The Finale - Wembo 24 Hour Solo World Championships - Canberra

Temperature generally seems to be commensurate with darkness. The blacker the blackness, the colder it is. I would have hoped that after 15 laps and 250 odd kilometers I'd have been at least a little bit warmer than I was - or at least a little more resilient. But no. The cold chewed into me, gnawing into my arms and worming its way into my psyche. It bent my mind from the task at hand and seduced me into thoughts of duck-down doonas and shots of schnapps in Swiss jacuzzis. My lap times were beginning to slow - partly due to the darkness, partly due to fatigue but mostly due to the fervent desire to doing anything else than dragging my skinny carcass through a strangely forested walk-in beer fridge.
When I began wondering about the potential warmth gained from leaking a little urine into my pants I knew it getting desperate. I had tried to keep my pit-time spend as low as possible, hoping to get through the night without another stop for clothes, but on that next pit Kyllie wrapped me up in all the nuclear winter spec racing spandex I'd brought with me - and despite burning another five minutes, I felt like everything was all right.

The first half of the course was almost all climbing and should a rider chance a buckled wheel or broken wrist it rewarded them with a spectacular view of race HQ and the Stromlo hinterland. As the wee-small hours ticked away each time I rolled over the summit I glanced over at the horizon, hoping that the sun was soon to make an appearance - to not only light my way, but to also lighten my mood.

If you're happy and you know it...

And two laps later, when it did, I let a little holy moment wash over me. 

The sunrise heralded the start of the last part of the race. The 'race' part. The first part was an exercise in restraint, the second an excursion into survival, the last part, with 280 odd kilometers in my very tired legs was all about winning, something. Anything.

Kyllie, Linda and Bede had not only been feeding me food and maintenance, but information as well - and it was about now that I began to actually hear it. With each pit I was told to look out for a target, and if I got them, look out for the next.

Now that I was feeling a solar powered my lap times were tumbling. I was told to chase 'Project 63' on one frenetic pit stop and bolted out onto the hunt with the desperate hunger of a bad salesman. I caught him in that lap (to be honest, continental drift would have lapped him, he looked like a tombstone) and on my next pit was told that I was only seconds up or down from either 3rd or 4th place. I wasn't at my cognitive best at that stage. Kyllie could have been reading me the ingredients list from a box of edible condoms and it would have all meant the same thing. Just go really fast.

But now all this racing business was starting to hurt. My feet were burning and bruised having repeatedly stamped on unforgiving carbon innersoles, my legs were boiling in lactic acid and my hands had shut down feeling to both my pinkies in protest. But positions in the overall standings were now being contested. I had no clear space between me and the people in front or behind. With the exception of World Champ Jason English, it felt like everyone was within striking distance of each other.

Getting all 'friendly' - AKA: Trying to break a bloke

I still had 4 hot laps to get through and now had some company. At the time I didn't think much of it, but I called out to pass a cat on one of the climbs and turned around to see another dude right on my wheel. His plate was numbered close to mine, he looked about as old as me and he looked like a tough bugger who'd just spent a night in the trenches. We hit the next lap suckered together - and driven by sleep deprived paranoia, I decided to see who this bloke was. I waited until I was right in the middle of the first technical steep climb - and attacked. My feet complained bitterly as I stood up and mashed the pedals, hoping to snap the ten or twenty meters of elastic that welded us together. Sure, it stretched, but it didn't snap. I tried again closer to the top and then again as we crested the climb. Over the sound of my exertion I could hear him heaving for air, but he wouldn't fold. 'So - old mate - looks like you can climb a bit'.

As the descent came up I steeled myself for a Sam Hill style ripping run. Its one thing to be able to dig into a climb, but another to hold onto a racing line when the trail is nothing but motion blur and swirling gravity. Again, I tested my new friend, to see what he had. I gapped him almost immediately - but not enough. The elastic stretched, deep into the range where it would snap for lesser men, but even after bombing drop after drop, as the trail flattened out he would roll back up to me. I attacked on the next series of climbs and he stuck with me, I bombed the descents into the race village, and there he was, holding it together 100 meters or so off my wheel. 

A little further back, but still there...still unbroken.

With only a few laps to go I pulled into the pits and ditched the last of my pre-dawn kit - which combined with all the exertion had me sweating like live exports in Saudi. Kyllie stuffed food into my mouth and information into my head. Old mate was actually a guy called Jamie Vogele who had stormed his way into third during the night, only to have me sniffing around as the race began to count down. As I stripped down to race weight, I saw him tear past and disappear into another lap. He had vanished like an election promise. 

Had I'd comprehended half of what Kyllie was saying I'd have been heartbroken. Thanks to my brothers-in-law Stuart and Robert, who into the small hours had been remotely following the race, Kyllie knew exactly who Jamie was and what his sudden acceleration meant for my little piece of podium. For my part I thought that I was in first, fifth, an alien, dreaming, all of the above - and apart from going as fast as I could, had nothing else to think of, nevermind some bloke I couldn't crack on the previous lap.

The clock slowed down, sped up, wound backwards as the third last lap flashed by. I was looking out for anybody with a five in their number - for in my madness this had some special significance - biblical significance for all I knew. I found myself lurking around Jason McAvoy (the eventual World Champ in my category) and embarrassed myself by attacking him too, not realizing he'd lapped me. To add to the kalidescope playing out in my psyche my body was really beginning to bitch at me now too. My knees felt like they were grinding cartilage like chewing tobacco, my shoulders and neck were seizing up - and my poor old feet would have felt better in the hungry end of a wood-chipper.

Still, I couldn't drop the pace, it wasn't going to make the pain go away in any case. I didn't stop at the next pit, driven by a desperation that was half pure madness and half racing paranoia. There was only two hours to go and I had to go fast - not that I knew the hell why.

'Aliens! Snakes! Snakeliens!' Riding crazy.

My last lap started at 11:20am or so after another insane hour of trail and misguided thinking. In the pits Kyllie had yelled at me one of the only things that I actually took note of. "Jamie Vogele is in third - he is five minutes ahead".
Five minutes is a massive gap. In the laps since I stopped to drop my winter kit Jamie had laid down two cracking times and had built a bulletproof advantage. It was a pretty harsh reality check. Coming fourth is the worst position in the world, even worse than second. And I had more chance of making a jumper out of my own hair than I had of making up five minutes in the last hour of riding.

Had I not been hurting so much, and been so well and truly done with being on my bike, I would have just rolled through the last lap, stopped and talked crap with the marshals, run my hands through the trail side foliage and generally been a tourist. 
But I was hurting, and the only way to make it stop was to get through the remaining kilometers as fast as possible. And so in one last twisted little sojourn into my brain I decided that I'd try and hurt myself - a lot - as much as I could while being on a bike - just to see what that kind of hurt actually, really, felt like.

Not terribly pleasant, as it turned out.

I pounded through that lap like I was being chased by wolves. On the climbs I loaded up my gears and on the descents I went brake-less. In between laboured breaths I wondered if the pain in my feet was actually a sensation of cold or if the jarred numbness in my hands was like being tickled through thick skin. I was riding like a tool and thinking like a twat, and then suddenly, bang in the middle of the lap - something quite strange appeared. 

Jamie Vogele.

There he was - grinding his way up a painful climb, with a head like an apple on a slinky, moving about as fast as decay. Here was the bloke who, for the last 6 hours had bravely defended his place on the podium...looking like he was clinically dead, with only twitching nerves turning his pedals over. 
For one enormous, pregnant moment I didn't know what to do. 

Then it all came rushing back. 

"Passing on your right"
I dropped down onto the trail in front of him, stood out of the saddle and sprinted. I turned around, expecting to see him right on my wheel. Instead, he stopped riding - crossed his arms in front of him as if to sleep on a desk - and gently laid his head on his handlebars. It was a deeply moving moment. It was like seeing an old Samurai laying down his sword.

Moving moment, yes, but also a moment in which I needed to move. I was terrified that Jamie might be foxing, or be magically revived and so I turned back to the trail, stood on the pedals and sprinted all the way to the line.

Pit lane had been turned into a media gallery. There were cameras and a crowd and a torrent of banter being bandied around by the race commentator.
Kyllie and Linda were waiting for me, as was pit legend Kenny Soiza who had supported not only me, but my co-competitor Kevin Skidmore through a torrid 24 by his standards. Kyllie wasn't surprised to see me, but shocked to see that I'd finished in an age group 3rd position and 15th overall. She was as excited as I was emotional - and I struggled to keep up appearances as I was warmly congratulated by those people who were watching over me. I was helped off my bike an over to a nice chair in the shade of the Stromlo Pavillion. 

With Kenny post race. Tired and emotional.
Just me, that is

From my plastic chair I watched the race wind down, still a little overwhelmed by the whole thing. Its easy to get wrapped up in the riding but if there is any form of solitude racing that is a team event its this. Kyllie and Linda had been absolutely epic, had stayed up all night and endured my bleating and barking during whatever frantic pit stop I was putting them through. Kenny had been a sage voice of pit wisdom and had more than once totally ignored whatever I thought I wanted and gave me just what I needed - and Bede our mechanic kept our bikes running smooth and hard all race.

Fellow racer Kevin Skidmore had been out with the fast starters up until midnight when some heart-rate strangeness put him trackside for a few hours. Moving from a warm doona to the blackened trail during the cold dead hours before dawn is a feat not to be underestimated...and while well down by his high standards still tapped out 18 laps of a brutal course. Thanks go to Robert Douglas and Stuart Peele for a pro-level information stream, Kev and Paul from Team C-Nut for keeping the stoke up and Lyn, Colin, Tim, Paul for swinging in to help.

And big props to Wembo for a cracking race. Phil, Robin, Mark and the kids at Cycles Galleria for their wisdom and for setting me up on the truly excellent Pivot Mach 429C. Thanks to Jess Douglas and Lance Cupido for their advice, to Jamie Vogele for making the last 4 hours such a bareknuckle pitfight - and to every other competitor who flew in to make such an epic event, so absolutely, properly epic. 

Physically - I'm still not yet over this. Maybe that's to be expected. Emotionally however, I don't ever want to be, and there may still be events to come that get me excited enough to put a 24 hour solo bike race back onto my mountain biking bucket list.

Results are here: http://www.durt.com.au/events/wembo2013/ 

Photos (refreshingly without me) are here: http://www.sportograf.com/bestof/2196/

Thanks Wembo - you rock

PS: Congratulations to Jason English and Jess Douglas. World Champions. Again. So proud.

Part 3 - Wembo 24 Hour Solo World Championships - Canberra

There was no gun, no puff of smoke, no Daisy Duke waving away two tearaway drag-cars, just the sound of cleats snapping into pedals and the gentle cheer of the gathered crowd.

We were racing, though to the casual observer, it was very gentlemanly indeed. Low pressure tyres casually hummed as we did a presentation lap of the tarmac. Fitzroy Rev rider Mark Sandon rolled up next to me and simply placed his hand on my back in a no-words gesture of camaraderie. I did the same, nothing was said, but the understanding was there. We were both rolling into the biggest race of our lives.

Rocks! Who'd have thunk it?

I had some reservations about the opening hour. I'd heard that it'd sometimes start like a time trial, blasting into 24 hours of trail like a coked-up SWAT team, which is what it is usually like in any race 6 hours and under. Instead the peloton formed well behaved conga line of co-ordinated colour, with almost a completely synchronized cadence as we snaked up the first climb. The pace was not flat out, but not exactly slow. Usually riding at this kind of speed would indicate that you'd got to the starting chute late and were rolling around at the back with the wobblers, trying to avoid the carnage as heavy breathing beginners aimed themselves at trees, rocks and sudden drops. By contrast each rider possessed such a command of their respective bike that they seemed to float over the trail, effortlessly cutting efficient lines through the barking rocks and snarling foliage. It was like watching bullets in slow motion.

3 hours in. Still clean, still covertly having fun.

Strangely, nobody talked. In past incarnations as a team rider at 24 hour events I'd come steaming up on a couple of solo riders who'd been discussing Jungian psychoanalysis at 4 in the morning, and appeared to have been doing so for the past 3 hours. Not at this Wembo. With non-UCI approved rainbow stripes on the line it seemed that talking was reserved for the un-serious. And here, on some of the funnest trails in the southern hemisphere, un-seriousness was rarer than rocking horse shit.
There were no well formed micro pelotons of similarly skilled riders, no witty banter, no discussions of concussions or tales of gore about saddle sores. It was like each rider was watching everybody out of the corner of their eye, in the fear that a fellow competitor would pickpocket their last gel and use it to out-sprint them - 22 hours from now. I stole no gels, spoke no evil and wound through the open lap lurking in tenth in the 40-44 age group. Not that I knew...I was still mildly terrified of what I'd look like in 20 hours time.

The laps ticked away and strangely, I was feeling pretty damn good. My ever attentive support crew of Kyllie, Linda and Bede the mechanic would jump to attention as I rolled into the pits, plying me with lube, bananas to gobble during transition and gels that I would mainline on the short and rare quiet sections of the trail. I tried to keep my ticker beating south of 160 per minute on the climbs and bombed the descents like I didn't like myself - which on such kicking trail was hella-fun. Much more fun than 'actually' not liking myself. I save that for road riding. And I didn't know, or wasn't listening, but I was drifting north on the score sheet and as the sun started getting shy circa 7.00pm I had crept into a category 6th and mid 40's overall.

Dusk - Light bulb above the head - but no idea

Shadows stared to stretch out and tiger-stripe the trail, mutating pretty average lines into a freak-show. Every so often I would misread a line and end up with white knuckles, complaining tyres and a massive momentum leak.
This was happening more and more regularly and by the time it was properly black, I was beginning to appreciate how hard this period may actually be.

Ask anybody (with a suitably loaded question) and they will agree. Darkness is isolating. It washed in around the trees and chased all the contrast out of the trail. My lights did a reasonable job of re-presenting my path in shades of white, light grey and black but I was still losing perspective, braking way too late and shedding speed like it was a painful memory. In the deepening solitude my thoughts got louder, madly clear and resolutely weirder. In a moment where I almost out-weirded myself I imagined that I was a post-apocalyptic bike courier who had to deliver an important package across a radioactive wasteland whatever the cost - with the odd zombie encounter in there for entertainment.

Role playing games, no dice

The darkness took hold like pneumonia and I was starting to get sick of it. To make matters worse I was being very well looked after my pit crew, but seeing them heralded only the harsh reality that I needed to roll out onto the trail again. Out on course, there were sections of trail that, once painted black may as well have been blunt force trauma. In a shining example of why alcohol should never be prohibited, at the impact point of one of the hardest sections of trail a group of spectators had gathered, and fueled by rum and their own warm hearts chanted whatever funny support-crap they could coherently sing, bringing a much needed smile to the parched lips of many a rider. 
"If you're happy and you know it, um... pop a mono!" 
I performed the weakest mono ever popped.
"Yahay!!!"

Having tucked away three or four night laps it was in-arguably colder and at my 11:00pm pit I threw a rain shell on for warmth. Kyllie stuffed my pockets with something that I apparently needed, but as I rolled away with a mouth full of muffin I only recall silently complaining about the weight.
One lap and 10 minutes later I was singing her praises - if a little desperately. Some 5 or 6 kilometers from race central, on the downhill run in to a particularly tough section of trail I flicked the switch on my lights to bring them up from one third, to full power. Instead of plastering the landscape with 5000 lumens of light, they went out. Dead. Ex-parrot dead. I don't recall my pupils enlarging so fast as to cause pain before, but they did at that moment. Not that it made a lick of difference - for all I could see I could have been in a coal pit during an Icelandic winter solstice. I locked up front and rear brakes and after a few loud moments of heartrate elevation breathed a sigh of thanks that it was rubber on gravel that pulled me up rather than skull on rock.

I must have dropped five minutes - four and a half being stupefied with stunned disbelief - and 30 seconds in switching out the dead lights with the weight that Kyllie had lumbered me with - a set of helmet mounted Ay-Up race lights. I was saved - but I had to savour it, quite literally. There was no way to mount the battery for the spare light to my helmet and it's cord was too short to allow me to pocket it - so I put the battery in my mouth and gummed it through the lap, dribbling saliva down my chin like an old Labrador with a mangled chew toy.

Mmmm...lithium polymer

Final episode tomorrow...daylight, oh baby.

Part 2 - Wembo 24 Hour Solo World Championships - Canberra

Sleep and me generally don't get along. We argue about 2 or 3 times a night, where sleep cracks it, storms out of bed and I end up wandering around the house until the wee small hours looking for it. The night before race day I really wanted a good nights rest, and to my astonishment, I actually got it. 

I was also feeling a little more relaxed about tactics. Some really smart-crazy people had published online that a 24 hour should be broken up into 3 distinct competitions. The first is not really even a race, its who is the freshest and strongest at the 10 hour mark. The second hinges upon who can get through the night the best and the third part, covering the last 6 hours is a bona-fide balls-out red lights flashing mountain bike race. 

And add the last little piece of calmness to the scenario, our pit crew had set up camp in a golden spot, perched right on the hairpin that signified the halfway point of Pit Lane. It mean that all the hard work was done to get there and once refreshed and refueled, a rider had a tailwind and a downhill run down to the singletrack. 

Pit Crew HQ - 85% built

Despite being relatively relaxed and prepared we were all still buzzing around HQ. Sweet somethings were lined up in little zip-lock bags, electolytes were mixed, bottles lined up and thanks to our resident mechanic Bede we had our respective bikes tweaked that last 1% that stood to make all the difference. I pained over my choice of chamois cream, the tension on my shoes, the placement of my number plate and had to be held back from making nervous and stupid last minute adjustments to my saddle height or handlebar angle.

Dancing with the Stars, Matt Page with Kev and me

There were guys even more prepared than us - nonchalantly rolling around the tarmac like ten year olds in their local cul-de-sac. Among them was Welshman Matt Page, who had come out to shake up Jason English's dominance. He stopped by, had a chat and as most of these very fast guys are, was a genuinely nice bloke.

Now feeling somewhat more relaxed than I should, I snapped myself into race mode, lathered up with about a litre of sunburn cream and chamois cream in no particular order, did a pointlessly brief warmup and rolled down to the starting line.

The starting chute for a 24 is a strange beast. In stage races and 6 hour enduros, the pointy end is straining against the fabric of the invisible line like a nipple in a Southerly. Instead we were all very chilled, even the usual embarrassing chatter born of pre-race nerves was surprisingly AWOL. 
We held a moments silence for Kane Vandenberg who fatally crashed the day before and watched the pros roll away with their entitled 10 minute head start. 

See you cats tomorrow...the Wembo starting chute

To be continued...the actual race.

Part 1 - Wembo 24 Hour Solo World Championships - Canberra

It'd be fair to say that entering a 24 hour solo mountain bike race is about the same as deciding to have cosmetic surgery on your wedding tackle. Not that they have the same physical outcomes, almost opposite in fact, but they are both high risk pursuits with debatable returns, that most people can do without. 
To those outside the world of mountain bike racing - and even to some within - it seemed like a stupid thing to do. Most people I spoke to about racing my bike for 24 hours non-stop reacted as though I'd said that I'd booked my man sausage into the shop for a set of speed fins and a custom spray. 

But soloing a 24 is something that has blinked away on my mountain biking bucket list for a while and with the World Endurance Mountain Biking Organization (Wembo) hosting the 2013 World Champs in Canberra, the opportunity to race it had become both relatively easy and terrifyingly real. Having loved racing team 24s at Canberra in my distant past I thought that this was an opportunity not to be missed, and in a moment of unrestrained impulsiveness I threw myself at the online registration, paid for my entry and sat back thinking that this was going to be epic... or an epic fail. 

Subtle reminders - everywhere

I had heard - and mostly believed - all sorts of myths about 24 hour racing. Stories abounded about the sleep deprivation, the madness, the buildup of lactic acid that would burn your legs down to bleeding stumps. I had searched Youtube for tips and watched crazed, wild eyed psychos offer that kind of advice that sounded like a cocktail of frantic warnings and outright abuse.
I had no idea how to train for a 24 but I did have many epic training ideas. I had planned to do full day stints on the wind trainer watching series after series of Breaking Bad, ride to and from Bendigo/Warnambool/Rio de Janeiro  in a day  or wear a hairshirt under a lead filled vest and do repeats of Mount Hotham.

Instead, I did very little and followed current and multiple 24 Solo World Champ Jason English on Strava and basically spent a bunch of time sitting in front of my computer with my jaw hanging open in disbelief. Jason's direct competition was also racing many hundreds of kilometers at many thousands of feet of altitude (Mongolia Challenge for example), and the numbers I was watching fall out of their stats was mind boggling. It'd be fair to say that the terror meter was finding new high water marks.

Don't add sugar to the crystal meth Walt! 

Fortunately, fear and resolve often hang out together. And when it reached some kind of critical zenith I was spurred into action. I trained. Hard, and a lot. 
And in a fashion it became contagious. Kyllie and me had hooked up with 24 hour veteran Kevin Skidmore and his team of Kenny and Linda we all started tempering our respective steel as it were - the riders were in the gym, on the trainer, tapping out long rides and racing 6 hour enduros, and the pit crew building spreadsheets packed with logistical considerations, such as whether we wanted marg or low salt butter on our Fairy Bread. 

We spent up on kit. Half in desperation and half out of pure respect for the undertaking. I did my research and reached out for a hot new bike. The very epic and incredibly fast Pivot Mach 429 Carbon from the very good kids at Cycles Galleria. Kevin rode it once, immediately got his own new bike and as race day approached, riders and support crew were all starting to feel - almost - prepared. 
Canberra awaited, glittering in the not too distant future.

The 24 solo course was cherry picked from the the singletrack utopia that is built into Mount Stromlo Forrest Park. Stromlo is a veritable Disney Land of trail, with excellent, mature networks that have hosted national and international race rounds of all flavours. And while it doesn't let you get dirty, it even has a cracking road criterium circuit upon which the race village was centered.

Race central from to top of Mount Stromlo

Most of the atmosphere of the race bubbled away on pit lane, which was about a one kilometer tarmac loop, with a confetti of marquees, portable offices and other paraphernalia shuffling and settling with the industry of the 24 hour pit crews . Popular items were motivational whiteboards with worn slogans like "HTFU Robbie", "Go Kelly!" and "John, did you remember to turn the iron off?"

A massive electronic scoreboard was blinked out the lap times in the middle of the circuit, a big inflatable arc marked the start/finish line, various media vans and meandering semi-officious hacks completed the look - and as the sun set on raceday-eve, everything shouted that this was going to be a cracking event indeed.

Pit lane, waiting for race day

More to come...



(A minutes silence. The day before race start I was in the carpark watching an ADCC downhill race taking place. One particular gent hit the second last big jump and got a little out of shape in the air - though either wind or bad luck. At considerable pace he landed front wheel heavy, it threw his weight forward and forced his bars to cross up. That effectively whipped him around his bars and straight into the high side of the last jump. He hit this wall of dirt at about 50 clicks...and stopped. He stopped way too quickly for it to be anything other than very serious.
Despite the immediate and commendable first aid efforts of the ADCC, he died that day - by all accounts, instantly.
Kane Vandenberg - 46, Naval Officer based at Nowra, survived by his wife and three sons.)

Magellan 6 Hour - Bendigo

Rocks. Who would have thunk it?

Rocks and me have a tense relationship. Its not like I was pelted with them at primary school or had to dig my way out of a collapsed quarry, but we just don't seem to get along.

Bendigo has lots of rocks. Plenty of them. So many of the damn things that they've made a reasonable living out of fixing high explosive to them and replacing them with big holes in the ground.
I've heard that Bendigo trailbuilders like rocks. They sleep on rocks, mix rocks with their drinking water and name their children after different types of rocks. And so why I was surprised to see vast amounts of palaeozoic metasediment reaching out to rip holes in anything resembling shoe leather or tyre rubber escapes me.

Surprise! Rocks!

As such Jimmy Lefebvre and I found ourselves doing practice laps of the Sedgwick course early Saturday afternoon. It is a picturesque course, with much grass and frivolity. Half of it located upon private land, lovingly built by one of the local rock farmers and the other half reaches out to where the wild rocks live - deep in the surrounding forest.
We rolled through the trail, looking out for fast lines, letting our legs feel the climbs and generally faffed about with not too much to do except impersonate serious bike riders. A quick chat with Joel (MTB club member) about tyres - specifically about their distinct lack of longevity in Bendigo - and we meandered off to Jimmy's holiday pad in Bridgewater.

One of the relatively cool things about mountain biking is that you can get to see some interesting places. Race road crits in Melbourne and its unlikely you'd see anything like Bridgewater - unless you took a left turn at the Port Melbourne hot-dog circuit and didn't realize your mistake for 15 hours.

The view from the back door

After an excellent sleep, with breakfast digesting and bikes on the roof we headed off to race central. Now fans of history would know that Bendigo is a pretty serious place for cycling. Its got both heritage and gravitas - and as a Bendigo bike racer, after braving sub zero winter mornings and mid summer days that would freeze and burn your tackle off in equal measure, you're a reasonably robust individual. Not to mention fast. 

Such is the stature of racing in Bendigo that big names were present and large groups of lazy sub-rouleurs were not. Its not a place where you get out your rusty old rig for a annual charity roll around a circuit laid down by the crazy niece of the local mayor - no sir, if you came to a race in Bendigo, you came to race. And this was painfully apparent when the gun went off. 

Hounds, just waiting for a rabbit

The pack shot out of the starting gate like the unfriendly side of a Claymore and within 90 seconds I was holding onto my hair trying to stay with the leading pack as both the trail and my heart rate went sharply skywards. I have this view (another one, I have plenty) that keeping the team elites in sight for the first couple of kilometers is an honourable goal. The rationale being that it provides both a carrot (a rider to catch) and a stick (a rider catching me) to keep this old nag moving at race pace for the duration of the event.

As the early kilometers moved from future tense to recent history I noticed a skinny bloke with big legs hovering around, sporting a little too much 'silver on his back' so to speak. Letting the pups get an early break on me is one thing, but letting the old dogs take the steak before I've had a sniff? That's not the way we roll.

"Soooo, which category are you in mate?" 
"Solo" came the one word reply.
"Ho-kay..."

Bollocks. This bloke looked a month older than me and he was doing exactly what cagey old buggers do. Give away nothing, except a carefully opened can of whoop-ass.

From what I could ascertain, Old Mate here was rivale numero uno. He looked composed, focused and properly dangerous. So 4 clicks into a race that was going to run north of a ton of kilometers, I attacked.
It wasn't a bar twisting Tommy Voeckler burst up the trail, but a more camouflaged little effort as I ever so quietly tried to slip off the front without raising the alarm. By lap one I had made 15 seconds, lap two it'd reached 25 and by the time laps 3 and 4 had rolled under me he was reaching his bottles almost a minute after I'd got mine.

There was daylight between him and me, enough space to convince him to settle into his own race and not worry about where I was. Or so I'd hoped. 

The course, while only an 8 kilometer loop had some distinct challenges. Sprinkled over the tight uphill switchbacks was a confetti of loose and sharp rocks - and on the fast and flowing downhill sections waited their more sedentary cousins, lurking in the trail like hungry crocs. As opposed to Beechworth, where the elements had worn some of the personality from the granite, these rocks looked like they'd had a little C4 surgery and were bearing their teeth in post-op displeasure.

I'd thought to keep the pressure on until I'd done 6 laps, putting a gap of at least two minutes between me and Old Mate, but in doing so I took a line passing a cat on a downhill section that pushed me straight into the waiting jaws of a trail croc. 
Both tyres punctured as I hit it with latex spinning off the tyre and into my face as it hemorrhaged from the wounds. I had my bike upside down pumping air into it as Old Mate came past - and he didn't say a thing. From the neck up he was like an Easter Island statue, his face being completely bereft of expression. That's just pure hardened professionalism, and it irritated me no end.

No champ, he's now in front of you

By the time I had refilled my front tyre, nursed my rear tyre home to transition, I had chopped up over three minutes. Add to that a very well executed filling of my bleeding rear wheel (thanks Craig) and subsequent pressure change I had not only been caught by the elite 3 hour riders but had gone another two minutes into debt. Not only that, but I was a little cranky now too. And so I chased.
And chased, and chased.
I chased Old Mate Easter Island like the meaning of life was hanging off his saddle.

A composed Jimmy Lefebvre smashing the 3 hour

Despite me ripping into this race like a dog rips into homework I was only gradually pulling him in. Laps 9, 10 and 11 went by and I had pulled back a little over a minute. As we both started lap 12 I got close enough for him to see me as we passed each other in transition with maybe 90 seconds between us. It appears that me being that close to him poked old Easter with a stick and he disappeared into the forest. 

I thrashed myself on lap 12, half out of self loathing for picking a stupid line earlier in the race and half entertaining the possibility that the evil puncture trolls had dolled out a little rupture to one of Easter's rubber hoops, but nay, honest racing was in the house. Such things were not to be - and rightfully so. 

By the time I crossed the line with 3 minutes left on the clock and had been convinced by race commentator Big Rich to do another lap I had burnt everything there was to burn. The course had been fast and fun, but after 6 and a half hours of rocks, tricky climbs and tight technical berms I had been chopped up like sashimi.

I let myself roll through the last lap, semi-content that I'd given all I had and that the win had deservedly been taken by another cat. Easter's real name is Peter Casey, who (I discover after a little Google stalking) is a consistent top three finisher and has actually pulled the kinds of results in the kinds of races that I aspire to. In our post race conversation he turned out to be a nice bloke and at one point, he even smiled.

In addition to the Bendigo MTB putting on a cracking race, a big thanks go to Jimmy Lefebvre who sorted me out with digs, kit and help during the weekend, and even found time to have a blinder himself. And a massive shout out to Craig, Paul and Dan (and their loved ones) from the Earth Wind and Water crew who again, raced, smashed it and were there to fill bottles and deliver harsh motivation from the transition area.

Objective validation of my story (ie race results) can be found here: http://www.mtbbendigo.com/files/6013/7872/1904/2013-MagellanBenCyc6hr-Detailed.pdf and Garmin guff is below, for the cats who dig that stuff:


Thanks for stopping by.

Six Hours in the Saddle - Beechworth VIC

I see rocks when I sleep

I'd tried hard to put the acronym of this race into a funny sentence. The best I could come up with without mutilating my first language was 'S.H.I.T.S and giggles' or 'Giving me the S.H.I.T.S'. Both were just plain stupid and had probably been done to death by hosts Beechworth Chain Gang over beer and pizza since they came up with it a couple of years ago.

The S.H.I.T.S is a standard issue 6 Hour enduro over what appeared to be a relatively short course. It was just the north side of 10 kms, not a lot of climbing and in an area known to be tacky at its wettest. Youtube had shown clips of happy old fellas lapping on bedded down hardpack trail, with nary a care in the world. It'd convinced me that this was going to be a flat out, big lungs, big legs burn to the end.

Youtube lied.

Wake up Wang! Its raceday

Old mate Jimmy Lefebvre and me had pitted overnight in Wangeratta and struck out at dawn to set up camp at race central. It was a crisp start with not a tickle of wind and the sun was out tearing up the thick fog that had come to sleep on the paddocks. For all appearances, it looked like it was going to be a cracking day.

We got to Beechworth and made it to race central. We erected the Casa d'Custard (my yellow 6 x 6 marquee) set up our race-food pantry and with everything bedded down I set off for a quick recon lap.

I had entered the solo 40+ and convinced Jimmy to come out and enter the solo as well. He's a tough lad Jimmy, well up for a challenge, but beyond smashing a couple of races at the You Yangs and Forrest he hadn't spent too many hours on the knobby tyres after crossing over from the tarmac. Before getting here I said that he'd be fine. Just tap it out, knock over 6 or 7 laps and go home happy. About 400 meters into my scoping lap I realised that I might actually be considered a bit of a prick.

To generalize, all Beechworth trail is what we might term 'honest'. It hasn't been created with a digger, it doesn't have any North Shore style bridges or jumps and it doesn't have any carpet keeping its manicured berms in place. Instead, this course looked like it had been made by a bunch of dudes who spent their day-times as either physiotherapists or bike suspension mechanics. 

The way a Garmin sees it

It was proper, skinny singletrack, both technical and very fast. There were rocks everywhere. Rocks on rocks, near other rocks before and after more rocks. The A lines were rocky and the B lines were just as rocky, only with smaller rocks. On a 6" AM bike with some body armour you'd be picking hot lines and smashing this all day. On an XC bike in man-spandex in the middle of a 6 hour enduro, it'd be smashing you.

I was out there trying to determine where I could eat and drink, but with the longest break between technical sections being only about 4 seconds I was beginning to think this race was going to make me very skinny indeed.

The way humans see it. Not me, pic blatantly stolen from http://speedcyclingsystems.com.au

By the time I'd pretended to understand the course and had got back to camp, Jimmy had heard the word 'brutal' mentioned half a dozen times. It was indeed an honest course. Brutally honest.

The prologue involved a little something to spread out the pack and as T minus zero came around, the organizers sent us about 2 kilometers down a relatively steep gravel road. After some sub-witty banter and a remarkably relaxed official start, we all began mashing the pedals to climb back up this road and over the timing pads to get into the racing proper.

Racing at Beechworth is a cerebal challenge. The trail twists upon itself like an Escher stencil, albeit one filled with rocks. I had hit out pretty hard, with a view to keeping Tory Thomas in sight. 
I have this idea that if I'm faster than the fastest girl (girls fly - let it be known) then I'm doing ok. Its been a while since I've been able to do that - and with Tory beating me at the Blores Hill 6 hour by a minute or two I thought it to be an admirable goal. 
So I was looking out for her - I would see her through the trees just up ahead, then all of a sudden, it would look like she was just behind me. It was hard enough stopping the rocks from eating my bike without seeing where my competition was - and it was only through dumb luck that my furtive glances off the trail didn't put me in an ambulance. So I gave up on the glances, stopped thinking about podium placings and just raced.

The race tapped itself out through the first couple of hours with the an above average rate of attrition. I'd passed a myriad of cats sidelined by punctures to either tyre, tube or heart but despite hitting stuff harder than it was hitting me I'd got through unscathed - and with more than a little surprise, I found some mojo. 
It was the good stuff, serious, high potency, straight into your eyeball mojo and I started really having some fun. Laps 3, 4 and 5 had swung by without incident. Lapping with me was solo hard-man Kevin Skidmore and we were swapping positions, talking shite and trying ever so gently to gap each other. The race was going very,very well. Smooth bottle pickups, energy to burn (thanks Endura) and my 656B Mach 4 was charging through the rock gardens like it thought they were Rotorua berms. Sweet as, bro.

The way a Garmin sees a race going to pot

My tyres had been barking in protest all day, and then, not altogether unreasonably the front tyre made a sound that I really didn't want to hear. I'd hit the sharp side of a rock and cut it - leaving me with a bigger than little cut and a quicker than slow leak. I had the 'Please stop' mantra banging away in my head as I turned the leak south and hoped against hope that the whistling would be replaced by the sound of a puncture choking on latex. It didn't. Stans sealant spat out of the hole but didn't fill it. I ripped off my CO2 + sealant cannister and emptied that. The CO2 worked OK filling my tyre but the sealant, less so, doing just what the original goop did and made for the exit. Freaking out just a little, I took a punt and made for transition, which was on the other side of 4 kms of technical trail. The whistle continued and my tyre protested ever more loudly as I nursed it back to camp.

I'd lost a lot of time, but apparently was in first place as I crossed the pads to begin lap 9. At transition I got a little help from Jimmy (retired, the rocks had massacred his wrists) to pump a bunch of air into my front tyre. And with some relief I set out to roll through another couple of laps and into victory. What I didn't know that 2nd had overtaken me during my pit-stop and was doing a pretty good job of taking the win.

Lap 9 was painful. The slow leak didn't stop, the lack of pressure in it forced me to bomb less and brake more, and twice I had my bike upside down, delivering air with a hand pump. As I rolled into transition for the final lap I was told that I was now second, two minutes down on the top spot.

Sometimes there is a little moment of quiet before the effort dial is turned to 11. Its an intake of breath, a moment to consider what is about to happen and maybe even some space to wonder why. In this instance, there was no moment - it was all filled up with the chase. And chase I did.

So there I was, blasting through the trail like a psycho trying desperately to recapture the win I only recently discovered I'd had in the bag.

And as (a lack of) luck would have it, cresting on of the rocky climbs I broke my chain. An XX1 chain - 2 races old had taken a hit somewhere and with some poor gear selection and too much torque it had snapped clean through the plates. I sort of gazed at it for a bit - not really believing it was happening. It may have been 10 seconds or so, then upon remembering I'd handed off my tool pouch (read chain breaker and joining link) on the 3rd lap to a stricken rider I lifted my bike onto my shoulder and bolted down the hill to race central. 
Fortunately it wasn't far away and within a few minutes I had my bike in neutral spares with two mechanics - appreciating the urgency - working on the fix. To their credit they got me back on the trail and back in the race, but not before I'd lost enough time to be a good 10 minutes away from the win. 

Now it was all about what I didn't know. First was away, who knew where second was, and third and fourth could have been up for a podium stealing mugging for all I knew. Time ticked away as I burned matches I didn't have.

I had re-started the lap from scratch and the evening light was starting to make things look a little different. My tyre had stopped leaking allowing me to go back to pre-leak lines and I got to thinking that I was now in third place and that second was only a minute ahead. 
'He's just around the corner' I kept saying to myself 'He's just around the corner...'

To add to the theatre playing out in my mind, as I came out of the final corner to climb up to the finish line there he was. Another rider, out of the saddle, giving it everything. With one last effort I dug in and - somewhat pointlessly in the end - rolled over the line just in front.

The podium, me on the right. 

Turns out that the lad I'd passed in the finishing chute was riding with a school team and had probably wondered what the hell some ginger blowhard was doing racing him to the line.
And when all was said and done, I'd held second in the solo 40+ and had torn the paint off in the last lap for nothing other than pride. It was an incredibly well deserved win by Brian John who had been absolutely ripping all day. As irony would have it he had lost the top spot to finish 2nd the year before - in not too dissimilar circumstances.

We didn't get to thank them at the time, but I'm sure that everyone would hand out a big bag of appreciation to the Beechworth Chain Gang for putting on an an epic, spectacularly organized 6 hour race, in a beautiful location over a brilliant, if 'honest' course. Big props to everyone who raced, great crowd, great trail, great atmosphere.
Definitely on the calendar for next year.

Back Story - Racing is fun

Frothing

I dig racing bikes, in particular the XC variety. There are few things that give my glands a rub like squeezing into a hot lycra skinsuit, lathering up with chamois cream, launching off a hip and railing a sick berm at attack pace.

What I'm going to do here is try and relay what I see as I explore, ride and race the wicked trail that I have around me - with the emphasis being on racing on that same dirty stuff.
Less preamble and more pre-jumping. Race reports due north...