to stumbling up a mountain while pushing 25kg of bike and the riding down.
And the puddle thing puts me right off.

Yeah, it was very unpleasant. I'm still pretty tired today so feel like I did some damage on that first day. Even pushing the bike up I was having to stop and stretch out. It's normal for me to be slow going up stuff but not normal to stop with cramp.

The filtered water is fine. Finding the puddles in the first place and then busting your fingers for 10min to get a drink are the bigger issues.

Also, don't add Maurten to a water bladder and expect it to mix...

Sam Thomas:

Distance On Track: 361.08 KM (45.43%)
Distance To Go: 433.72 KM
Daily AVG: 174.50 KM
Speed: 0.00 KM/H
AVG Route Speed: 7.27 KM/H
AVG Moving Speed: 9.50 KM/H
ETA: 1 d 21 h 39 m
Moving Time: 1 d 14 h 0 m (77%)
Stopped Time: 0 d 11 h 38 m (23%)

So, roughly 17hrs on the bike/day? Maybe 5hrs of night riding then - which I was hoping to avoid (and have managed to avoid very well by quitting).

In hindsight, I could've ditched the 2 feedbags of food and put two bottles of drink mix in those instead, carrying a bit more food in my Camelbak.

If you wanted higher risk, you could lose the tubes and just deal with TL repair.

Could've run dyno and lost a battery pack and my Six Pack front light. The front roll needs to be adjusted otherwise the front light hides the front wheel so helmet lights were better anyway.

Ditch the bivvy and have bigger sleep pad and sleeping bag only (as it was I forgot most of my sleep kit and had to borrow James's before the event anyway). Ditch the undershirt I wore all day and instead maybe swap it for gilet at night (something else I forgot to bring).

I'd probably change my 20 year old MTB gloves - maybe just use mitts. After the start there wasn't much "finger bashing" anyway. I still had some residual tingling from Mille du Sud that probably would've got worse.

I'd likely change that SID gripshift suspension lockout to a simpler lever so I had my full grip width, didn't keep bumping the button and it didn't rotate into my brake lever.

A smaller rear light would mean less interference with the dropper post but it's all I had.

I'd also hoped the Wolftooth Valais would allow me to run my Viscacha saddlebag but that wouldn't work so I'd look at getting a larger saddlebag that still works (or a Tailfin, as I'm sure James will mention soon :P) so I could put some more of the lighter, bulkier stuff in the saddlebag and reduce the size of the front roll a bit to help with the light clearance.

Also, don't be a fat fuck (too late) and don't shit your pants and do way too much leading up to the big, scary event...

Thanks for the (before it all went to shit) photo, Aga...

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Sell the Sid and buy a pike 3rd gen 130mm

What for? I don't ride anything fast enough (yet) to need more travel.

What I need are my legs from 20 years ago..

Also, you could've told me before I dropped the bike and scraped the bloody stickers :P

Then there were... none.

Since everyone has scratched and I was the 1st to scratch I'm basically the winner of this non-race, right?

Bike pack up race winner.

Every single person DNF!? What happened with everyone else?

Various stuff. Too slow, crashes, injuries, kit failures, etc

It's definitely no joke here.

Oh you can add me to the, what is it now?, 3 other people with dropper issues.

Mine's basically new and yesterday it would fully lift and is very hard to push down. Do droppers not like the rain or do they not work for fat people?

I'll just leave this here...

https://www.wolftoothcomponents.com/collections/chainrings/products/64-bcd-chainrings

Don't know about winning, but definitely trendsetter.

I've always been a leader...

What kind a bell end organiser runs this sort of stupid event