Geelong Crazy 6 Hour

Oh...my word... I love the You Yangs. Oftentimes at endurance races I'll turn up and hope that I can learn a trail fast enough to - in turn - be faster than everyone else on that trail. In the case of the Crazy 6 - held at the You Yangs MTB park near Little River, I am more familiar with this trail than I am my own face.

There we all were. Packed in, rubbed down and fired up.  I was so up for this race it was getting peculiar. But I wasnt alone in that sentiment, and as the gun went off, the speed at which the pointy end opened up pretty clearly indicated that most of these dudes were not only hungry to race but were sons and daughters of this trail too.
Generally the starting speed of a race is usually directly proportional to the number of elites, divided by the  length of the race in hours. I don't know what the numerical representation of "fark-king-hell!" is, but it appeared that most cats in this race had been on their bikes when they should have been in maths class. A wave of riders 12 wide and 25 deep poured towards the valve that was the opening to the single track - with me getting tossed around up in the middle like a tourist in the surf. 

It could have been an explosion in a bike shop, but testament to the mad-skillz of my fellow races, we all squeezed in and opened our respective racing accounts over this very, very sweet XC race course.

Each lap started with whip through the Kurrajong trees and a small climb with a gradient about as steep as a sea breeze. We would then get loose with some big spandex air through with what constitutes a jump park in XC terms, hit some more fast berms, wind up the heart-rates on the fire roads and hurtle fire back towards camp. 
Hot laps were being cut, people were popping, others were attacking and all I trying to do was hang with the team elites for a while. This worked out, I managed to stay within complaining distance for the opening couple of laps - and hoped that had given me a handy start over my solo 40+ competition.

The race progressed to plan. I pulled in some of the elite solos, mistook a dude for another dude, and turned myself inside out catching him - only to realize that all I'd done was burn a bunch of matches gapping the 40+ category cats trying to get to me. 
Matches however, I had many of. I was running purely on Pro4mance gels and bottle mix - and despite yearning for a vegemite sandwich - I was jumping out of my skin with energy. My legs were spinning like government marketers and my mind, usually sulky with pain and suffering was gibbering like a grade 3 class who'd discovered a big stash of teachers Koolaid.

Five hours in and I was still time-trialling the fire roads, tearing up the quasi climbs and having the time of my life tweaking out the big jumps at the top end of the loop.

My raceday lines on the YYs jumps

 I was having obscene amounts of fun. This was turning into that one in a dozen race, where there was nothing but free speed and glory. And I love glory, almost as much as I like obscenity. 

Turns out there was a bit of it going around. I managed to cross the finishing line in first of the old buggers and sneaked my creaking carcass into 3rd overall - covering about 157 kms in a little over six hours. It not only meant 80 arbitrarily valuable points in the Victorian Enduro Series, this being the first of seven six hour races that make it up - but it almost meant two big bags of grocery trophies. Yum!

Gradient profile that looks like a pump track - sweet!

Big thanks go to all those excellent cats who make my racing life so much fun. Cycles Galleria deserve props for looking after me and my truly epic Pivot Mach 429C, Pro4mance Sports Nutrition for 6 hours of power, to the GMBC for an absolute chuckle-fest and to J Lefebvre, GT, K Skidmore et al for all their help pulling down camp while I was bathing in category adulation.

Racing! Groceries! W000t!

Bendigo Golden Triangle Epic - March 2014

I have history with this race. The last time I turned up I spent 8 and a half hours essentially wandering around with my head in a plastic bag full of cat shit pretending to be a bike racer. I had mechanicals on masse, got dehydrated, got lost, food flatted and for all money basically had a (non-free range) pig of a time.

This year, using my free entry into the race I scored at the Bendigo Six Hour, I was back to avenge my pride. This raced owed my ego a debt and collection was due. I was coming into some form, had some kick-ass SRAM Roam 60 carbon wheels on my ride and a bunch of race food from Pro4mance that was handing out the big power. Boxes were all ticked and I was going to get all Ninja on this shit.

Not a Ninja, or a bike racer. You cant race with hair like that...
unless you're Tim McGrath. (Stolen from the Interwebs)

The day before race day was spent milling with Jimmy Lefebvre and his water ski mates on the banks of the Lodden river in Bridgewater. The weather was totally random, one minute calm and balmy and the next howling with cyclonic winds and wine-bottle sized raindrops.

It meant good and bad things...good in that it should water down a notoriously dusty course and bad in that it may have deposited the Pivot marquee I'd set up at race central earlier that day in some arbitrary Bendigo suburb.

The course was looking just like...what I like. Flat (ish), technical and with the rain bedding it down, fast and tacky. The start list however was not. Generally reserved for masochists this race was stacked with strong names, none more so than Shane Roberts - the two time champion, who I'd previously seen disappearing into the forest from the get-go like he'd mixed up his miles with his meters.
We were each up for a three-peat of a twisted 52km circuit, largely made up of the same bloody rocks that Bendigo make most things out of (breakfast for one) and a fair swathe of brutal, off camber singletrack. (Course GarminConnect link for trail geeks). We knew it'd be a long race. The marshals were suggesting a winning time north of 8 hours.

We all milled around, shared stupid nervous jokes, got a ceremonial race briefing and in the yawning light of a modestly beautiful Bendigo morning, we were released into our event.

As expected, Shane Roberts lept off the line and bolted up the road. He did that last year and for all I knew he did it the year before. I thought it best to hang with him as long as I could, just to see what he had. Quite a bit as it turned out. I had been on his wheel for about 10 minutes when I looked behind me to see nothing but  an empty and eerily quiet forest. We began taking turns, eventually breaking into conversation - and while still mashing the pedals having a pretty good old chinwag at the same time.

We tested each other occasionally during that first lap, quietly and half-heartedly flicking on the power or the speed to see if it would dent the other, and for 99% of that first 2 and a half hours, it did absolutely nothing. In the last 1% however, Shane took some sick skills to technical section just before the start of the second lap and began getting smaller and harder to see - eventually crossing the pads about 10 seconds up.

About to cross the timing pads for the start of their race however were the 50km riders. Shane relived his race start by sprinting up the strait and before I knew it I was gapped by about 30 meters and surrounded by the 50km elites. I chewed on some tough love as I fought to stay on their wheels - wheels which pretty quickly had locked back onto a certain Mr Roberts, some 60 seconds later.

A Zoolander moment "All he had to do was turn right"

Strangely we'd all caught some of the slower riders from the 100km race and during the ensuing hilarity - involving comically relaxed beginners and super-pro XC whippets from the 50km race, I managed to pass Shane as he found himself caught behind a suddenly prostrate backmarker. And as I tried to stay on the vicious wheels of the guys who had brought me up to him, I managed to create a little gap between us.

I was bouncing off the rev limiter staying with this one guy. He lacked finesse in the singletrack where I took a ceremonial turn at the front, but he would open the taps on the open sections, dragging me along some 10 kms an hour faster than I otherwise would have. We were burning past and burning off guys in his category, let alone mine and I was in that sort of enjoyable place where the pain is actually fun. Eventually I was jettisoned off the back - but by that stage I was only 1500 meters from the start of my final lap - but critically about 1500 meters in front of Shane.

The commentator was frothing as I came through. I swapped into a fresh Camelbak and bolted up the hill to what sounded like him revving up the prospect of a 'changing of the guard' - or somesuch.
It did provide big inspiration though, and with relatively clean and clear trail ahead of me I attacked the last 53 kilometers like a birthday party kid attacks a Pinata.

Sometimes in long races, it gets quiet. There was nobody out on the trail except for the odd 100km rider who would initially freak out as I approached and would fire up the encouragement as I passed. I too was a little edgy. As one point I took a wrong turn and ended up burning valuable matches tearing up 500 odd meters of wrong way trails. In a rare moment of clarity I managed to u-turn and get back on track before too much damage was done, but it did nothing to soothe my nerves.

I was terrified of getting caught, and in such situations the cup of my imagination runneth over. There were the three CO2 cartridges I had in my Camelbak. Every so often they would clink together and through the fabric and over the noise of the trail, it sounded exactly like somebody - ie Shane Roberts - was changing gear, right on my wheel. So I would periodically hear this click/clink, look behind me in panic and bolt off as if I'd actually seen some errant big cat.

Thats me...on the right

The I kept checking my watch, looking behind me, pretending not to be totally freaked out as I passed dudes on the trail and dug right into the hurt bank trying to reel in the finish line. The 8km to go sign heralded the start of some 'I might win this' sentiment, but also the start of some 5km of new and very technical trail. Even though I had already gone over it twice before and despite going as hard as I could, I was still only creeping through it. Race HQ felt like miles away - but soon enough, the trail opened up and I laid down heavy pedal strokes in a desperate attempt to remove whatever space there was between me and the win.

And win I did, thankfully.

I win something! Get the shakas out

It must be pointed out that the Bendigo MTB club has much to be proud of. All categories of the Golden Triangle Epic attracted very deep gene pools of MTB racers, the trail was a fantastic mix of tacky hardpack, tech-rocks and flowy whippable turns and like always, the race was run with the efficiency of German arms factory with the vibe of a community garden.

A big thanks again to Bendigo MTB for a cracking race, to Jimmy Lefebvre who put me up at Casa dela Lefebvre in Bridgewater and to my awesome sponsors, Cycles Galleria, Pro4Mance Sports Nutrition and Jet Black for all the things they do best.

More stuff to follow should you be remotely interested (photos are quite good).

Strava malarkey - Results - Photos from the day

Mount Buller MTB Festival

Big mountain bike riding has something a little more to it. While quasi-urban trail builders actively seek out gradients to provide the pulse raising rushes we're all after, trail artisans at altitude, when they pull out the tools are already building on gradients well in excess of double figures - hoping that what they build doesn't dramatically increase flight time for local rescue helicopters.

Or in less eloquent terms: Riding mountain bikes on actual mountains can be scary as fcuk.

I know Buller well. Over the last five years I've ridden its rapidly maturing and altogether brilliant trail network, and despite the fact it will scare the bejesus out of me at any given moment and command more hardness than six months in the Foreign Legion - the riding at Buller is big 'A' awesome. 

And so it was that Rapid Ascent took their twisted minds to Buller and created the Mt Buller MTB Festival and that their version of an all-in race weekend, 4 contrasting events over 3 days of racing was going to be brutally hard and quite possibly - shit hot fun.

Having raced this event before I had my expectations. Last year I was half as fit and earned a Vets 4th, but this year - tooled up with some confidence and a kick ass carbon 29er I was ready to lay some smack down. Interesting to note that smack (whatever it actually is), wasn't really in the mood to lay down, and in fact came out swinging like a gibbon.

In the first race Rapid Ascent loaded up a 50 km short-marathon with about as many high meters as you could fit in a Dubai hotel and with the addition of a sneaky opening climb up around the Arlberg we were all deep in oxygen debt within about a kilometer of the starting gate.
I was holding onto the pointy end in about 6th or 7th wheel as we powered over One Tree Hill and track and pointed ourselves downhill, towards the Corn Hill and the very honest Stonefly climb. Tim Jamieson was the only visible threat in my category he was only 20 meters or so up the trail - well within striking distance should I not pop or blow something up. 

Just so happened that I may have been in the suburb adjacent to popping, but I was in the immediate vicinity of blowing something up. On some of the steeper sections of climbing I would feel what appeared to be a slipping chain - which would herald its momentum theft with a crack like a bullet hitting a shipping container. 
I'd change gear - hope I wasn't about to snap a chain and continue, but the sounds and symptoms also continued, becoming more pronounced and regular. Eventually, as I tried to rip into the fire-road that summits Mt Stirling - my hub, which by that stage was sounding like a SWAT team hunting the waterside workers union - totally gave way. Halfway up a gravel ladder I was spinning forward like I would be if spinning backward. Pedal spins - wheel doesn't, crazy - and as my rivals crested the hill and disappeared - totally heartbreaking.


I took up Sam Maffetts generous offer to use his event sanctioned toolkit from the back of his ute at the top of Stirling, and despite removing and resetting the cassette I was getting myself ready to chew into the bitter reality of a DNF.

DNF-ing is F-ing crap. I was getting all bi-polar, yelling 'Allez' at passing racers when I saw them and when alone, ripping out torrents of obscenities as I tried to manage my frustration.
Eventually I found my way back to the village with some help from Rapid Ascent and set about trying to get my wheel sorted.
I had no luck at bike shop at the top (XX1 freehub bodies aren't in great supply yet) and despite the efforts of Dan at Jet Black and Phil at Cycles Galleria - no help from the mountain was forthcoming. In short, it meant a day spent behind the wheel and not on the trail if I wanted to race again that weekend.
First world problem, yes, but I was gutted. DNF-ing is bad, DNS-ing is something I've never done. I was consoled by Kyllie and endurance hard-man Simon Goninon (think 24 hour Tough Mudder - he did one) while we drank cider and watched the very excellent pump-track comp put on in the village.

Sunday morning came around with me under a seat belt and eight hours later, as the sun set on the cracking Buller day I'd missed - I was back on the mountain with my BH Ultimate 29 hard tail, with nothing more to do than lament a lost day and to take a couple of hours to ride out some frustration in preparation for Monday's hitout.

In the starting chute for the final race of the weekend, some were showing signs of fatigue more than others. I'd pretended to earn my stripes by thrashing out a bunch of descents and ascents late on Sunday, but I was really only doing course reconnaissance. There were bandages a-plenty, mismatched wheels, tubeless tires with tubes in them, and grips and gloves sharing new damage from the weekends frivolity. Not that it made much difference, because there were sheep stations on the line apparently - and when the horn sounded the mob bolted out of the gates like death-row rams with a chance at freedom.

I was able to hang with the top ten as we shot off toward the start of Copperhead trail. I had ol Tim Jamieson sitting on my wheel and another bloke in front who was strong as neat rum but handled a bike like he'd been drinking too much of it. So with the goal of getting a little clean air in front of me for the technical descent approaching, I attacked.

Are you kids crazy starting at a pace like this? Show the old man some respect...

As I'm getting older I've realised that whatever 'laying the smack down' is - it is definitely a finite resource that needs to be handled in little gambles, and in this rare instance, it paid off. By the time I got to the bottom of the run and up the resulting climbs leading to Corn Hill, I had gapped Tim (rivale numero uno) by about 2 minutes and was sitting about 6th.

I got over Corn Hill OK, did alright on the climb up to Misty Twist and then started to feel decidedly average. The kind of average you feel when you know that the decision to not eat on the last section of clear trail was the wrong one. Add that to the Burke and Wills moment on finding that there is no more water in that bottle and things were beginning to  look pretty bleak. I was food flatting, dehydrated and the brutal climb I was on at the time was bouncing me around like I was a cocktail party waiter trying to offload hors d'oeuvres made of crab-shit.

I think I can, I think I can. The Little Red Engine getting over Corn Hill climb.

From that point on I was riding through a wall of noise. A veritable cacophony of heavy breathing, strained grunts and terrible gear changes all mixing with the fear and self doubt that swims into ones mind when the warning lights start flicking up on the dash. In my oxygen deprived and sugar depleted state I was passed by two guys who had the wherewithal to not only ride fast but eat and even occasionally drink. I knew that Tim Jamieson was probably catching me but I could do nothing but tip in more than I thought I had. In desperation I set about adopting a mindset akin to the kind that I adopt in the finale of really long races. 'Hurt yourself son - it helps to pass the time'.

And so as the final few kilometers climbed and went - I was still grovelling around in the cockpit, chewing the laminate off my stem trying to imagine that anyone who would take my little piece of category glory was still two minutes away. As it turned out, they were.

I crossed the line 1st in Vets, 8th overall and with a little north of two minutes in front of Tim Jamieson - (who had comfortably won overall vets honours) and after a little post victory exuberance settled in for a period of relatively relaxed breathing.

It hurts to DNF, and kills me to DNS but in the post race glow of a little win at the dead-rubber end of an event I still let myself enjoy a few warm and fuzzies - and it is in these moments that I remember why I race and what it means to me. Moreover - to thank all those cats that make racing - racing.

Mad ups to Phil at Cycles Galleria and Dan from Jet Black for all their help, Simon Goninon for being around and true to form (ie larger than life), and to Rapid Ascent for putting on another clinic in how to run a kick ass mountain bike race. And not to rotate a cliche, but big thanks to the broader MTBing community, who are an excellent bunch of cats and a true pleasure to be around - for being a critical part of what constitutes a great event and great racing.

And a very proud and heartfelt thanks to Kyllie Archer, my loved and loving wife who not only helped me through my first world problems and subsequent moping - but even had the time to place first and fourth in the two events she raced. Super-chick. X
                                    

Geelong 3 Hour - Gazebo without the relaxation.

The GMBC is a proud and vigorous club. They run a bunch of races in their You Yangs stomping ground but only a and few that fizz and pop more than a round of their very popular Gazebo series. Its a roll call of all those kids that shave down and oil up and get out the mad-skillz over trail that Victorian mountain biking would almost call its ceremonial heart.

As such it was a packed starting chute that I found myself in for this, the last round of the series. It was straining with talent, most of it up the terrifying front of this group - with the likes of Adrian Jackson and Sam Chancellor trying to out psyche the very serious Murray Spink. Not to mention just about every other cat with a number swinging from their bars and a race-face north of the neck line.

And I've been there many times, but I never fail to be surprised by how flat-out XC races start. There is no commissar waving a doily from the top of a red Skoda tempting the race to roll into its climax - no way, its the equivalent of firing 10 or 11 salvos of human cannonballs, all at once.

Halfway up the main straight my heartrate was nearing critical levels - and not looking like it was going to have the chance come down.

Early efforts - A grade reminding me where I am

A long line of riders hit the singletrack. I had stuck with what resembled the front group (about half of the pack) and pretty quickly found myself settled in. A little too settled as it turned out. About three wheels up a dude fast enough to sprint with A Grade was showing some fine B grade technical skills, holding up a little-too-polite line of meandering spandex.

By the time passing was opportune, the fast group was away and much work was required to cover the real estate between me and the last of those wheels. 

But I set about it. The course was relatively flat, bereft of 7 km strips of climbing instead swapping them out with the beautiful sweeping uphill berms that when hit hard enough still made you whoop, even while you were pooped. Once on the top of the hill we bombed down through Lactic Acid, one of my favourite ever descents. It is fast, really fast - with slippery small-gravel and stretcher spec rock gardens at the top ending with sweeping berm-jump-berm combinations at the bottom that would make a rider throw mad tail whips, had they not had timing attached to their lines.

The race progressed and I was starting to drag in some kids. The spaces between riders in short A grade races are always so much longer than enduro races, and each rider I caught felt like a little serious moment. I eventually caught an old Kung Fu associate Adam Elford who was recovering from illness (half dead and still fast enough to be at the sharp end of A grade) and ever so slowly I was reeling in veteran hard-man Tim Jamieson. I got to him with some effort and even got by old TJ, but shake him off? A totally different proposition. I attacked a little, spun up and out of a couple of corners, bombed a couple of technical descents but not enough to pop the old bugger. He occasionally took his turn at the front and probably threw his version of a half-hearted attack as well but coming into laps 7 and 8 we were still suckered together.

As the race ticked away we'd crawled into the top ten - and as we near the finish line at 2:55 odd we chalk and cheesed. Strange voices were rationalizing the idea of finishing now, holding back for the Mt Buller race, saving my legs, being safe with my preparation, and in a rare moment, I believed them. I sat up - and Tim, he took off. It took about four guys to roll past me, uncomfortably parked under my marquee before I got back on my bike. 

With clear trail ahead I took off, to reduce some of my losses, only to have them revisit when my favourite descent issued an invoice for all the fun it had given me.

I hit a rock garden a little too hot, burped my front tire and ended up with a dribbling flat that tracksided me about 2 kilometers later. To his credit Jimmy Lefebvre - who was running hot in B grade rescued me with a CO2 but by that stage my top 8 finish had swelled to 12th.

Still - as far as prep races go it totally rocked. There are few things as fun as whipping through golden trail being pushed and pulled along at race pace and for that I'm very grateful to the GMBC for basically being bloody awesome, at almost everything. Props to Glenn Tournier, an old 3 Peaks colleague who smashed it to win B grade and to AJ, Sam Chancellor and Murray Spink for showing us how its done. Results are here and GMBC stuff is all here. 

Thanks to Cycles Galleria for their love and attention pre-race and to all the guys on the day for helping out with the marquee and other infrastructure. Racing rocks.

Photos coming, when I find them.

Gravity 12 Hour - February 2014

It was a throw away line, something like 'I hope the rain comes...' or something equally stupid. Only farmers, green-keepers and people in sudden self immolation remorse say stuff like that, not mountain bike riders.
There is some kind of twisted rationale to my madness. On my drive up to Bright I was watching bush fire smoke lurking around the mountains, mixing with the raging humidity creating air as easy to breath as flatulence in a vacuum. With some rain, maybe a nice gentle 5 mm the air would clear, the trails would bed down and the riding would be as easy as losing your keys.

I woke at 3 am to the sound of what I know to be rain and lazily let a little smile settle on my face as I drifted back to sleep. 3 hours later when I woke up properly, that smile had every reason to be absent. It was still raining, and by the prevalence of mud and puddles on the ground outside, it hadn't stopped. I wondered if this gave me reason to be gloomy.

In the starting chute gloom was without companions. Everybody was chumming it up, allowing all the unseriousness of long racing in torrid conditions to flow over. It seems to be a given in endurance mountain biking, in that knowing that your day will hurt like bladder stones allows all those high expectations we can have to be washed away by the rain, mud and broken derailleurs.

On the encouragement of MTB emperor and MC Norm Douglas, we solo riders corralled ourselves at the front of the race, relieved that we were exempt from the onerous task of running to our bikes in a LeMans start. I led the solos out into the rain and mud and onto what turned out to be a very honest mountain bike coursed indeed.
There were proper climbs, fast, flowing and altogether technical sections of single track. In between were short bands of fireroad allowing the consumption of suddenly muddied bananas, gels or anything that flew or crawled within chewing range.

Half a lap in - half a kilo of mud on...already

The rain kept coming. During the first lap we solos kept ourselves largely together. Jess Douglas was there in amongst the boys keeping us both honest and slightly scared, Kev Skidmore and  Sam Moffitt of Wembo fame were letting their legs warm up and lurking around the edges was a bloke I'd never seen before. Like most of us he was skinny, had sunken cheeks and hollowed eyes and that kind on expression that indicated that he'd tasted too much of his own blood. His name was Corey Davies and he reminded me of Peter Carey - another freakishly fast dude that I've yet to beat.

I was still on point when the first serious climb reared out of the ground and was promptly passed by almost everyone in my little peloton. Kev Skidmore, Richie Read and Sam Moffitt all disappeared and I was left alone to hold up the team riders as they flashed through the trails behind us.
The rain kept coming and within a couple of laps large parts of the trail was turning to shit. Various different shades, textures and resulting levels of grip, but it all had the consistency of baby-poo mixed with fast setting Araldite. At about lap three I cracked it. In a flash pit-stop I changed out my Racing Ralph front wheel with one equipped with a Rocket Ron tread pattern and my world changed. Within two laps I had caught and passed messers Read, Moffitt and Skidmore and during the course of adding a couple of pounds of mud onto my face had put a couple of minutes into the bank.

Male Solo Top Five - A bit rude out of context

The trail had started with its own dry weather technical challenges but with the incessant rain it was becoming a bona fide bike handling nightmare. It was like the twisted spawn of Belgian Cyclocross and the Red Bull Rampage was lurking in the pines, ready to mug the unsuspecting with a fistful of wet roots and muddy off-camber.
But even with mud trying to fill in every cavity on my face I was finding that this tough love was working for me and I began to cruise through the trails thinking that my secret stash of grip happily spinning away on my front wheel was enough to counter any massive differences in pure power or athletic prowess.

Laps 6 to 9 rolled by. It'd be true to say I was feeling a little lonely. In many of these races I pass the time swapping stupid stories with Kev Skidmore, but he and his gripless race tyres were sliding around the trail 2 or 3 kilometers behind.
Coming into the pits and shortly before the rapid ingestion of some mud covered food (long fingered gloves - downside # 1) I'd asked Kenny Soiza, Pit God to the Gods, to give me an update on gaps, times, fashion trends - whatever. 

On my next pit I heard that I was in front, eight minutes or so up on Corey Davies. But he had cut his last lap 2 minutes faster than me. I'd counted out 10 laps so far, had planned to do 14 which meant that at current numbers he and I would be finishing this race with a balls -out sprint. Something I could do without after 12 hours of mud therapy.

Really? Really. Real racing starts now. (Stolen from the Interwebs)

So I tipped it in. On my next pit Kenny said that he's still coming and that my lead was now 6 minutes. On lap 11 I tipped in some more. In my attempt to hold on I attacked anything that didn't threaten to attack me. Hills, fire road, even some fast jumps that I thought I had wired. With the rain stopping my grip advantage had been whittled away as the trails began to dry out and become tacky, and despite me lifting my work rate by a factor of 5 by the time I launched into lap 12 Kenny told me I had only 4 minutes in the bank. 

Now I was scared. I found myself tearing out of pit lane with a mouth full of jellies, chocolate and mud and trying to catch and hold the wheel of a team whippet as they blasted up the trail.
Not only was I scared, but now I was starting to hurt. World 24 hour Champ Jess Douglas has this great saying that resonates with crazy endurance athletes - Pain only hurts. Its the 'only' bit that should take precedence in that statement, but it was the only bit I forgot at the time. And during that lap-long moment, pain was synonymous with shit, and with the absence of the 'only', I was left with 'shit hurts'. I still find it bizarre sometimes that I pay money for this.

There was some upside however. My lap times were starting to come down, the trail was way easier to stay fast on and I had the fear derived tailwind of somebody being chased. It was only at the start of lap 15 when Kenny and Bede had moved from 'hold him off' to 'you've got it in the bag' did I let myself start to entertain the thought of winning this thing.

Nevertheless, I charged out into my final lap with a consortium of imaginary woes. Puncture, mechanical, blood sugar dive - damnit, alien abduction - anything that might befall me as I forced my exhausted cadaver through one last loop. But none of these things happened and lo and behold I crossed this line first and threw a couple of shakas in celebration to a warm reception from Norm Douglas and the assembled crowd.

Yay. I'll take that.

Podium - chuffed

Norm made quite something of a category rider winning overall - which I was grateful for. I was (and am) very grateful to Cycles Galleria who beyond being a kick-ass bike shop, race tuned my XX1 and plied me with enough excellent Endura product to power another 15 laps, Jet Black for letting my ride be the totally epic Pivot Mach 420C, to Finishline Events and Bike Superstore for putting on and supporting the race and mad thanks (again and again) to Kenny, Bede and Kev for putting up with my shit and supporting me through to a handy little win.

Big props as well to Corey Davies, Kev Skidmore, Sam Moffitt and the indestructible Jess Douglas who all won stuff and rode like lords. Yeah.

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.