I raced in a North Yorkshire Mountain Bike Orienteering (NYMBO) event at the weekend. These are a series of relaxed and well organised events.

Mountain bike orienteering is great fun. Basically you get a set time to reach as many controls as you can to score the most points. The route and navigation is up to you. You get ride in a new area and have an incentive to really push yourself.

This event was held in the Howardian Hills north of York. The area is a great mix of quiet roads and singletrack. It made for a great venue.

Over 4 hours I rode 52km and climbed 800m. That’s about my limit. To put that into perspective the winner climbed 950m and rode 80km. That’s an average of 20km/hr which is amazing.

The riding was great fun, although the mud seemed to stick to everything. At one stage I had to stop to get the 5kg of accumulated mud off my wheels.

As far as kit is concerned the couple of “must haves” were:

1)A  Miry Mapboard. These are expensive but well worth the investment if you regularly do MBO. (Mountain Bike orienteering)

2) My Marmot Driclime windshirt again was the perfect top.  These simply are the most versatile windshirts going.  They keep the wind away and are very breathable.  I use mine now for skiing, ski touring, walking and biking.

The next event is 17th April in Broxa forest in North Yorkshire. For further info see the NYMBO website.

Jake

Sorry this update is a week late but the short answer is for my race partner Tim & I nothing happened. We went into round 4 leading the male pair series and holding the yellow jersey bike numbers. However come race morning Tim was too sick to race. The result was that we slipped from 1st to 3rd, which to be fair would have happened anyway as the Powell brothers and the Inov8 pair are better than us. With one round to go which we again can’t do, we hold 3rd with a very slender 2 point lead over the pair in 4th who are the only team who can overtake us. It all comes down to if and how they do in the welsh round.

Last Sunday I has my first run out as a male solo. Tim always stops me from making at least one big error per event so I wondered how I would fare. I went for an ambitious bike leg only missing 1 control but was 15mins later out on the run than I had wanted. The run course had a couple of big hills but was fairly compact so I recovered some of my lost time. I dropped 4 run controls to finish with 550 out of 600. I was pleased with my performance and finished 5th overall in male solos. I did however overshoots 2 checkpoints and one junction.

Will post when the results of the last round are in.

Packing to go skiing tonight, which is always an opportunity to test new kit. As well as some Dynafit Vertcial ST’s on some K2 COMBAcks and some BD Traverse poles, all of which are new to me, I have a pile of clothes from Mammut, Odlo, Mountain Equipment, X Bionic and Craft.

My dilemma with new clothes is that the only way to fairly test them is to put my faith in them and leave all my tried and trusted favourites behind. Not something I am completely happy doing, but out goes the ME Astron Hooded Jacket, ME Liskamm Pants, Ortovox Merino Top, Smarwool Merino Bottoms and Marmot Salopettes (can’t even remember the name they have lasted that long).  I did however draw the line at my Marmot Ultimate Ski Gloves.

So what have I got? No hardshell salopettes at all but the new fabric G2 Ultimate Mountain Pants from ME and the lighter Advanced Base Jump Pant from Mammut.  No softshell jacket either but an ME Shroud fleece and a windproof midlayer from  Mammut. I have base layers, all synthetic from Odlo, X Bionic and Craft plus a synthetic/wool hybrid from Mammut. The one piece I have no doubt about is a trial jacket from ME. It’s an insulated jacket with a full 3 layer pro shell outer, dare I say it a ski jacket. Might be another season before it’s perfected but it looks great.

Had hoped to line up some Rab Vapourise and eVent as well but that will have to wait for another time. Will send some updates from my trip and have full reports when I get back.

Please help us to choose the right products for you.

Do you prefer a zip neck or crew (round) neck on your thermal top? Zip necks allow for a bit more temperature regulation but cost £5 – £10 more than a standard unzipped thermal long sleeve top. Which do you prefer?

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All of last summer’s Mountain Equipment Sleeping Bags are now on sale to make room for the new ones. Most of the changes are cosmetic and some of them as minor as labelling, but we won’t sell them as this current unless they are!

The down ranges of Extreme, Xero and Dreamcatcher are 20% Off RRP

The synthetic ranges of Moonwalker, Starlight and Sleepwalker are 50% off RRP

We do not have a complete spread of sizes and weights in the sale, just what’s left from last summer, but have a look because the bag you want might be there.

Open Adventure’s 4 day event  Adidas TERREX has been accepted as part of the World Adventure Race Series.

Recognition of what great events James and his team put on.

If all sound that sounds too much, start with a friendly little Open 5

Arcteryx has come to Facewest this spring. Today we had the climbing harnesses delivered but tomorrow we should have most of the shell and softshell with a few stragglers after that. For this spring we have concentrated on their lightweight shells for our ski touring, weight concious and summer alpine customers. Arcteryx still make a good range of shells in Gore Tex Paclite which ME and Marmot don’t use much any more. We have both membraned and non membrane jackets from their softshell range and a selection of non membraned pants in different fabric weights.

All Arcteryx Spring/Summer 10 Products.

Arcteryx Climbing Harnesses

The stock will go onto the site tomorrow but I know it’s in the warehouse now, so you can order it now if you wish.

I know it’s blowing our own trumpet a bit but we are proud of our customer service. There are a new reviews, including some international ones, almost everyday on TrustPilot and so far not one complaint.

Our latest review:

Fantastic service, very fast delivery and great advice!

Stuart, provided myself and my team with great advice for our alpine race in April 2010, www.pdg.ch. The kit arrived the next day and worked fantastically on our training week in Switzerland. If you want straight talking advice from someone who knows what they are talking about then Stuart at Facewest is your man!

Although I am mentioned by name for the advice, I didn’t receive it into stock, pack it or send it so it really is a team effort to make these things happen.

Thanks and keep them coming.

We regularly get requests from people for products from our brands but which we don’t hold in stock and we’ve always been happy to try our best to source items from our suppliers where possible. We’ve decided to take this one step further and appoint Tim to handle all of our special orders. Alongside this we have published a set of Special Ordering Terms And Conditions for anyone wanting to take advantage of the service.

So if you’re looking for a specific product and we’re not stocking it then have a read and drop Tim an email, he should be able to help you out.