DUST, GLORIOUS DUST

I'm not even half way through washing the dust off everything I had with me this weekend at the Original Source Mountain Mayhem but I thought I would type some words to let everyone know how we got on. The Bike Mechanics had a great race this year, finishing in 26th with 24 laps, out of 200+ teams, our best result yet.

During our practice lap on Friday afternoon the heavens opened and I can't say I was that eager to get going on the Saturday. The course designers had been busy this year adding new sections and bringing in some old ones. Being so fresh, these sections had no chance of holding up in wet weather with thousands of riders cycling over them, and I thought if it was going to be wet, this year would be tough.

However, the forecast looked promising so we crossed fingers and hoped it would dry out and stay dry for the weekend, and thankfully it did. We stuck to our usual strategy of Mark doing the run and me going out second, followed by Jon then Andrew. Mark had a good run, starting at the front of the pack, even though he tripped and fell on the start line (I just wish I'd had a video camera), and he finished with a quick first lap.

It all went pretty smoothly for us all, no mechanicals or any major dramas, and we kept putting in consistent laps throughout the day. The course this year ended up being fantastic. Some of the new twisting sections through the woods were great and made the course far more interesting than previous years. This year also saw the return of the "land rover climb", a long, grassy track, which last appeared in my very first Mountain Mayhem, and my first 24-hour event in 2004. Back then all I remember of it was slipping, sliding and dragging my bike up a long hill of greasy mud, thinking "what the hell am I doing here?" but this weekend it was dry and dusty, and all part of the fun.

Being a normal training week for me (i.e. not a race week), I already had over 280km of riding that I'd done during the week in my legs before the start of the race, and I wondered how I'd cope with racing. I'd made sure I only did endurance rides during the week and kept the higher intensity training for the weekend. Luckily it paid off and I felt strong on all 7 of my laps.

This coming week is a rest week for me, with just some easy rides to do, for which I'm grateful for, as I feel like I need a rest. Then I'll be going in to my final 4 weeks of training for the Twentyfour12. I could only admire and respect the guys that were soloing this weekend, and many of them riding more laps than some of the teams. I just hope that I'll be one of them crossing the finishing line in a few weeks' time.