The Kielder 100 mountain bike race took place over the weekend, and covered 103 miles of tough terrain around Kielder water on the Scottish borders.

The event sold out in May with 650 entrants, including Alex Bottomley and Gareth Ashton, both back again to take on one of MTB's toughest challanges and improve on last year's efforts.

The course included several very rough fireroad sections interspersed with singletrack, including the Newcastleton 7 Staines trails. One section (shown in photo) was built entirely from wooden planking over the peat bogs, and was mesmerising to cycle over with gap/wood/gap flashing before your eyes.

From 650 starters, 347 managed to reach the cut-off points in time and complete the whole course, some taking over 14 hours.

Alex bettered his time from last year by 13 mins to finish after 10 hours 43 mins (110th). Gareth was pleased to avoid the mechanical issues that got in the way last year, and finished with a time of 10 hours 11 mins (62nd).

Both have resolved this is one challange that does not have to repeated next year, but we shall see!

Gareth Ashton

Photo reproduced with kind permission of Joolze Dymond, www.joolzedymond.com