Let's start this one by setting the scene... 25 teams came to take on the inaugural Mawson Marathon, the first race of it's kind in Australia, a non stop mountain bike race for 360km in the Flinders Ranges. I was immediately attracted to race as soon as I heard about it and entered before they even managed to get an entry system going :) The race is done in pairs, so I needed a good team mate, but who to ask? The choice was obvious, my arch nemesis Brett Bellchambers, the one they call "the second coming of Christ", the one that has broken me into a million tiny pieces before. We've had our stoushes in the past, but this time we would join forces.
Our competition was pretty impressive; the top teams comprised of some pretty amazing athletes; Professional cyclist and Australian Olympic team member, Chris Jongewaard; The youngest ever rider to complete the Croc Trophy, Brett Anderson; Current World Solo 24hr Champion, Jason English; Former National Solo 24hr Champion, Andrew Bell; Winner of the 2009 8hr endurance series, Mark Tupalski; and Former World Solo 24hr Number 3, professional coach and cyclist, Mark Fenner. All these teams had dedicated four wheel drive vehicles (Jongewaard had four of them alone!) and the two Torq team caravans were a daunting sight at each of the support points. They all had shiny new matching team bikes, Chris having dedicated time trial bikes for the road sections and mountain bikes for the dirt; I on the other hand had borrowed a frame and some 2nd hand wheels and tyres and cobbled together a bunch of 3 year old parts off one of my old bikes, while Brett had committed the ultimate sin and converted his single speed into a geared bike, he only got in two practice rides with gears after years of riding without any, Kylie had to give him a little phrase to remember, so he would know which shifter button to push (and yes Brett, "the bottom is your friend" ;))...
We didn't stand a chance, but nothing was going to stop us trying, to psyche ourselves up we watched the ultimate under dog movie, Dodgeball and then packed all our gear into Kylie's 6 year old front wheel drive Astra and drove the 1600 kilometers to the start.
It was great to catch up with everyone in Blinman at the race start, until Arran questioned my choice of pre race dinner, seafood risotto, when we are over 1000km from the sea. I never said I was smart! After a very disturbed nights sleep of having to sneak off to the bathroom during the night, we rolled down to the start. Kylie's little Astra was dwarfed by the flotilla of four wheel drive support vehicles that were there! I wasn't nervous though, Brett's relaxed attitude and sense of humour is very infectious and I knew I was in for one hell of a ride with him.
From the start the course was 18km of bitchumen to the dirt, so the field formed a peloton and we rolled together chatting, it was nice, until Chris launched off the front at full noise, it was an impressive display of strength but he was just testing the waters as he let the field catch him pretty quickly. After another stint of cruising Brett looks at me, looks ahead, looks back at me with that cheeky smirk of his, and I knew it, we were going to attack and try and get to the dirt first. He flew off the front and after exclaiming "fark!", I did my best to go with him and we pulled away. The big boys let us go, we were after all, no threat to them and I imagine they we happy for us to hurt ourselves a bit ;) We got what we wanted though, and were first onto the dirt, the others caught us and we flew through the first few kilometres together, Chris pulled a gap quickly and Jase and Bellie went after them, leaving Brett and I with the Torq boys. We were flying at full XCO pace, I could not believe how frantic these first kilometres were, but we were hanging on and everything was going swimmingly until the fateful pssssssssss of a flat could be heard. It was Brett's rear tyre, it was dry of sealant and could not be saved. We pulled over to fix it and watched the orange Torq jerseys disappear into the distance. The repair took 9 minutes as C02 failed to work and we had to pump it up manually. Secretly I was relieved, this meant we did not have to sit in with the other guys and try and hold their pace, we could just roll at our pace now and we could make up that 9 minutes over the next 300 odd kilometres I thought...
Of course what actually happened was Jase and Bellie sat up and waited for the Torq boys, bunching up and working together while we were left to work against the wind alone.
That didn't worry us though, jokes were cracking and the pace was too, we flew along enjoying the amazing views around Wilpena Pound, maybe I was enjoying them too much, ploughing straight into a rock and having a little lay down. The crash broke my chain (it was twisted and I am a dufus and jumped back on the bike and pedalled too hard, snapping it in two) and we spent 2 more minutes fixing that...
We pushed on to the first support point at the 75km mark where Kylie was waiting, I rifled through the boot and grabbed another tube, chain link, C02 canister, food and water and we got going as quick as we could. Kylie told us the gap was 12 minutes, which is just about as long as the time we had lost, so things weren't too bad, we were on the pace and hopefully all our problems were behind us. Taking turns on the front we ate, rolled and took in the stunning views...
The beauty of these short races is how quickly the time flies, before I knew it we hit the 100 mile point, right on 6 hours. I mused that if I could do the 100 mile fling in this time, life would be good :) Getting this far this quickly shows how fast this course is as we were just cruising along at this point. Then, out of blue, I had the most instinctual feeling... I smelt blood in water!
Somewhere up ahead, somehow, I knew, they were fading... we rolled on for Hawker, which was the 185km point, roughly halfway. Kylie was waiting, this time with good news; there was indeed blood in the water, Tupalski was tired and we were closing the gap to the Torq boys, it was now down to 8 minutes, some quick maths and if we attacked now, we would catch them before Quorn at this rate... and like sharks in a frenzy; we're off like a shot!
We pushed hard and tried to reel the boys in, at the 260km mark we are rolling in to meet Kylie when I spotted the Torq support cars pulling away, they had just left! Kylie confirms the gap is less than 5 minutes now. The camera crew got wind of our chase and fitted a helmet cam to us from the moving camera car, and I started to get very fired up! This is Fenner and Tupalski, guys I've never chased before, guys out of my league, guys I had no business chasing, but it was happening!
We stopped to get some warm clothes and headed off, within a few minutes we could see the boys, just ahead of us on the fire trail! Our goal was now firmly in sight and we lifted again, but not too much, holding back a little, putting down just enough to continue to close the gap, slowly, but surely.
At Quorn, the final support point, there is a 100m section that you ride up, get support, and then ride back out. Just as the Torq boys are riding out of there, we are riding in and we rode right by each other. Exchanging some friendly "evening boys!", we pulled in to fuel up for the final assault, we downed red bulls, sandwiches and gu's, and I took some pain relief, knowing the final 70km from here to the finish would be all out, and it was going to hurt.
The course gets faster here and I was on a mission, putting down a full noise 1 hour time trial effort we went after Team Torq. Attacking people at the end of the race is my speciality, I've done it heaps of times and I usually get who I chase, so I was pretty confident we would catch them back up. The thing is though, the kinds of guys I usually chase at the end of a race are not professional cyclists, they haven't been the World Number 3 at anything or have collections of National level medals across multiple cycling disciplines... I was about to learn the hard way, that when you go after guys of this calibre, they don't roll over and play dead, they respond.
While we were on the limiter chasing them, so were they, making sure they stayed away. Then they got a big carrot in front of them, the flashing red lights of the Pivot/Kona team of English and Bell were in their sights, they could see 2nd place ahead of them! They didn't need us for motivation any more, they went after 2nd place.
By Wilmington, the final town, about 20km from the finish it was clear we were not going to catch them, so we shut the engines down and spun to the finish, resigned to fourth. We'd chased the Torq boys for over 6 hours by now, whittling the gap away little by little, getting close enough to see the whites of their eyes, so to not be able to seal the deal at the end was so incredibly frustrating I cannot describe it!
On the other hand though, working with someone of Brett's calibre lifted me to be able to chase guys I never would have dreamed possible before. He's a master tactician and he knew exactly what to do and when to do it, putting us in the right places at the right times. He ran our show and it was an honour to work with him and hope I'm lucky enough to get to do it again some day!
Kylie was also crucial to our ride, being there for us the whole time, never missing a beat and providing all the vital intel we needed to stay engaged in the race.
I also have to thank Onya Bike Belconnen for the frame and Radical Factory Racing for the wheels, without you guys I couldn't have afforded to get a bike together for this race, so you guys rock!
Some stats for fun:
Race Distance: 360km
Climb: 2542 vertical kilometres
Energy Burned: 11,631 Calories - 28 Farmer's Union Iced Coffees
Speed: Average 24.4km/h
Time: 14:45
HR: 127bpm
Crashes: 1
Result: 4th
Support Car: Driven 3,227km
Petrol: 297 litres (700kg of C02 offset by Green Fleet)
Cost: $2000 for entry, travel and food