# Highland Trail 550 - 2023



## Proto (30 Nov 2022)

Daughter #2 has entered 🙈 More hours wasted Dot watching, and sleepless nights.

NT550

Hope it goes better than her GBDuro effort. You can’t say she hasn’t been getting the miles in, having just ridden the Eastern Divide, Maine to New Orleans. 😀


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## chriswoody (1 Dec 2022)

Fantastic, best of luck to her. I've nothing but admiration for anyone who makes the start line of that one. 

It's a route I'm going to hopefully be riding myself, but not racing, trying it at a more leisurely pace over a couple of weeks rather than the few days the racers take.


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## Jameshow (1 Dec 2022)

Oh bother the men's entry is full! Doh! Going to have you give it a miss!! 

Looks a fun ride for the adventurous!!


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## steveindenmark (1 Dec 2022)

Good luck to her. GBDURO will stand her in good stead. Anyone who turns up to the start line for these events gets my respect. The logistics of getting yourself and bike to the start and home from the finish can be huge.


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## Proto (2 Dec 2022)

Lots of big hitters on the start list, e.g. Philippa Battye, Jaimi Wilson amongst them, means this will be super hard and fast.

I see Molly Weaver has entered. Daughter and Molly were briefly on the same road team a few years back. Molly's fairly astonishing start to this years GBDuro (sadly curtailed by Covid), it will be interesting to see how she goes. A strong rider, pretty well riding full time these days, and will be hard to beat if it's purely down to physicality (It won't be!).

Daughter may be let down by her MTB skills. She's had plenty of experience on tarmac and gravel but she lacks experience in mountain biking. We'll see! And all this whilst she's meant to be writing her Masters dissertation .........


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## Phaeton (2 Dec 2022)

chriswoody said:


> Fantastic, best of luck to her. I've nothing but admiration for anyone who makes the start line of that one.
> 
> It's a route I'm going to hopefully be riding myself, but not racing, trying it at a more leisurely pace over a couple of weeks rather than the few days the racers take.



Week's it'd take me months & I'd be walking a good chunk I think, good luck to anybody who can put their body through that, it just shows what we can do with enough determination, respect to all competitors.


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## chriswoody (2 Dec 2022)

Phaeton said:


> Week's it'd take me months & I'd be walking a good chunk I think, good luck to anybody who can put their body through that, it just shows what we can do with enough determination, respect to all competitors.



It's definitely a tough route, Alan Goldsmith is the route designer and his routes are notoriously tough and often feature some epic Hike a Bike. There are competitors who have ridden it on Gravel bikes and at least one person has won using a single speed bike. I can't begin to imagine how hard it must have been, but like you say determination and grit can get you far. 

Another aside, it's great to see the amount of female competitors this year, as mentioned some strong riders. In the men's entries, there are also some impressive riders with some epic rides behind them, I look forward to the departure next May.

I'm just aiming to ride the summer route, either next summer or the one after, I'm reasonably confident I can make it round, but we'll see.


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