More news from the Marin Bristol Bike Fest (11-12 June 2005, Ashton Court, Bristol). As well as all the stuff you already know about (12 hour enduro starting 9am Saturday, Southern XC round on Sunday), the organisers have also done a deal with the people behind the Rat Race urban adventure races. The Rat Race got started in Edinburgh, then came to Bristol and this year there’s one in Manchester too. The Bristol event takes place on the same weekend as the Bike Fest, so you’d think that doing both would be a challenge. And you’d be right – if you’re doing the Bike Fest enduro you’ll still be racing when the three-hour Rat Race prologue kicks off, and the chances of you feeling up to the eight-hour Sunday leg is, frankly, remote. But if you want to have a go, there’ll be a special three-hour mini-event on Sunday exclusively for Bike Fest riders. Of course, if you’re ultra-keen you could skip a couple of hours of Bike Fest to get the RR prologue in and do the whole thing…

The Rat Race format is fairly simple – teams of three do the usual multi-discipline adventure race shenanigans, but in the city. So you’ll be street running, riding through town, kayaking in the docks, abseiling off buildings and all sorts of other fun stuff. Enter Bike Fest and Rat Race at the same time and you can get a fiver off your Bike Fest entry, with the Rat Race taster being £20 (or £50 for the full event if you can figure out a way to do it all).

Those all-important URLs: www.bristolbikefest.com and www.ratraceadventure.com.