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.)