Quote Originally Posted by noel View Post
People should be encouraged to do it, just so they can say "yes, but I did the down and up". This would add to your overall achievement, and gain respect. It also makes it closer to an actual category A race (but that's a different discussion).

We tried it one time on a recce of the second half of the Skyline. I went down and up and 38DD went round the edge. I got there first by about a minute, but my heartrate during this bit averaged 160, whereas his was 140.
Interesting. Last year I was way way behind Phil Winskill approaching the penultimate checkpoint (he was a tiny dot on the horizon). He went down and up and I trundled round the skyline and ended up in front of him. Phil went from a guaranteed 2nd to 6th and lost about 8 minutes. My advice is not to do it if you want to finish as quickly or as far up the field as possible.