Tuesday, just another day in the office. I was getting a bit fed up of sitting down all day so decided to look into 24hr bike races this season to realise a desire to go do one at some point. Turned out there was the Relentless 24 up in Fort William that very weekend. Great stuff. Plus I don't think I'm quite ready to torture myself by freezing my nuts of with the Peffer in January!
Thinking of people who would be game, I sent a few texts round and Nikki responded saying that she was keen. We then entered as a mixed pair under the name Vaseline Virgins - aptly named for a 24hr race. Slipstream Bum Inspectors sounded more of a road racing team!
After some long days the rest of the week to get Friday off, I headed up to Dundee to meet Nikki and her mate Will who kindly offered to support us and drive his van up, which was an enormous help and proved to be invaluable during the night for staying warm. Next thing I knew I was stood next to motorbike legend Guy Martin at the start line for the roll out! The bunch stuck together for the first lap (I think it was around 10k but not sure) but quickly split on the second when Nikki took over the baton/timing chip! We did a lap each during the light and two at night for a bit more rest. Our lap times averaged around 1hr 10mins, with fastest being 1hr 3mins (not a patch on the 50mins laps of some guys!)
The track itself was amazing, being a mix of the witches trail and ten on the ben and a few fire roads linking them in a figure of eight loop from the start/base. It was pretty technical and fast in places, with two big relentless up-hills to get the elevation. North shore, flowing berms and mud were the theme coming down. The daylight laps proved invaluable for when the lights had to go on. I was running a mates hope light and my China special. Both worked wonders with just enough juice to cover my night shift, including my massive 1hr 45min lap where I was so physically exhausted I had to stop at the start half way round the lap to eat loads of biscuits!
There were numerous crashes, my best one being falling off some north shore into a bush as I didn't realise I was on but it was pretty low and dark! There were a few others, with the next best crashing out at the top of the witches trail coming down but none were as funny. I did realise I was flying down a fire road on a night lap pretty fast and my eyes were closed. I ended up singing 'The Young Ones' the rest of that lap to stay awake! Thankfully though as everyone was spaced out so much that you only saw one to five other competitors per lap nobody saw/could hear my singing!
The atmosphere, the marshals and people watching and helping out like the guy Matt who became team support for the banter and the guys from exposure lights who joined in our team abuse we shouted at each other. We may have been the ones taking it least seriously, and probably why people wanted to join us, but we loving it and it kept the spirits high...well maybe not all the time, especially the two laps I did around 11pm when it rained! Matt's bacon sandwich quickly remedied this for me though!
During the race neither of us slept (you really didn't need to as you were pretty wired to go out for your next lap) which allowed us to get in a good number of laps. . As a result when it came to the results we won our category by 5 laps, and were 5th fastest pair overall. We totalled 19 laps, though after giving everything on the 17th (my 9th) to give Nikki time to get her last in before the cut off, we realised we had time for one more. Despite the initial lack of psyche I (was forced to) manned up and we nailed it to get in just before the 25hr time cut! Last ones in!
Would I do it again? Well despite the broken spoke, buckled wheel, untrue gears and new set of brake pads which resulted I would do it in a flash! Maybe not a 24hr solo though!
I have signed up for ten on the ben June 2014 solo. 10hrs how hard can that be?!
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| Podium first and second mixed pair |
Also as you were probably wondering, I can still confirm we're still Vaseline Virgins! Just well hard!
