Thinking of scoring a last-minute team entry for this weekend’s guaranteed-to-be-fantastic Bristol Bike Fest event? Forget it – it’s full to the rafters, entries are closed, there won’t be any on the day, please don’t show up on the off-chance, you’ll be disappointed.

The good news is that there are still places for the 12 and 6 hour solo events on Sunday, so what you want to do is to split your team up and all enter as solos. And if you think that sounds a bit hard, well, think of it as a lesson learned – get your entry in earlier and you get an easier time of it.

Mind you, we can talk, the Bikemagic entries only went in the other day. Keep an eye out for the four-person Team Bikemagic/Justride (that’s Dave and his Devon buddies) and the three-person Bikemagic Babysitters (Mike, his good lady wife and Chris Williams, who put in a very respectable solo performance last year but wants an easier time of it this year).

And if you snag one of those remaining solo places, you can have the inestimable pleasure of racing alongside (or, more likely, well ahead of) Mike and Dave again, ‘cos we’re soloing as well. Two twelve hour races on consecutive days has got to be easier than one 24 hour race, right?

There’re some important last-minute updates for competitors on the event website at http://www.bristolbikefest.com/news5.php. The only thing we’d add to that is to bring lots and lots (and lots) of water, plus sunscreen and well-ventilated clothing – the forecast is showing temperatures in the high 20s °C for Saturday and breaking 30 on Sunday. Obviously bring waterproofs too, this is Britain after all… The course is fully prepped and apparently in great shape.

It’ll be a cracker. See you there…