It's Going to be a 24 Hour Mudfest!

[pinkbikes]

Oh my - it was fantastic. Now it's over and I've been able to put it all in perspective.

Let me see...

It was a mud fest! It was foul! It rained the whole night before and it was just soul-destroying to hear the mud grinding paste happily destroying bits of drivetrain and chewing out brakes.

But, our team rolled up anyway and decided to do a lap each to decide whether we kept going or sat down and enjoyed a nice camping weekend! (Sort of the TrekJeni option!) We all decided to keep going. We'd done three laps each when we chanced a look at the interim results to find we were coming third in the 6 person mixed teams. We made a pact to keep this a secret from the most competitive person in our team in case he started to ride us hard, but eventually caved in and told him. So he lined us up to do double laps through the night so we could get some sleep between rides - our worst fears realised!

I had a memorable and slow double lap at 1:30am with Meatloaf playing in one ear as I headed out. I enjoyed it well enough until my second lap, when terminal chain suck set in and it all locked up and sent me scrambling to unclip before I fell sideways in the mud! Then again. And again. Finally I had to admit I could not put any pressure on in granny and had to walk up all the rest of the hills. On one particularly torturously long and sticky hill my iPod started playing "Oh What a Night" and I almost sat down and laughed. What a night indeed!? Then, as I found I could spin along lightly in middle ring along the edge of the dam to the finish of the lap, on came Chris Rea singing "Driving Home for Christmas" which was just gorgeous as I headed back to all the lights of camp and the fairy lights I had put on our camp so I could find it easily! How "feel good" was that!? It really did look like Christmas!

When I woke up for my morning lap I was greeted with the news that we had crawled our way into second place. Well - the race was on then. I got out the old fire extinguisher and hosed off my drivetrain, loaded up with the right lube (I'd used the wrong one in the middle of the night for my double lap it seems - hence the chain suck in all the mud) and off we went.

After 24 hours it all came down to the last lap. We overtook the first place team at the very end of our second last lap and DH held them out to the end.

So after going out there expecting to have a crap weekend, we rode our way into first place by just being consistent and always having somebody out there no matter what. Everybody pulled their weight and put themselves out there. Our girls (the two of us) did the required third of the laps to qualify as a mixed team (if you drop below a third you get busted back into the all male category) which was very closely scrutinised by our competitors!

Unfortunately I got home with 6 buckets full of mudddy clothing and 4 pairs of muddy bike shoes, only to find that the washing machine had given up the ghost. So I still have buckets of muddy clothes that will be soaking until the repair man can come out on Friday! Bugger! But winners are grinners.....