Now that this years’ edition of the EPONA Ultra 100 is done and dusted and the SIRONA is lurking in the distance, it’s time to shift focus, not dwell. I don’t do soppy reflections. It’s the second 100 miler under my belt, the buzz – not as lingering as last year. Still a great achievement that I basked in for a day or two while other first-timer pals are still, today on a high no doubt!
I took advantage of my quick recovery by sorting my EPONA ultra bling.
I can’t mount and frame everything. There’d be no room. I’ve got a hanger for the unworthy, but this one, I felt, deserved one, since the effort was a massive improvement on last year. It was never gonna be easier, but I did better.
So, I got to it. As a graphic designer and pretty creative person, I make all the stuff you see myself. After wanting to get last year’s EPONA bling mounted, my eyes watered at the costs (£200+!) – never one to devalue anyone’s services, as a designer I’m tested daily about why it costs so much. It’s the years of expertise, not the hours of execution. But I couldn’t justify that amount of money. As I had an idea of the layout I wanted, I sent of my layouts and some even said it wasn’t achievable.
I ain’t one to shy away from a challenge (except the Wild Horse 200 at the moment), so thought fuck it, I’ll have a bash for a fraction of the price. Might be a bit rough and ready, but if it looks OK, it goes on the wall. Design the layout around the bling and race number was step one. Step two, align it all. I like neatness and evenness! Buy a frame. Measure the size of the backing board. Adjust size of my design to sit nicely. Order the print (a 2mm board slightly bigger than A3 size) then painstakingly stick the race number on – straight and even. This took a go or two!
That’s the fucking easy bit. The buckle… What a twat!
The EPONA ultra buckles are a special bit of bonus bling – as they are in any big event.
Aligned it, pressed it into the board to see where I needed to make a hole for the nobble to just pop through and retain itself and cable tie the bracket on the buckle. It. Always. Fucking. Moves. So, it took a few goes. Got it in the end. Secured further with copious amounts of gaffer tape hidden behind the buckle itself. The medal was faff, but a little less faff at least. Just a case of making a slot and feeding the ribbon through until the right length and the wording positioned correctly – then stuck down with some heavy duty double-sided tape. Final step, loads of tape on the bac over the cable ties and the nobble on the buckle and keeping the excess ribbon tucked away. No way I was cutting the ribbon, that’s too easy and too lazy!
Done!
However, it didn’t stop there! I’ve seen some pretty cool 3D prints of extruded routes and I wanted to see how they were done, so as always, you don’t know unless you try… So, I had a bash. Downloaded the GPX, put it into some software to turn 3D, took the STL file, chucked into my 3D printer software, dicked about with it a little then sent the Gcode to print.
Had no idea how this was gonna turn out…
…But it turned out pretty good! Only meant to be a novel souvenir, not a scaled, super accurate representation.
It’s pretty cool because you can see the ups, downs, lowest points and the highest points. Again, design a backing board, ordered a frame, tweaked the board dimensions to fit the frame (always better to have and measure than take the online product descriptions as Gospel. They are so way out it’s laughable most of the time! Anyway, this was the result. Cheers Amazon and www.printed.com! An improvement on last year’s effort or better? Take a look here!
Better find some room on the wall for the SIRONA one next!
