Ruthin Kona 100, September 2003
Results can be found here
Just a few lines about the final round of the Kona 100 MTB marathon series
which was held around Ruthin in Flintshire this Sunday just gone.
Four of us - Chris Jones, Jon Ellis, Howard Lam and myself - headed up to
Wales on Saturday afternoon looking forward to what was heralded to be the
best course of the Kona 100 series. A last minute change from Corwen
couldn't have been easy for the organisers, but it proved to be for the
best by all accounts.
The 'timed ride' started at 0930 on Sunday morning in glorious sunshine,
which was a bit of a contrast from the rather dull and rainy evening that
had passed. The event was full, so there were around 1000 riders doing the
event, with about 60-70% doing the full 100km enduro. We were there on a
variety of takes on the theme of mountain bike. Howard was riding his
shiny new Santa Cruz full bouncer, Jon his newly-resprayed Orange Sub5,
myself on the my usual ageing Saracen hardtail and Chris on his Inbred
singlespeed - 100km on a singlespeed in Wales, I ask you...!
The first 3.5km was, as usual, behind a pace car which unfortunately took
the wrong turning about 2km in. A little confusion followed with Jon
making a slight detour (roughly 1.5miles...) along with a gang of other
riders - a bit unfortunate.
The course can be summed up on the whole very simply -
awesome and hard. It criss-crossed the Clwydian Hills a number of times
and had just about eveything on it bar really rocky downhills. What was
lacking in knarlyness was amply made up for in other ways; massive downhills
through slippery grass fields, relentless grinding climbs, forest single and
doubletrack, moorland single and doubletrack and mud. There were a few
issues en-route with course signing which resulted in me taking a detour
with another group about two-thirds the way through the course which cost
about 10 mins or so. These issues were later revealed to be down to some
local kids removing key signs...
As an indicator to the course's toughness, they had shorten it to 85km and
it still took the winner (who would have been one of either the 9
Commonwealth Games competitors or 3 Olympians that were present that day)
4 hours and 40 minutes to finish. Over an hour longer than normal.
All in all a great day out and a very fitting end to the Kona 100 MTB
marathon series.
Bart Hallmark
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