Race Face

Since Cara’s writing a feature on women’s racing for C+, she thought it was about time she did some! Last Saturday, we drove up to Hillingdon for the Women’s Festival of Racing – so she could get in some laps, chat to the girls there and I could get some pictures of her in action. Secretly, I was also hoping to capture another good ‘race face’ – to match the classic one she made on the last sprint to the finish the week before. Sadly, no amusing facial contortions to report.

Still, it was a lovely day, and even though it was a bit of a drive up to get there (we rented a car from Avis, £28 for the day, made me think maybe car sharing is the way forward), it was well worth going to. Here’s a few snaps…

The girl’s got Soul…

I’ve been going on enough about 29ers these days, so it’s about time we blogged Cara’s new wheels. As much as she enjoys her Thorn Catalyst (her touring weapon of choice the last couple of years), it’s a bit porky (with its Rohloff Speedhub and heavy duty frame) for out-and-out-mtb-thrills in our local woods. So it was time to usher in a new ride for summer fun-ness: a Cotic Soul.

Weight weenie

We just got this Salter 1020 kitchen scale. The nice thing about this particular model is that it weighs up to 5kg, in 1g increments – which, after prolonged internet trawling, turns out to be very good for the price (£19.99). We bought it from Scales Express who, true to their name, were pretty quick to deliver too.

So far, it seems to work really well. We’ll be using it for reviewing products, and working out how we can skim down those ‘valuable’ grams when we go ultralight touring…

Trip Availability Update

Above: The Likir Massive style it up. (Likir village, near Leh)

Due to a deluge of work, blog updates have been lacking of late. And when we haven’t been working, we’ve too busy taking advantage of the sunshine to get out and ride…. So this is just a quick post to let you know about availability on the trips for 2007.

At the moment, both Spiti and Sach Pass are full. But we still have places left on the Manali to Leh epic. Don’t forget, we’re running it with a twist this year, by taking in some seldom ridden side roads and a couple of extra 5000m+ passes that are truly off the beaten track. It’s a good one for roughstuff tourers and mtb’ers alike – there’s fun little bits of singletrack for those who like that kind of thing, or you can keep to the ‘main’ drag, which is enough of a challenge in itself.

Do drop us a line if you’re interested in any of the three trips, as you never know, plans change and people drop out. Or we can put you on the mailing list for 2008.