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.