Blogging at 21:15 on Sunday 8th September from N 55.53172°, W 02.56268° / http://maps.google.com/maps?q=loc:55.53172%2C-02.56268
It was cold during the night. I woke to frost outside at about 4.50am and had to start the engine to warm the van a bit.
It was cold for the event, too. I was slightly under-dressed for the numerous transfer stages but just about right for the all-in efforts required for the six timed stages. I found the format doesn't really suit me and it's not too dissimilar to road racing where there's a lot of soft pedalling, then eyeball-popping efforts to make or go with breaks.
The course was great, though. The scenery was spectacular and the route spot on. The stages were a good mix of lengths and had everything from a proper barely-rideable brutal hill-climb, through technical single-track, to full-on 42x12-spinning gravel tracks.
Unfortunately the day was tainted. I was one of about 20 riders out of 700 or so for whom one of the special-stage timing beacons didn't work so, at the moment, I have no idea how I did compared to the 680 (or so) who had no problems. I felt I went pretty well. No one passed me on the specials, but I passed loads.
To help cheer myself up and to replace some of the 3000-ish calories burned I went to a Sainsbury's in Stirling to have a veggie breakfast. I paid my money, set up my knife, fork and napkins, stole about a thousand of those little packets of salt and pepper (travelling tip #1002) and waited with stomach rumbling.
Then, over the tannoy, a pre-recorded but very authoritative voice instructed everyone to leave the store, immediately.
No one did.
It took three more announcements and some pretty stressed-looking staff to persuade the various customers that obeying the electronic voice was more important than failing to buy aubergines; or even eating their paid-for fry-up.
It took about 30 minutes before anyone was allowed back in. It turned out to be a false alarm that probably cost Sainsbury's thousands of pounds in lost sales and most definitely resulted in my baked beans not being hot enough.
At the coordinates shown now where I'm going to kip. I've seen the Wellington Monument that's close by (pic) from the main road between Jedburgh and Edinburgh loads of times but never been up to it.
Hopefully, in the morning, that's going to change. Then it's the dull drive back...
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