Scott 24 - 2008

It was the 10th anniversay of the Scott 24hr, my 9th 24hr, and my 3rd 24hr this year. This time though, it would be very different any of my previous 24's; this would be my first as a sponsored rider in a team that was there to win.

Usually I do these with a group of mates and we are there purely for fun, mug punters. There would be a lot of planning about who was taking what and we'd set up camp a few days before the race to try and get a good spot. Someone would have to gather information and funds to enter us 6 months before the race. There'd be mucking about with bikes and the need to take a raft of spares and tools, tents, marquees and gear, it was a huge effort, but worth it for a great weekend of riding with your mates.

This time though, the boys from Onya Bike Belco would be looking after me. They entered us, did rego, setup marquees, brought along all the tools and spares and a full time mechanic (the mighty Pip) to keep the bikes running clean, and Bob had even negotiated catering for us with a chef from the Crown Plaza! All I had to do was show up on Saturday with my bike and ride. Pretty awesome stuff!!

It all sounds pretty easy, but with all that support comes pressure; we were there to win and put Onya Bike on the podium, not just there to muck around, but to repesent the shop.

Not needing to be there until 10am Saturday meant I could sleep in and enjoy some pancakes with the kids and my pre race routine was much easier and more relaxed. I rolled into camp early with my bike, race food and clothes and was ready to go.

Being our fastest rider, Nick took the first lap, we racked up his bike and he set off to the start line for the Le Mans run a few hundred metres away. We had racked up with 100's of other bikes in what we thought was the right place, but then a marshall came and made us move 100m further up... I had no way to tell Nick we had moved, so when he ran right past me, heading for where his bike was, I ran off after him with his bike. In the melee of a thousand people running around in there, it was hard to get to him, but I got the bike to him and he took off. He must have been pretty fired up from that distaster, because he did a screaming lap time, coming through transition in 5th place overall, so he had worked his way past over a 100 riders that had run past us at the start of that lap!

Bob took the reigns for lap 2, setting a good pace and then it was over to me. The pressure was on, working with two boys 15 years my junior was pretty scary. These guys are bloody fast too, and I was really worried I would be an anchor, the slow old man on the team. I took off way too hot on my lap, spending most of it over my AT, racing as hard as I could go, not smart when there are 24 hours to go! I'd met Team Giant rider John Claxton at Worlds this year and as he was pairing (so taking it easy) he sat on my wheel and we chatted, well, he casually poked fun at my pathetic race lines while I struggled to be capable of saying anything back between gasping breaths ;)

The course was awesome, flowy the whole time, but the congestion on Lap 3 was shocking, big groups of slow riders bunched up wheel to wheel in crawling freight trains, meandering up the mountain. It was pretty hard work to get past such big groups, but a worthy effort; at the top of the mountain I got a fairly clear run down the descent, which was awesome fun, cruising into transition fairly happy with my effort, but the lap time was not the sub 40 minute I'd hoped for.

Good news though, we were already 10 minutes up on 2nd place and well in the lead, it was looking like this would be easier than we'd hoped. Personally, I was just relieved that having me (a slow old man solo rider) on the team wasn't going to cost us the win ;)

Kylie's MumNuts team had become pretty famous around transition too, their bright pink jerseys catching the commentators attention at every transition, the media even spotted them and got an interview. They were having success on the course too, moving firmly into 2nd place in the Female sixes.

As the race went on, we started to pull away from 2nd place, putting a few minutes a lap into them; so we just kept it consistant, everyone having a good time and with the pressure off, the race had become more about fun. I relaxed and stopped pushing too hard, just cruising and enjoying some of Canberra's beautiful Spring weather. Surprisingly, my lap times got faster though, probably due to the congestion being gone and passing being easier.

Into the night and we continued to pull away, the red lap had become a pretty dangerous place to be though, with people crashing and being carried out left, right and centre. It was like a war zone! Seeing one poor girl immobilised on the track with a blanket over her really brought home how quickly you can go from having a good time, to having a spinal injury. So we turned the pace right down and prioritised staying upright over speed.

A close race had developed between 2nd and 3rd and they starting to lay down some frantic laps to try and get ahead of each other, I think for a while there, they where even gaining us as we were up by 2 laps at one point, but they narrowed that lead down to a lap at one point.

With the dawn comes the return of speed of though, and when we realised what was going on with 2nd place, we started to put the boot back in and picked the pace back up. We were all having a ball hammering around and making the most of the course.

We must have been getting tired though, because all 3 of us failed to meet the incoming rider at transition, screwing up fast change overs. I think we were getting a little cocky with a fairly safe lead at this stage, but still, we should have kept it tight.

We had started to put more time into 2nd place and recovered our 2 lap lead by 10am, and then it was time to decide whether we would call the race done and dusted at 11:30am (as you can finish after 11am and still get a valid finish), or push through and finish after the official 24 hours at 12pm. Bob was keen for one last cruising lap though and headed out for our final lap, giving us 32 laps and 1st place!

I'd never come 1st in anything at this level before (I had come first in a C grade club race earlier this year, but this was for a category at the biggest mountain bike race in the World!). Pretty elating stuff, but odly I didn't go crazy in celebration. It was far more casual, I was more relieved than blown away I guess.

We worked well together as a team and it was more elating to work with riders of this calibre than it was to win I think. Teams usually annoy me, there's always someone that will let you down (in my last two pairs teams, my team mates pulled out of the race before half way), but not this year, the boys were fast and dedicated and Bob and I were pretty much on par for lap times, so no one was the dead weight; Nick is a machine though, he laid down much much faster laps than us, the boy's a freak, which is even more impressive when you consider he only started riding bikes 2 years ago!

The mightly MumNuts team kept it tight too, and held 2nd place, taking out their first podium. I'm so proud of them, a group of 6 mums that went in the event for fun, but ended up caught up in the racing and getting a solid result! They had put together a lot of group training rides and even brought in Adam to coach them, so their 2nd place was well earned.

And as for our sponsor, Mick took out first place by two laps in the mixed threes, so both Onya teams had achieved the mission and won their categories, a very successful weekend for Onya Bike indeed :)

All in all a top weekend; both Kylie and I had taken out podiums, so it was straight home for champagne, steak, prawns and chocolate, sweeeet :P

I always like to do some post race analysis and this year it was a good opportunity to compare my lap times from last year to this year, to see if my training efforts this year have made any improvement... the end result is that I was on average 19% faster this year! That is an amazing speed increase, and really shows how much improvement good training can bring.

An a quick look at how much I faded throughout the race shows I did fade at night, but recovered nicely in the morning, and this year I faded less, so I am faster and have more endurance. A product of a lot of base training, something I had not done in previous years.