Pro racers don’t usually bother going after Fastest Known Times on bikepacking routes for the thrill of it, but Cameron Mason is no ordinary pro, and his set-up for his assault on the John Muir Way was even less conventional. Sat aboard an aero road bike, stuffed with tyres 6mm over the official clearance, the Scottish rider blitzed the 212-kilometre multi-terrain route in under eight hours last week, adding to the never-more-relevant debate over what bike is the right tool for the job at hand.
Mason, who races cyclocross for Seven Cycling and road for the Alpecin-Premier Tech Development team, was at a bit of a loose end earlier this month after capping his ‘cross season with third overall in the X2O Trofée series.
“I just was like, ‘I need to scratch that itch of just doing a bit of a mission’,” he tells Cyclingnews. “I’ve known about the John Muir Way for years. My childhood family home is on the route, and actually now my own home in Edinburgh is also on the route, so it goes through two very important places to me.”
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The John Muir Way measures 212 kilometres from coast-to-coast in Scotland, starting in Helensburgh in the west and ending up in Dunbar in the east, featuring “a mixture of forest tracks, singletrack, canal towpaths, walking paths, cycling paths, landrover tracks and sections on roads”, according to the Bikepacking Scotland website.
After going out to recon the parts of the course he didn’t know so well, all that was left to do was wait for the trails to dry out and wait for a favourable westerly wind. “A few of these things came together to actually do the route and the I woke up one morning and got the train through to Helensburgh, and then just cracked on,” Mason says.
Aero bike, road gearing, and squeezing in 38mm
The wind needed to be blowing at Mason’s back if he was to stand any chance of bettering John Mackenzie’s FKT of 8h 19m 42s – not to mention the second-best time of 9h 01m 20s held by Cyclingnews’ very own Graham Cottingham. But the dry conditions were especially important given his bike set-up.
Remarkably, Mason completed the ride on a Canyon Aeroad, the German brand’s all-out wind-cheating road racing frame that has won the past three editions of Milan-San Remo.
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