[Closed] SES Glenlivit

Don't bother.

Lots of folks not feeling the love for the glenlivet event. Not filling me with hope for my local event in Largs tbh.

I heard a few minor grumbles when out on the trails but most people were positive. Sure it was different from e.g. Inners but I thought it was good to have a different kind of challenge and not have arse on the back wheel all the time. The challenge was staying off the brakes as much as possible on Stages 1 and 2 which were ancient walkers paths.

I personally really enjoyed it. Bit of trail centre. Bit of old school mountain biking. Wee bit of fresh cut.

Certainly it didn't differentiate those with wild good skills from those without but rewarded fitness and flow (times were all quite close). The fast guys were still the same fast guys.

It was also amazing to have dry trails on Sunday when Saturday was quite damp. Other places would've been the usual quagmire.

I'm not sure I would go out of my way to ride the trails again but if I was out on an adventure day ride and came across trails like that I'd say I'd had a great ride 🙂

I'm interested to hear what the problem with Glenlivet was? Big loop for little reward?

From the photos and videos I've seen from Largs, I'll be surprised if it even happens. Was originally looking forward to it too

Yeah - if there was a 'problem' at all I guess some people felt a bit burnt for the amount of adrenaline they got for the graft to get to the top. And fairly long transition in and out of Tomintoul.

Knowing that there's not that much steep bits in the area I'd assumed the climbs would all be quite 'nice' spins up landy tracks or fire roads. But there was a fair bit of field/grass/mud/moor on the climbs which was really draggy so that was energy sapping and slow going.

Interesting re. Largs...

Edit: oh and also loads of people got 'lost' heading out of Tomintoul in practice thanks to what seemed to be a poorly communicated change of plan/route and minimal way marking.

A bunch of us headed over to do this, then left on Sunday morning to ride elsewhere, as just couldn't face riding those tracks again. Spoke to a lot of people who did similar, and actually met quite a few over at Fort William!

It had around 10km of tarmac road. Stage 1 was a reasonable, if unchallenging opener after a long slog in, but it never happened for me after that. Stages 2 and 5 were a wind-up surely, especially 5. Stages 3 and 4 just bits of the red descent mixed with a couple of short steep rooty sections.

I missed the first two rounds, but it speaking to those who did race those, they were fast, techy courses, which really separated out the riders. This felt more like a Merida/CRC MTB Marathon from about 10 years ago, hiding under the covers of an enduro race.

I thought it was so bad I didn't even bother racing on the sunday. Stages were flat as a pancake with zero technical challenge. A lot of people felt the same. It felt as though they had grand plans for something bigger but either didn't have the time of resources to do anything. S1 and S2 were boring as hell long straights across a flat moor. S3 and S4 were 99% trail centre with a couple of tiny token off piste bits which were crap. S5 was a laughably bad bumpy grass descent. They must have realised it was crap so they decided to make the transitions massive. 5-6 hours of riding for ~15 minutes of racing. I know a lot of other people who sacked it off after practice. A long drive for nothing and I can't say I'll ever go back to glenlivet

Largs is a slightly different concern. At present, there are only a couple of descents in place, and both are too short for an enduro. Largs/kelburn has the geography for sure, just not the volume of trails - there is no way you could ride 35-40k which seems to be about the distance required for these events now.

There is masses of potential, and an estate that is very keen and proactive too, but I just feel this is too early for the area and worry slightly that if folks come away with bad vibes from the event, it'll impact on further events and inhibit development.

Grew up near Largs. Stringing together a good 40km XC ride is tricky, nevermind something with enough up-and-down for an enduro event. Unless one of the transitions involves taking a ferry across the Clyde to somewhere hillier...

The hills behind kelburn are high enough, you could double the height of the current descents, and trails could be cut up there, but there isn't any actual access to the top, so climbs are also needed. That's a hell of a lot of work to be done before mid October.

So I guess the experience varies from Glenlivid to Glenlovinit... 😀

It clearly didn't happen here though, and even though I live within an hour of Glenlivet, there is no way I will ever head back to ride any of those stages. I may head back with the kids and Mrs to ride the blue and red, but after paying £50 I'd expected a lot more.

Yeah I was very skeptical when I saw that Glenlivet was on the calendar as I've only ridden it once and swore I'd not be back in a hurry despite living about an hours drive away. Looks like there wasn't anything done to make it worth going back which is a pity as it would of been nice to have some more local choice for decent trails to ride rather than having to drive 2/3 hours to get something half decent.

Had a great weekend at Glenlivet last autumn. Went with a bunch of mates, stayed in the hostel and had a couple of boozy nights in the village. The group was pretty mixed ability, and we were hungover, so the trails were pefect 😆
If you're sober, I wouldn't bother.

I really liked the new offpiste bits they'd built within the trailcentre- they'd be easy to find with the aid of strava, assuming they're not closed off. Some lovely awkward corners and puzzly line choices. Pretty much all the enjoyment I got from the weekend, I got in those and I wish they were somewhere local.

The trailcentre, well, we didn't ride it all but it felt basically like the boring sort of trail centre, lots of it I forgot as soon as I rode. I don't like slagging trails as there's been huge amounts of work there, and it's actually a really high quality build too, but imo not too well conceived. The sort of trails that'd be great in a busy area as it's really accessible but I can't see why as an enthusiast you'd travel to them as you can get basically the same experience elsewhere- so considering they're in the arse of nowhere, the wrong approach imo.

But it's a nice area, a really good drive, looking at the bigger picture it might fit somewhere. Faint praise.

I didn't do the race, in the end. Just edited a longer version but I basically just didn't want to spend another day on it.

It was a good ride out with mates - and as mentioned felt like the Selkirk Marathon with more timed stages.

Unfortunately for a few of us there wasn't very good taping of some key sections of the stages - so some went off trail for +3 minutes on a 1 minute stage.

Sections where there were marshalls on practice were unmarshalled, so I rode straight on past a turn, realised I'd gone wrong, stopped and decided to just carry on anyway. My fault for not remembering from practice, but everyone before me did it (all the elites), and then it was marshalled after me - so felt a bit crap for the disadvantage.

Also, as constructive criticism, I'm colour blind, and orange flags disappear in heather for me - which meant I went totally of trail on stage 1 and 3. White tape really is far better.

I liked it. Not what I usually ride but it was sunny, riding with a good group of guys who i mostly hadn't met before and then sprinting like buggery on the pedals and trying not to touch the brakes on pretty much all of the stages.

Certainly different from the EWS two weeks ago but decent fun nonetheless.

Felt really uninspired after a rainy practice day. The natural off cut bits had were too awkward with no flow so they missed a trick there.

On the day, it was a nice xc day out in the sun. As rickon said, felt like an xc marathon day with some timed stages. I actually enjoyed some of the transition bits more that the actual stages.

Who ever tapes the course really needs to go ride it with a racers head on. We you are tanking on with max focus of the trail, the taping really needs to be obvious. I missed the turning on stage 5. 🙁

It's possible that Tweed valley has raised expectations a little too much, as lots of other areas don't have the geography/volunteers/trail infrastructure that exists there?.

Dunkeld seems to thrive in a similar manner.

I thought the issue with using a mix of trail centre descents and off-cuts was that it made things pretty confusing, as it appeared that there were families out for a nice ride around on the red, so that track was fully open to non-racers. A load of us overshot one of the off-piste bits on Stage 4 as the marshall stood by the turn was helping someone with a mechanical, and wasn't directing people to turn...

It just felt like a shambles. Really poor venue with just not a good enough track. I've never walked away from a race before, and seldom heard of others doing so, but the number of people we spoke to on Saturday and Sunday who were pulling out was incredible.

It's possible that Tweed valley has raised expectations a little too much

The non-tweed races last year all managed to live up to expectations, ignoring the weather in Fort William at round 1.

I think it's telling that when you ask people if they've been to Glenlivet, the answer is never or "Once". No one seems to want to rush back. The trail centre bits were smooth and flat. Of the "black" bits, 90% were drops of about 1 foot. Only one, maybe two of them could be considered "black" (the rocky staircase and the bigger drop into the "bomb hole" type run out)

I think it was also telling that only a small part of the first two stages appeared on strava beforehand. For two well established trails not to have any biking activity on them, makes them a pretty poor choice for a trail.

As well as having regular trail users on the trail centre stuff, we encountered walkers on the two natural trails. How we chuckled when we're doing 20-25mph through the rain and mist and you suddenly discover half a dozen german tourists in the middle of the trail. Zero signage at the bottom to let anyone know what was happening that weekend.

I really liked the awkwardness of the offpiste in 3 and 4 tbh, I'd like to see more of that. Watching others ride it you might see 3 or 4 different valid routes through a section. Especially that righthander with the really wide taping, loved that. Felt like there were legitimate line choices rather than good/bad, main/chicken. Not saying everyone should like this, or every trail should be like this, but I didn't think it was a bad choice, just something different. If you could take those trails and drop them into the golfy I'd ride them often.

I didn't comment on the marking earlier as I wasn't sure if it was me being a knob! But I thought it was awful. I went round after the marshalls stopped, and couldn't find stage 2, signs from 1 took me straight to 3? Couldn't see 2 at all. And getting from stage 4 to 5 was pure guesswork, there were a bunch of totally unmarked junctions. I gave up on finding it and decided to follow the red just so I could get home, and it turned out that was the right thing to do- but that was just luck. And yep missed junctions in stages or overshot them and had to backtrack.

Oh and I didn't see a single sign directing people back to Tomintoul from the end of stage 5, or any of those "warning bike race" signs on the road for that matter, or any bailouts marked on the loop. More generally, unmarked arrows are no good, they could be from some other event, I heard from people who got diverted onto the road race route! I knew the wee orange flags were theirs from other races but did everyone else? Maybe some of those bad points would have had a marshall on but you need signage and tape that's adequate, marshalls get called away or distracted and practice was allowed outside marshall time anyway.

(Trying to keep the trails open was a mistake considering how much of the trailcentre was being used, it's not like we were just crossing over, I'd have been unhappy if I was there as a regular punter too. Never seen that before)

I don't trust my judgement on the event as a whole tbh, I was pissed off and frustrated and I had plenty of time on the road back in the rain, to work myself up into a proper grump I'm bad for feedback loops. Maybe on another day I could have been into it. I felt the same about vallelujah and I know a lot of people dug that.

You're definitely not alone NW.

Looking at the timing, if Mikeep had not missed stage 5's turn-off and had to backtrack, he would have podiumed. That, right there, totally sucks and shouldn't happen. You can't have one set of riders race effectively a different course, and then compare them.

Hrumfffffphhh.

I really liked the awkwardness of the offpiste in 3 and 4 tbh,

It was ok, but in a 30 mile ride, a couple of hundred yards of reasonably ok stuff isn't acceptable

Largs is definitely a concern, not least because the guys in charge of building turn down any serious offer of help and simply refer folk to volunteer dig days. They need to build 3-5km of good trail AND give it time to be ridden, tweaked, blown out and repaired, so they really only have maybe 12-14 weeks. And they're not even local. They should completely hand over one trail to willing experienced builders and stop worrying about who's going to get the credit for it

The concern about Largs is the No Fuss guys were quite dismissive of criticism of Glenlivet at the weekend. A refusal to admit they may have got it wrong there may also mean they won't budge on Largs.

By introducing two new venues this year, it was a great way to get people thinking about different destinations for their biking. If anything the weekend past has done more harm than good to Glenlivet's reputation. A bad round at Largs will do similar damage. The other factor for Largs is the weather. Given they have virtually nothing built, it's highly unlikely they'll have anything remotely weatherproof in time.

Now is the time to switch venues and it needs an honest appraisal. Bring the Dudes back into the series, although we heard at the weekend that there's some dispute about access up there hence why it hasn't even been announced yet.

I think the walkers path point is valid - IIRC its part of the Speyside Way but there should have been better signage, warnings and marshals in that case.

Sounds a bit like the MTB event last year for Rock and Road - tried hard to get "an event" into the festival calendar but some poor route choices sours it for all...

I'll be watching this story with some interest - which NF guys BB?

which NF guys BB

Not sure who exactly but a friend that also left after practice sent me a message saying he'd spoke to them and they didn't see the problem. He asked me to mention it too in the hope they'd understand where we're coming from. Another couple of my crowd spoke to them and the response was pretty much it is what it is. Fraser, Spook and Fiona etc are great and every event has been brilliant because they put so much work in. I don't reckon the responsibility for the trails at each event fall under them as they will most likely work with someone local, and I suspect it's been over promised and under delivered by the local element.

I had a few issues with the SES at GlenLivid this weekend, I felt that overall the event was more like a NoFuss one rather than a Scottish National Series (a stepping stone to EWS). Besides the severe lack of signage, poor taping and marshalling which has never been a problem before, the stages were not up to standard. 1300m of climbing with maybe about 600m descent seemed a very poor effort.
I was present when issues had been raised to Fraser after he initiated conversation. He seemed reluctant to take people’s opinions on board even when it came from some of the top boys! Regardless of pro or not, even as a customer I thought his defensive responses didn’t paint a good picture and I actually lost a good opinion of him, everything seemed like a personal attack maybe. Any other proper race organiser takes constructive criticism all the time, they request opinions and approach the racers. In this case I really got the impression that money had exchanged hands so he was happy. It wasn’t the complaints over the stages but even the lack of marking and poor taping didn’t even get taken on board.

Onto the Stages….
Stage 1 was acceptable, open fast and a bit different. Like a general smash out and about in the hils, I didn’t have an issue.

Stage 2 however was not an enduro stage. Apart from the ridiculous transfer’s associated for this stage, the trail was in no way worth the effort. I heard multiple people confused to the starting location during practice, including myself. I didn’t mind what of stage 2 there was but alone it was not acceptable.

Stage 3 was fine, expected trail centre got trail centre.

Stage 4 was the same, fresh cut saved it but with the obvious last minute build, it wasn’t crafted with much care or thought. The undulating but mainly flat or uphill really didn’t cut it when the overall stages had already put such a negative impact on the event.
Stage 5…..what was that. This is my biggest complaint, 50secs of rubbish. Someone cleared some sticks and called it a stage. What annoyed me further was that I heard from the horse’s mouth, this was simply created to get people to the café. I understand why but seriously the event has to come first. If that can’t be a priority it is then the organisers fault for choosing the location. I have no problem at all with Glenlivet but whatever story is true regarding the pushing of building with no response or restriction of trail building, this was not the correct location for a SES.

Fraser seemed to think because most people could ride it, it was a successful event. I really think he needs to be able to differentiate between the SES and No Fuss punter events, the SES is supposed to challenge people. I also feel that because all other events have been located at places where racing has occurred for years it can be pretty hard to actually pick a poor trail. As for Glenlivet this lack of knowledge was clearly demonstrated. With the event having been confirmed for around 6 months I can’t help but really feel there was plenty of time to involve the correct people even locals to help out. The potential here seemed to be high! I honestly had the most fun ‘freeriding’ from the café down the trees intersecting the fire road.
I know this was only a single event out of many but the attitude I witnessed really put a downer on the whole series for me. I didn’t mind the travel from Stirling but it honestly did feel like a total waste of riding time to me. I also didn’t appreciate stage 5 marshal smoking in my face tbh.
Get EWS Neil to run these!! They are always so well organised.

It wasn't as steep and techy as I was expecting or hoping for, and after practice I wasn't that enthused, but actually racing them did bring out the best in them.

Plus the weather was fantastic on Sunday, beautiful views each time you got to the top. Nice day out on the bike.

To be fair, if saturday's weather had been like sunday I'd have been a lot more forgiving!

Rapter's first comments are pretty much how I was feeling; if you take away the SES part and it was a one-off race, maybe pitched like Enduro Enduro as a more fun or accessible event, the stages would have been alright. But after 9 races we've got a pretty good idea what an SES round is and isn't.

On marking, it takes ages to mark out a race stage never mind a full loop, they'd put in a ton of work there, I reckon it probably took 95% as much effort as it would have taken to do it right which is a real shame. There's been other times where the marking has been just barely good enough but I don't think they need to change much to sort it.

Maybe this is partly about losing the collaboration with Innerleithen MTB Racing? No Fuss might be bike race legends but nobody knew enduro like IMTBR.

I know many folk that did not bother racing the Sunday and went elsewhere so something must have been amiss... I actually enjoyed race day as something a bit different and not just hanging on for grim death down steep stuff - as part of a series I think it fits to have a more 'endur'ance event BUT, it still needs to reflect value for money. With an average spend of guessing on my costs £140, to ride a lap of a trail centre I was a bit underwhelmed. I also agree with taping as I ended up having to walk back up the hill having followed what was a natural line on the steep but the tape had already been blown through.

It is really difficult to run events - give it a go if you feel you could run an SES - and a lot of work had been put in by the folks. As long as the lessons learnt are carried forward then the series can only continue to grow. Purely negative, and sometimes personal, slating will rapidly kill enthusiasm and we would be left with no SES and that would be rubbish.

Yay - someone else enjoyed it! I was starting to think I was wrong and I shouldn't have enjoyed riding my bike in the sunshine...
I think I'm probably not #Enduro enough is my problem.

Yay - someone else enjoyed it! I was starting to think I was wrong and I shouldn't have enjoyed riding my bike in the sunshine...

If it had just been a ride in the sunshine it would have been passable.

Instead I paid £50 for the pleasure, had to drive for 8+hours to get there and back, plus other costs.

Only saving grace was the fact we all got absolutely hammered on the Saturday night and had a great laugh!

Ah - so we enter the murky world of trying to put a value proposition on our bike riding enjoyment. It's something I try not to think about as for me there is zero justification to enter any race as I could ride the trails any other day for free.

In principle I just went for a normal bike ride on Sunday and paid £50 for one under-ripe banana and three bite size bits of flapjack 😀

It probably did help me that this race was one hour drive for me and I got to spend the night in my own bed as opposed to a tiny tent in a soggy field...

[url= http://enduro-mtb.com/en/video-scottish-enduro-series-2015-round-3-glenlivet/ ]http://enduro-mtb.com/en/video-scottish-enduro-series-2015-round-3-glenlivet/[/url]

Some people seemed happy 🙂

Some people seemed happy

Indeed - there was some strong stoke-age there. Full power to the loon. His dibber didn't 'beep' at the start of stage 2 so he just went round and did it again (the longest transfer in both directions - an extra c. 9 miles and 1000 ft climbing). And was chirpy the whole way giving riotous banter to everybody he passed on the climbs. #spiritofenduro 😀

hey, that's my mate's lad 🙂 he's always like that 🙂

I'm not going to argue about the good or the bad, as I was working elsewhere last weekend, but you have to consider that not every round is going to feature highly technical trails, and is going to push riders strengths/weaknesses in different ways.

I know Glenlivet has been criticised, but as one of the organisers (remember the SES organisers include more than NoFuss) said to me earlier this year, they've got to try new venues. If you stick to the same 'safe' venues, then you end up with a lack of variety, and a pretty stagnant series, which is what they're keen to avoid, so they're happy to try one or two untested venues each year.

Yes it could result in lots of moaning if it's not up to the expected standard, but would you rather have the same 5 or 6 venues every year (ala SDA*), or 4 or 5 known good venues with 1 or 2 unknowns that could be anywhere between excellent or rubbish?

Personally, I think it's a risk that should be taken. The organisers now know in it's current form, Glenlivet is not ideal, but they also know the weaknesses of that venue, and what needs done if they were to consider using it again.

*I'm not wanting to criticise the SDA as I know they put a lot of effort in each year and have additional issues they face with tracks, but you pretty much know what locations/tracks will be used every year.

I was up at Kelburn last night (Largs SES venue) and I have to say, it's a worry. At the moment, there are 2 descents, one which is kind of bike-parky that will take a good rider 2 minutes.

The other is a bit more enduro-like, steep, rooty and slithery in the wet, but is only about 1 minutes worth.

There is another one marked out, ie trees sprayed a bit, no idea how long this would be as it's only a rough plan at present, but I can't see it being any longer than 2 minutes.

So, with 4 months to go, and the head builder (I use the term loosely) away back to France for 2 months, it's looking a bit grim. There is only really one fire road climb to get to the top of these as well.

How they are going to eke out a full days riding is very, very questionable, as they don't seem to even accept the offer of help from local boys, instead relying on a few guys from Edinburgh that understandably ain't there that often.

At the moment, there are 2 descents, one which is kind of bike-parky that will take a good rider 2 minutes.

The other is a bit more enduro-like, steep, rooty and slithery in the wet, but is only about 1 minutes worth.

There is another one marked out, ie trees sprayed a bit, no idea how long this would be as it's only a rough plan at present, but I can't see it being any longer than 2 minutes.

3 stages, ridden twice, one transition to the top? Sounds fun

Would take about an hour.

3 stages, ridden twice, one transition to the top? Sounds fun

sounds pish imo. Would also be a headache for timing I believe, especially as you might have folk on stage 1 mixing with folk on stage 4 (or whatever).

On a different note. Ignoring the February conditions, what was the general feeling about Ft.Bill? Tempted to enter that round

There's loads of good stuff at Fort William and last year was good so I'm expecting a good race.

If you stick to the same 'safe' venues, then you end up with a lack of variety, and a pretty stagnant series,

Not only that but you'll massively favour the riders who can ride it regularly. Different venues mixes it up a bit.

A series should have different venues with different challenges and there will always be people who prefer certain courses. I accept poor marking is bad though and should be sorted whatever the event.

Ft Bill had a great race planned last year, the weather hammered it and broke a stage so there were some grumpy faces but if it'd gone as planned it'd have been ace. Laggan was mint last year too.

the weather hammered it and broke a stage so there were some grumpy faces but if it'd gone as planned

lolz, they planned it for February, it went exactly as a race in February is ever going to go 🙂

Nah, be fair, it was properly apocalyptic- closed roads and floods and that all over the place. (I ended up spending half of the sunday night waiting to get towed out of a flood near callendar!) Feb was always a bit brave but it was worse than you could expect.

Didn't see that coming - Kelburn have just started advertising uplift days on facebook!

Aye, they have a big ex-military looking vehicle for uplifts.

I really don't like to criticise, as they are the only place locally that are really making an effort, I'd just hate to see the Enduro fall on it's arse, then the negative effect of that of people not coming to the area, and the estate pulling the plug.