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Extra 200 places available tomorrow for Etape Loch Ness

Don't hang about, they won't last long...

An extra 200 places for the inaugural Etape Loch Ness sportive will be released at midday tomorrow, Tuesday February 11.

The first 1000 places of the closed-road event were snapped up in hours when the event was launched in November last years, so organisers Caledonian Concepts expect the newly-available places to go quickly.

The only way to get a spot in the extra 200 will be to sign up for the Etape Loch Ness alert emails. Subscribers will get an email in before the places going on sale, containing a link to the entry page.

Event director Malcolm Sutherland said: “The speed at which the initial places sold out took us completely by surprise.

"We always knew that it would be a popular event – our years of experience in organising large-scale sporting events indicated that there would be significant demand - but we never expected it to capture the imagination of people in the way that it did.”

The 67-mile ride comprises a lap of the famous lake, starting and finishing in Inverness. The route takes in the north side of the loch, first passing through Drumnadrochit, Invermoriston and Fort Augustus before looping round to the southern side.

The event’s official charity is Macmillan Cancer Support and the extra places will only be available to riders who pledge to raise money for the charity.

Malcolm Sutherland said: “We ask that people raise a minimum of £100 for this charity, which supports people with cancer and their families across the Highlands and the rest of the UK.

Caledonian Concepts has been in negotiation with a number of agencies to get permission to increase the field to 1200 riders, but there will be no more this year.

Malcolm Sutherland said: “I can confidently say that no further places will be released for the 2014 event, however we feel there is now clear evidence to show that Etape Loch Ness will need to grow in future in order to accommodate the level of demand.”

John has been writing about bikes and cycling for over 30 years since discovering that people were mug enough to pay him for it rather than expecting him to do an honest day's work.

He was heavily involved in the mountain bike boom of the late 1980s as a racer, team manager and race promoter, and that led to writing for Mountain Biking UK magazine shortly after its inception. He got the gig by phoning up the editor and telling him the magazine was rubbish and he could do better. Rather than telling him to get lost, MBUK editor Tym Manley called John’s bluff and the rest is history.

Since then he has worked on MTB Pro magazine and was editor of Maximum Mountain Bike and Australian Mountain Bike magazines, before switching to the web in 2000 to work for CyclingNews.com. Along with road.cc founder Tony Farrelly, John was on the launch team for BikeRadar.com and subsequently became editor in chief of Future Publishing’s group of cycling magazines and websites, including Cycling Plus, MBUK, What Mountain Bike and Procycling.

John has also written for Cyclist magazine, edited the BikeMagic website and was founding editor of TotalWomensCycling.com before handing over to someone far more representative of the site's main audience.

He joined road.cc in 2013. He lives in Cambridge where the lack of hills is more than made up for by the headwinds.

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a_to_the_j | 10 years ago
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...a closed road event is worth paying for...
problem is there is not many other roads for the drivers to use, so not sure how thats going to work - perhaps they will close just 1 side of the road....

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Leviathan | 10 years ago
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What, no locals complaining about the idea of paying to use their 'local' roads for 'local' people, or the congestion this will cause?

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