Riding, Racing, injuries and success!

Lots has been happening in the last couple of weeks and I'm now sat at home with grazed knees, visions of muddy bogs but most of all a sense of achievement.

Rothbury Ride and DNS Whinlatter Duathlon

Last weekend I had a great ride up in Rothbury on saturday then was planning to go down to Whinlatter to do the Whinlatter Duathlon which is a great event that I did last year, check out http://www.highterrainevents.co.uk/ as there is a whole series of these and I'll be doing the Kielder one in a few weeks. Unfortunately we did a bit of night riding at Rothbury and I came a cropper a couple of times on the same knee, then just as I was nursing this at the bottom of a sweet bit of technical singletrack, bosh one of the guys who came down after me couldn’t stop and smashed straight in to the exact same spot!


Rothbury, Northumberland, great day

 It was pretty sore but headed to the pub none the less and hoped for the best. I headed back to the bunk house a bit earlier than the other guys to get a good night sleep and neck some ibuprofen...what I'd hoped to be a good night sleep turned in to a nightmare when the others returned to deliver a incessant chorus of snoring :(



So when my alarm when off at 6am I opened my eyes to having had pretty much no sleep and instantly knew that my knee was badly swollen and it wouldnt be worth the trip to the lakes, gutted! So me and housemate/fellow riding mate/killer kielder official photographer Rich E (twitter @STATO) headed home to the Toon and straight back to bed to get some kip. The rest of the day was spent moping around...

Kendal Mountain Fest/Newcastle Stampede 10k adventure run

The knee recovered during the week just in time for this weekend where I headed to the Kendal mountain festival for bike film night (brilliant, check out lifecycles isn't amazing) with a bunch of guys with a proper lakes natural ride planned for the next day. We set off from Ambleside and did a loop that took in loads of technical singletrack (ace), epic climbs and unbelievable scenery, loved it. Back home that night, good feed and ready for the next day and the Newcastle Stampede www.newcastlestampede.com!

It rained a lot the day before and was raining on the day as well. The Stampede in its first year promised to by muddy, challenging and tough for every k of the 10k in total but all for a worthy cause, the British Heart Foundation.

The race went off in waves, 5 in total and me and some friends were in wave 2. After an army style warm up session I was on the front row and ready to gun it off the start to get the obstacles that were clearly going to be choke points. Me and mate Andy went out pretty fast and got ahead of the pack, we the got to the first tunnel followed by waist deep bog/river but had to wait behind the people from the first wave that we had caught up. The water was literally freezing and pain was definitely felt in certain body parts!



Newcastle Stampede bog

 This set the scene to follow which was a mix of trail running and mud scrambling through the marines designed course and a lot of time was spent in trenches or half submerged in ice cold water. Oh and the hay bales, it felt like there were hundreds to climb over and towards the end they were punishing when you were soaked through and knackered. Lots of good banter with the marines on the way round, a couple of them just near the end did the usual ‘just one more lap to go’ so I scooped up a big slab of mud from the bog I’d just climbed out of and smothered their nice clean army kit with it J.

I managed to get a good gap about half way round and somehow found myself out in front. This was strange territory for me in any race. Fortunately for me some of the guys behind got held up by wave 1 stranglers so unbelievably I’m pretty sure I crossed the finish line in first place in my wave!


There’s no chance that I would have got the fastest time on the day out of all the waves as wave 1 had nobody to hold them up and we were waiting 5 mins to get through the first major obstacle. But hey ho it was all for charity.

Frozen cold but happy it was done. Yet another challenge where I managed to push pretty hard and outdo myself.

1st place in my wave?

Unfortunately I still had some cuts on my knee from the bike crashes the week before so on crawling hands and knees through tunnels and over rough ground these quickly opened up and were accompanied by others fairly quickly. These are now really sore and stiff but nothing a good feed and sleep won’t sort out. Think I might do the pizza hut challenge next week, my record is 18 so I think the big 20 slices is my next big challenge!

Meeting Northumbria Water next week to discuss permission for the lake section of Killer Kielder, hopefully there will be a positive outcome and I can start cracking on with organising the mass of things on the to do list!

Matt