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24-hour mountain bike

Read the following entertaining report from a competitor in the 2004 24-hour mountain bike event held in Canberra Australia.

mountain bikingmountain biking

Hi all,

I reckon if I had to go through an epic to do the event, then you have to have an epic to read about it.

So just to clarify, this is my race report from the 2004 Mont 24 hour mt bike race, held on Oct 9-10, midday to midday. I've raced it every year for the last 6 years, but only as part of a team. This year I was giving the solo category a try.

This year the initial run, before we jumped on the bikes, was increased to about 800m - it certainly seemed quite a long way as we walked it to get to the start line. Most people seemed a bit worried about how long the run was, but I was quite happy. 800m was going to give the huge field (about 520 teams, or 2200 riders) a fair bit of time to spread out. I wasn't planning on running too hard, but I was hoping I'd be able to get nearish the front by the end of the run, so that I would be mostly able to avoid the congestion that the middle of the packers would be suffering early on in the first lap of the bike leg.

As it turned out, I got to start right near the front of pack, thanks to some kind soles who offered (or didn't object) when I stood in front of them. It was next to impossible to get behind them even if I wanted too (well that was my excuse). So the initial run to the bikes was quite uneventful.

I got out of transition well before grid-lock descended, and was probably in about 3rd position. Despite the excitement of being up near the front, I thought I did a pretty good job of restraining myself in the first lap, and didn't fight too hard to maintain position, happily letting people past.



So the first lap was quite fun - no congestion, taking it easy, and enjoying the ride. I think someone told me I was 19th at the end of that lap. I noticed my back was a bit sore, and part of my brain was saying "holy crap, you've only just started a 24 hour race and your back is already sore", but I was pretty good at ignoring this part of the brain, instead celebrating with the part of the brain that was going "whooo hooow, you're leading the solo riders".

Into transition, I spotted Leon and Sarah, my trusty helpers, and pulled up along side. They gave me a mueslie bar and fruit bar to stuff into my pockets, replaced my drink bottle and also gave me a banana sandwich to snack on for the first section of the next lap. This was pretty much the routine I followed during the transition at the end of every lap.

Lap 2 was also great fun. It started off with all these fresh riders overtaking me in the first couple of kms, only for them to tire and have me catch them a little bit later on. I was wondering if this was a pattern that would continue for much of the race, but then realised it would probably be me to be the one to tire later on.

The middle 50% of lap 2 I barely saw another rider. It was quite strange. How could I be in a race with more than 500 teams, and it be so quiet?

There were 2 check points out on the course, where they would record the numbers of cyclists as they came past. The solo male cyclists all had numbers less than 100 (the female soloists were numbered 100-199), so the people manning the check-points could easily tell the soloists. On lap 1, they told me I was the first solo rider. I wasn't too surprised by this, as there were only a couple of cyclists in front of me when I first got on the bike, and I hadn't noticed any soloists amongst the riders who'd passed since then. However, when the people at the check point told me I was still leading on lap 2, I started to think that was kind of exciting, as I thought the good riders would have passed me by then.

Incidently, the people on the check points didn't fail to give me a cheer on any of the 20 laps I rode. It was fantastic. On the tough night time laps when things were looking really gloomy, at least you could always look forward to the transition area, the bottom of the first downhill hairpin single-track and the two checkpoints, as there was always people there to give you a cheer at each of these places.

On lap 3 I saw a banner that said 'Go DaveO". I had a chuckle, and thought that I would just pretend that that banner was really for me (there's a lot of DaveOs in the world). I think it was the end of this lap that Helen Bostock asked me if I'd seen the banner that they'd put out for me. Wow!! A banner that really was for me! Thanks Helen, and Aaron, and whoever else was responsible for that.

Anyway, the first 4 laps were a lot of fun, and I wished the whole race would be this easy. I was averaging about 60 minutes per lap up to this stage.

For some reason the fifth lap was a bit more difficult. I can't remember why any more, but for some reason it was. Perhaps I was starting to tally up all the parts of my body that had mentioned to my brain at some stage that they were beginning to hurt. But looking back now, I don't think anything was hurting too bad.

At the end of this fifth lap, I got my first update on the race positioning. As of the end of lap 4, apparently I had a 15 minute lead over Josh Street, who was in 2nd place. Now this was exciting, but also a little troubling. Looking at the results from previous years, I didn't really expect to be in Josh's league, so to be 15 minutes in front of him made me a little concerned I'd gone out too fast. But not too concerned ... mostly I was just excited to be in the lead.

Perhaps this excitement was the reason I enjoyed lap 6, picking myself up from the slightly depressed state I was in during the fifth lap. Not even the onset of darkness (usually the most dreaded moment in any 24 hour event) stopped me from enjoying it.

I was only about 5-10 minutes into lap 7 when my main handlebar mounted light failed. I thought for a second of turning back and getting Leon to fix it, but decided against it. I still had my helmet mounted light, though I have to admit that the usefulness of the 6W helmet light was almost as close to zip as it was to the usefulness of the 20W handlebar light. About 10 minutes later my helmet light failed too. Now this wasn't good. It was next to impossible to ride the single track with no front lights, so I was relying on the light of any cyclists nearby to see things. And I was probably only a quarter of the way into the lap, so it was going to be a long lap before I could get back to transition and have Leon fix my lights. One guy passed me with a really bright light. I put in a surge to stay with him, but it was an effort as he was going quite fast. And I didn't manage to hang on to him for too long either, as on the first bit of down-hill single track, I just couldn't stay with him. There were some sections of the track that you weren't able to make out with his light. I'd already taken a couple of risks riding track without being able to see anything, but to do so on a steeper downhill track with worse obstacles was too risky, even for silly me.

But then my savior came. A guy called Wayne caught up to me, and he asked me if I'd had a stack. I must have passed him earlier when my light was still working, and he was now puzzled as to why he'd caught me back up again. I explained to him as we rode together that I no longer had a working front light. It was funny, I guess I thought that it would be immediately obvious, but not one of the dozens or riders who passed me, or even the people on the checkpoints, seemed to notice that I didn't have a working front light (or at least, no one commented on it).

Anyway, Wayne rode with me for the rest of the lap, sitting just behind me. That had the problem of my shadow being cast exactly on the ground that I wanted to see, but if I rocked side to side I could mostly see most of the obstacles. And I'd found out earlier that trying to use the light of riders in front was just too difficult on single track. I guess the difference is when you get to a section where you can't see a thing, then you slow down and the person behind will catch right up to you and mostly illuminate it, whereas the person front just gets further in front.

So I managed to finish that lap, amazingly without any crashes. And my lap time ended up being quite a respectable 75 minutes, or something like 5-7 minutes slower than my previous lap. Not nearly as costly as I'd thought, I had worried Josh that might have caught up the entire 15 minutes just on that lap alone.

Leon put on new batteries and both lights were working again. So lap 8 was great, almost like the boost I've gotten in this event in previous years when the sun rises and you can see again (OK, maybe not that good a boost). Having said that, I spent alot of lap 8 thinking about how lap 7 had been quite an experience. I'd spent the whole lap with eyes straining, trying to see where the track was and where obstacles were, that I hadn't had any brain power left to think about which body parts were starting to hurt, and also how incredibly long 24 hours really is.

I'm having trouble remembering most of the rest of the night laps. I remember having a few drousy moments, and I tried to slap my face a couple of times in the hope that it would wake me up. I also remember concentrating on the relative gap between Josh and myself until about 3am.

I got the impression that Josh's night laps were about 5 minutes faster than mine. But I also thought I had about a 15 minute lead on him before night fall, so when he failed to overtake me within the first 4 night laps, I started to get competitive, and focus on holding him off for as long as possible. I thought if I held him to midnight, and if he continued to only put a few minutes per lap into me for the remainder of the night, I might be able to make them back up again during the remaining day time laps.

I guess I can't have been feeling too bad if I was thinking these competitive thoughts. Anyway, I did manage to hold Josh off until after midnight. I think it was a bit before 3am that I got into transition, and asked Leon and Sarah if Josh had overtaken me yet. They said no, but told me that he was only a few minutes behind after the previous lap. Just before I left, Josh arrived into transition.

So off I headed onto another lap. After a few kilometers you reach the fun down-hill hairpin single track that nearly always had cheering spectators. Sarah was there as she was on most laps, cheering "go Dave". A guy caught up to me soon after and said "are you Dave?". I said yes, I was indeed Dave, and he asked me if I was the guy winning the race. I said yes, but not for much longer as Josh was about to catch me. The guy said, "well, that would be me". Anyway, Josh was very friendly and chatty, and we spent the next 10 minutes riding together talking about adventure racing and other stuff. Whenever he got a bit in front of me (for example if he'd overtaken another rider, and it had taken me a bit longer to also get past), then he would slow down and wait. When we did a couple of faster, bumpier single-tracks, he'd also gain on me, and I began to see why he was lapping faster than me. But still he waited so we could talk.

Earlier on in this lap my main handle bar light had started to flicker on and off. It had done this for a few minutes 2 laps earlier, but then came good again. I was hoping that would be the case again, but sadly it wasn't to be. Eventually it was off for most of the time, with only the occasional flicker on. We got to another of those single-tracks where Josh was faster than me, and I was struggling with just my weak helmet light, and I had to slow right down. Josh finally took off.

The rest of that lap was really slow, and I was quite concerned that I'd lost a lot of time to Josh. I was pretty despondent when I got into transition. I appologised for keeping them waiting so long, and told Leon that my main light wasn't working. He put on fresh batteries, and my lights were fine again (it must have been a dodgy battery), so I went out for another lap.

For some strange reason, I didn't seem to be riding this lap any faster than the previous one. The terrible second half of the previous lap I'd put down to not having a proper light, and I'd assumed as soon as my lights were working fine again, then I'd be back to my usual night time lap pace (mid 70's I think). But this lap was feeling very slow, and I wasn't feeling crash hot either. Indeed, it was all quite depressing.

My eyes started going funny too. I was having a lot of trouble focusing, and was worried that I would crash into stuff if I couldn't see properly. But then I started fantasising about crashing, and then just lying down where I fell, and having a nice rest. I'd heard stories about solo riders hallucinating during the event. Sadly I didn't have any good ones, but I do remember that every second stump or fallen branch that you'd see out of the corner of your eye would look like an animal. I had a lot of close calls with crazy animals that night.

As I said earlier, I don't remember much about the rest of the night, other than the fact it wasn't much fun at all. I can't remember anything being particularly painful. I think it was a mixture or being extremely tired, having a lot of things that were sore or aching, and continually having to fight off the temptation of stopping for a nice rest and lie down at the end of each lap. I kept on wondering if I could rest for an hour without losing much ground in the race, and was always dissapointed to conclude that the answer was no.

Actually I do remember now that my forearms were particularly painful.

All the downhill bumpy single tracks became agony for my forearms. I couldn't decide if they'd turned to jelly or concrete, but either way, they were tender, and didn't like bumps at all.

After an eternity, daylight finally arrived. It seemed like I was now in the final straight of the race, albeit a 7 hour straight. I started feeling a bit better, but then was distraught to find out that 3rd place, Graeme Allbon, was only about 15 minutes behind me, and was gaining about 10 minutes per lap. I was debating with myself if I really cared if he caught me. I decided that I didn't want to give up on 2nd place without a fight, and so I tried to lift the pace. So although I was feeling a bit better, perhaps only psychologically, but now I had to push harder to ride faster, so the laps weren't getting any easier. I couldn't believe that I was actually going to have to race hard for the final stages of this race to hold my position. It was like a worst nightmare scenario (OK, perhaps not worst, but it seemed like it at the time).

I don't think I've ever experienced something that has been so tough for so long.

I didn't really give myself much chance of holding off Graeme, as I still felt terribly slow out on the course. Especially on the bumpy downhill single tracks (my forearms were one constant I could depend on for the second half of the race, luckily most of the other pains and aches came and went).

But 2 laps later Graeme hadn't overtaken me yet (I think Leon and Sarah had told me he was 4 minutes behind). So it seemed like the rate at which he was catching me was slowing. Perhaps I could hold him off yet?

At around 8am I worked out I only had 3 laps to go. These final hours were really quite strange. How could this race be almost over when there was still 4 hours to go? Four hours is still an incredibly long time when you feel rotten, but still have to race hard. Actually this was one of the other things that I'd been talking to Josh about when we were riding together. About how it seems like the race is almost over after sunrise, but really there is still a very long time (7 hours) still to go. I'm beginning to wonder if he was sneakily psyching me out. He seemed so nice though ...

But back to the 3rd last lap. I thought if I could pull out a fast lap, I could demoralise Graeme, and hopefully that would mean I could then take it easier for the final two laps. So I dug deep to try to pull out a good one, and by my standards at that stage of the race, it wasn't too bad (about 75 minutes). I finished that lap, and Sarah and Leon told me that Graeme had slowed the previous lap, and wasn't looking good at all. So I think I finally started to relax, and my body started to give up the ghost. The small bit of adrenaline that helped me to put in a faster previous lap was gone, and the extra bit of fatigue from doing that faster previous lap wasn't helping either. So these last 2 laps were really quite hard (much like every lap since 3am now that I think about it).

My taste buds were really screwed by now too. I was having trouble drinking anything, I couldn't tell the difference between Coke and Poweraide, as they both tasted acrid. Food was pretty off-putting too.

As I headed out on the second last lap, lots of people seemed to be cheering me on. Then all of a sudden I found myself getting a bit emotional. It was starting to dawn on me that this epic event was almost over. I thought about the amazing sense of relief that would accompany the end of this event. Its magnitude seemed incomprehensible, and I was starting to get overwhelmed by the thought of it.. If I was like this now, then I thought I'd probably be bawling like a baby when I actually finished.

But that was still over 2.5 hours away, which is still a very long time to be riding when you're completely stuffed.

Heading out onto the last lap, once again I was blown away by all the people cheering me on (unless I was hallucinating), and I found myself getting emotional again. I also started to wonder what my body was going to do once I stopped. Would I break down into a sobbing mess, or just break down? Or would I suddenly feel on top of the world?

Lots of riders passing me gave me words of encouragement. It was amazing. I don't know if I knew half of them or not, I was having trouble recognising anyone by that stage.

On the last bit of single-track, Josh lapped me. He gave me a few quick words of encouragement, and congratulations, and then kept on going. A bit later I realised who he was.

Finally I got to the final bit of fire trail, and there was just a kilometer of easy road to go to the finish. Most of this track was lined with people, and most of them seemed to recognize that I was a solo rider, and cheered me along. Some of them even seemed to know my name.

Coming up to the final finish shute, what seemed like a thunderous roar went up from the crowd. I have never experienced such an amazing, welcoming cheer before. It was simply fantastic. I don't know how many people actually knew me (though I've since found out that there were more of my friends there than I realised at the time), but everyone seemed to cheering (I think they gave a huge cheer to all the solo riders).

So I got off my bike, crossed the line, and my body didn't suddenly give up on me. A guy stuck a microphone in front of my face and asked me to sum up in one sentence how it felt. I don't think I even managed one word. Just a moaning sort of sound instead. I think he realised that I wasn't going to be the most articulate interviewee, and went back to interviewing Josh.

So I guess that is about it. Cycling news claimed that I collapsed from chasing Josh for 24 hours, and had to undergo medical treatment. I'm not sure if they just exaggerated the true story (I got a bit dizzy, and a St Johns guy had a look at me), but more likely they were talking about Graeme Allbone. I still haven't heard exactly what happened to him, but I think he was taken away in an ambulance, but I don't think it was too serious.

I guess all the remains to be said is to thank some people.

A huge thank you to my support crew, Leon and Sarah. It is such a massive commitment to agree to help someone for a 24 hour race, and I certainly couldn't have made it through the event without their help.

They were there ready for me on every single lap, completely organized, making sure I had everything I needed. On many laps I was a bit dissapointed that they were so organized, because they had done everything that needed to be done so quickly that I didn't have an excuse to delay the start of another bike lap for as long as I hoped (a few more seconds, minutes, hours, whatever it took). When I'd become completely feral (some might say even before the race began), covered in sweat, dirt, saliva, coke, poweraide and who knows what else, they didn't hide behind the barricades, or even hide behind protective clothing. They just continued to happily do their jobs.

Thanks also to Helen, Bec, Aaron and whoever else organized the 'Go DaveO' banner. During those depressing laps I tried to remember to look up at the banner whenever I went past it, as it always made me smile.

Finally, thanks to everyone who cheered for me during the event. As I've mentioned before, I have never felt so supported in a race before.

It was truly a great feeling.

cheers,

Davo

======================================

Some selected results:

Solo Male:
1: Joshua Street. 21 laps (399km) 24:23:33
2: David Osmond 20 laps (380km) 24:23:58
3: Graeme Allbone 19 laps (361km) 24:01:17

Solo Female
1: Tory Thomas 17 laps (323km) 24:28:46

Male Pairs
1: Cannondale 25 laps (475km) 24:27:01

Male Teams of 4
1. Mongoose 28 laps (532km) 24:39:47 (outright winners)



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