Another successful Tour of South Derry

Thanks to all of you for coming along today and making this one of the biggest Tours to date. We hope you found everything up to the grade and thanks to you all. We will be able to hand over a handsome sum to Macmillan.

Thanks to also to the folks that organized things and worked hard behind the scenes and to the marshals and backup services on the day, and to the lovely Macmillan people for feeding us all at the end.

Many thanks also to our current and previous sponsors, below is the list of sponsors for the 2012 event: O’Kane’s Chemist, Magherafelt District Council, Oneblueroom, H&A, Sportique, Essential Designs, Genesis, Modern Kitchen Supplies, Hutchinson Feeds, Kellystone, Brooklands Health Care, Cloane Construction, SDC, T McGrath Menswear, C.K Car Sales, G.M.D. Decorators, Time bar + Venue, Purvis Stone and S McPeake&Sons

Last weekend Stephen Law and Vincent Bradley of Carn Wheelers joined forces with Alan Gilkinson from East Tyrone Cycling Club as Team G-NARR, to compete in the King Of Three Rock Enduro event at Ticknock MTB centre Co. Dublin.

The King of 3 Rock was a two day Enduro MTB event on October 13th/14th 2012 which included the Team-Trail-Thrash (Saturday), and Dixie-Dash races (Sunday), culminating in the ultimate accolade for any mountain biker in the country – the crowning of the King of Three Rock!!

The weather for the Team-Trail-Thrash was perfect but the bad weather two days before the event left the trail condition somewhere between greasy and tacky but that didnt deter the Team G-NARR hopefuls as they thrashed their way to 5th place in the Rockers category.

Having spent Saturday racing, practicing and climbing four of the five Sunday stages then spending too long at the high stool on Saturday night three bleary but none the less eager heads appeared from the hotel on Sunday morning, ready for almost 3000ft of climbing and descending and generally being as gnarly as possible.

The weather conditions were terrible for the Sundays racing but it didnt make the racing any less fun, the enduro format is take your time to the top and go like an eedjit to the bottom, and as the stages wore on the climbs were getting slower and slower and everyone was happy to see the top of Stage 5.

So, the results. After the 5th place in Saturdays team event the results didnt look so spectacular with Stephen, Alan and Vinny taking 49th, 67th and 80th respectively out of, ahem, 95 starters. But the aim for the event was to have as much fun as possible and we managed that so the results didnt matter a lot.

Thanks to MAD MTB for holding an excellent event, hopefully we’ll get a few more enduro races done next year.

The Sunday cycled will has now changed to 9am start, from Maghera Leisure Centre