Be at one with the trail

[pinkbikes]

Hi cc. Well I've done two 24 hour races at two different venues and in two different teams with different strategies. And I enjoyed them both....

The first was sort of impromptu. I got a phonecall out of the blue one day from a girl I did a clinic with to ask whether I would be the last member of an all-girl team of 6 for the Merida 24hour at Kooralbyn back in April. I had met three of them before and they were great gals (and not deadly serious but wanted to give it a decent go) so I said yes, that I would happily be a part of the MTBDirt Daisies (if you could see my avatar better you'd see a daisy zip-tied to the top of my helmet and daisies on my jersey!)

I had very limited preparation - only three weeks and one was on a cruise ship! I rode the exercise bike in the gym until my eyes crossed and ran up and down all those stairs until my butt burned. I was feeling very "leg-strong" but fell off my bike within an hour of getting home (the world was still rocking unfortunately but the bike wasn't) and bruised the ribs and had resulting back spasm 6 days out from the race. So it probably wasn't the best preparation!

But the girls were GREAT! We ended up with a strategy of running two groups of three. The laps weren't too long - about 8.5km -and we ended up doing two laps each and then one group of three went to bed for 6 hours while the others kept going, then we came back while they went for a sleep, and then they did laps and then we did laps. It worked really well that way, as the event was in the grounds of a pretty decent resort (now in receivership) and we had a nice hotel room to sleep in and shower to shower in etc! It was a wonderful introduction to 24hour racing and since we were the only 6gal team, we won our category (well duh!) Mind you, we could have done one lap and rested on our laurels and still won our category, but instead we did 32laps, so we were justifiably proud and I made some great friends to ride with and did my best ever lap at Kooralbyn by a country mile.

The second 24hour race was VERY special! It was the Insomnia 24 Hour at Kurwongbah, north of Brisbane. It was the race I went to look at last year that made me get into MTB in the first place, swearing that I would be back to do it myself this year. In the process of getting ready I coerced and corrupted friends and co-workers to "see the light" and get into MTB too.

In the end my DH and I put together two teams of friends, rellies and workmates to contest the race. DH's team was the MTBDirt Cranky Old B@stards (complete with jersey from Suarez) and was a 4 man team. My team was the MTBDirt Dilberts and was a 6 person mixed team. It was a logistical undertaking of magnitude, as it was held on a beautiful property with no power, no running water, and no accommodation. We had shade-houses, a huge barbecue, various tents for sleeping (our 10yo daughter was with us, along with a fair few support crew) and even a communal bikerack made from star-pickets, timber and zipties. I even made team banners. And we even had a team "massage therapist" who was a friend of one of our team members and just loves MTB but couldn't race.

The lap was quite long - 17.5km - so we were able to just take it in turns. It was a great course - not too hilly or so technical as Kooralbyn - but quite muddy in places from recent rain. There was a point at about 12km where the course came back past our camp, so the rider could yell out "Dilbert" or "Cranky" as they went past and the next rider knew they needed to get ready to go soon.

Everybody got along so well in our teams and we had humour running rampant (we even had a disco ball hanging from a tree) that we were sad it was over when the end drew near.

Funnily enough, we didn't think to check the results until a couple of hours before the end, only to find out we were coming third by the narrowest of margins. We had a quick re-think of our strategy (everybody take a turn and do the best you can and try not to fall off) and sent out one of our quicker riders next to guarantee we could get one more rider out before the timer stopped. We cemented out third place, which was just icing on the cake of a fantastic weekend. Everybody had such a nice time together that we met up a couple of weeks later for a "latte de-brief" to share pics and tall tales!

Everybody is keen to give it a go again next year, with some of us even thinking about venturing over to Rotorua for the Ay Up 24hour in March. Ay Up are the naming sponsor next year and are keen to put together a package to encourage the Aussie contingent to head "across the ditch."

So there - it is - a long-winded version of how much fun 24 hour racing can be for a sturdily-built, only somewhat fit, MTB newbie!

[pinkbikes]

Oh - (and as if it looks like i left anything out!!) - I forgot to mention...

In the first race we each got a lap in in the daylight, which was great, so we knew where we were going in the dark. And it helped that we'd ridden the course before too in other races. We each did 5 laps, with two of the girls managing to get in a 6th.

In the second race, because of the longer lap and because it was held on the Winter Solstice so we got the longest night possible, we couldn't get a daytime lap for everybody. As the most experienced night rider (but far from the most experienced rider) I got to do my first lap in the dark and went OTB! We each did 3 laps except for the guys we sent out in a rush towards the end to sneak an extra lap in (he did 4). And I didn't ever see the course in the daylight until I did our very last lap! All the way around I was "Ooo - look at that! Ahh - THAT'S where this is! Oh- look how close we are to camp here!"