WHAT'S BEEN HAPPENING IN THE MONKEY HOUSE?
GORILLA ENDURANCE
You can tell by the happy faces that we have a number of the troop riding ridiculous distances this week.
John Pears is now on day 8 of his Trans Continental adventure ;
Day 5 - 300km , 5000m elevation - he started at 4am, summitted Toumalet at noon , then descended through the wet only to discover the hotel he'd booked had cancelled on him. Even a kebab couldn't help and he stopped eventually at 1am.
Day 6 - 300km, nearly 2000m of climbing after sleeping in a hedge - as you can see from the photo, John struggled today.
Day 7 - 300km over 3000m of climbing .
Day 8 - no figures in yet, but i have seen on his insta feed - pedalingpears - that he is now in Italy.
Keep going mate - awesome job.
And we have got 3 of the troop Neil Cocklin , James Brown and Oliver Agar all doing the London-Edinburgh-London 1200km audax!!
JB looked to be flying on day 1 knocking out nearly 400km over 14 hours. Neil , on the other hand, had a more stressful first 100km - involving 3 punctures and a broken rear mech.... but he managed to sort that and even did 70km more than planned for the first day in the end to catch up a bit of time.
Ollie forgot to pick up his transponder at the start, but did about 390km for the first day.
Neil and Ollie are now stuck in Richmond, North Yorkshire, and JB is at a stand still as you can see by his photo, as they have suspended the event because of the high winds and poor weather, they are all hoping to be on the move again by 7.30pm.
Mad as a box of frogs the lot of them, but fair play. Keep cracking on guys, utmost respect.
GORILLA RACING
Daniel Hand finished 9th at the XC FNSS round 12 - i know this was a fantastic result for him, but i can't tell you what all those initials stand for, as i just lifted it from his Strava ! Chapeau mate.
QOMs
The only Strava crown i saw this week was Lisa Jones QOM. Well done.
FANTASY LEAGUE
The top of the TdF Femmes changed significantly over the final weekend for the pros, and also in our fantasy league with Matt Mitchell winning with 4816 points, snatching victory from Craig Munro on the last day, who ended up on 4686 . And then in a travesty , which the race stewards are still looking into, David Lee took the final podium spot from Bruno also on the final day of racing.
Thanks to Matt for organising the fantasy leagues for both the Tdf and TdF femmes, and to everyone who took part.
THURSDAY RIDES
The rides for Thursday are now on the website for you to book onto - use coupon code FREERIDE25 for a weeks free trial. This week we have - all leaving 6.30pm from Hare & Hounds :
18-19mph Stuart John Bulloch Dickens heath/Cut Throat TTT
18mph Páraic Scanlon Bushwood 30 miles
17-18mph Richard Bates Studley loop
17mph Bruno Wythall loops
16-17mph Adam Maclean 24 miles Alvechurch lumps
15-16mph Helen Pike 25 flat miles
Thanks as always top our amazing volunteer ride leaders for giving up their time.
See you Thursday.
Ride safe
Bruno