Morning Ride

Afternoon Ride

Lunch Ride

Firstly, this route was spectacular, this may have been the most beautiful ride I have ever done. Big up Scotland. 

This is such an interesting ultra race, putting a check point on the Isle of Mull and therefore having to plan around catching two ferries on and off the island really spices things up. But this year, for one final twist, half the ferries back to mainland (including the last one in the day that I and many others were planning on catching) were cancelled the night before the race. 

Having eyed up last year’s results I thought if I put it all together, I was in with a chance. However, pre-race preparations couldn’t have been any more shambolic. The ferry cancellation meant I now needed to get up two hours earlier than planned to get an earlier ferry. Lying in my hostel bed, counting down the time till my alarm at 03:15am, I just couldn’t sleep. Every matey seemingly wanting to pack their suitcase at midnight was not helping. There was one major skat at 00:15am where after calling Barnard I decided I was going to just leave right then. I got ready and made my way to the start point, but then realised I didn’t have the have the maps for Scotland downloaded onto my wahoo. So, I had to go back to the hostel to sort this, I called Barnard again, where it was decided I should have one more attempt at sleeping. However, this simply wasn’t happening. So, by about 02:00am I decided this time I was definitely going. But before setting off I had to assess what this meant for timings, I calculated that with leaving 1hr15 earlier, I would still end up on the same ferry off the Island, and therefore I was effectively adding this 1hr15 onto my finish time. However, this extra time would make it far more likely that I wouldn’t miss either of the ferries and end up stranded in the middle of nowhere. At this point, having now been awake for 21 hours already, aspirations of just finishing were now higher than aspirations of winning. Even if this was difficult to swallow.

To skip onto the finale, having made my ferries in good time and now knowing I was going to make it home to a bed, thoughts of winning were back. Keeping an eye on the progress of others, it seemed like it was going to be between me and two fellas who set off a couple hours before me. I worked out with our respective start times and the arrival times of our respective ferries; our total ride times would be about the same on arrival back to mainland. So, it was going to come down to the final 175km back to Glasgow. But with my ferry ending up being delayed and me taking an age to get off my ferry due to being in a deep sleep on arrival, I had already gave them a good advantage. But to be honest, after finally getting 30 minutes of sleep after being awake for 40 hours, I was so wiped out when I woke up I kind of forgot about trying to win. Finally, I came round enough to decide that I was going to go hard and see what happens. With about 90km to go I realised I was going well and that I was actually in with a chance of winning.  This inspired me to give it absolutely everything till the end. And somehow, I managed to pull it out of the bag! Sneaking in for the win by 6 minutes. 

Lastly, big shout out to Craig who I formed a little team with on Mull, we had a good amount of time till our ferry back to mainland, so it was really nice to have the time to ride and chat together, this really refreshed the brain. I’d definitely have had a meltdown hiking to the ridiculous checkpoint location on Mull on my own too! Big thanks to the Racing Collective for putting on such awesome events, to Dan and Emma for having me back at the finish in Glasgow. And last but not least, Nick Barnard, the only man I was going to call having a sleepless meltdown prior to the race and also who I’d call straight after rolling into Inverness 25 hours later.

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Luke Temple

TransScotland 2023: WIN!!!🥇

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Morning Ride

Afternoon Ride

Afternoon Ride

Afternoon Ride

Lunch Ride

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