A RECORD number of people have already entered this year's End2End Mountain Bike Challenge – despite the registration process only opening yesterday.

Entry officially opened on Tuesday at 12am and since then 1,232 people have paid to enter the 75km race which starts at the Point of Ayre and finishes at The Sound.

Chairman of the End2End Committee Stephen Honeybone said: "It's definitely the fastest uptake. I know last year we had a very quick uptake but not to this level."

Last year the event attracted 1,400 riders. 900 of these were from outside the UK and included riders from Scandinavia, Israel and Australia.

Currently the cap on how many riders can take part is undecided as the committee have to look at some of the narrower parts of the course to see how many bikes it can withstand. 

Stephen continued: "There is no cap on the number of entries just yet. We expect the number of bookings to slow down over the next week. When we start to get to the 1,500 mark we will make a decision then to how many can take part."

There are no plans to run multiple End2End challenges although Stephen said they had considered some changes to the event in the future.

He explained: "We are going to keep it to the one event but we may extend it over a weekend to make it into more of a festival – but not this year!"

The registration process for the End2End Mountain Bike Challenge is set to close on Friday, September 9.

The event takes place on Sunday, September 18.

To enter click here.