24hour to 23minutes

Its been some time since my last entry, and in that period a fair amounts has happened. Training has been up and down due to busy work and family loads, but I have been getting just enough of the right miles in. Missed the round 2 of the summer series due to illness (not a nice one either), but managed to recover in time for what is so far my favorite mtb event of the year, the Bontarger 24/12.

Previous Dusk till Dawn experience should have put me off riding big enduro races forever, however I have a bad memory and evidently forgot how hard they are. The setting for the race was Newnland Park in Plymouth, a private park open to riding exclusively for races. The course was great, really steep climb to start that tapered and climb for the first mile, in to some rooty tacky single track for the next 1.5 miles. Once through this it wandered its way through a super fast fireroad decent, and a nasty climb and bombhole run to a really fast rocky, narrow, root covered decent. Seconds after you thunder out of this decent it was about two thirds through, and you hit some gravel fire road that climbed steady for about 500yards (past a bunch of guys smoking reefer, chucking out ear melting drum and bass for the entire 24hrs). They were located at the foot of a soul destroying 25-30% climb about 300yards long, that made you get out of the saddle and grind your way to the top, which turn a sharp right into a succession of root cover smaller, shorter sigletrack climbs. Putting these behind you and it was pretty much home free for the last 2 miles, after the climbs came the biggest, fastest XC decent I've ever done. The track was bumpy and got pretty slick as the hours went by, it also had a nasty gully running it's entire length off to the left which if drawn into it you were more than in danger of dropping off it's near vertical 100ft edge. Through the river crossing after the decent and all that was left was a tricky climb through a considerable amount of roots, which spat everyone off at some point. Quickly this brought you to the last section of fire road that led you down a lovely quick grassy decent, under a bridge, weaved you through the campsite back to the handover.

All I can really say is that all the guys riding for both Streetlife and Extreme Sport Therapy put in an amazing effort, all completing their full complement of laps. Not one person bailed out (although I was close at 5am), and we had some a great set of results. Jason, Darren, Andy and myself grabbed 5th in the 24hour men's, Neil, Giles, Kevin and Ian got 22nd, and Alex, Howard Olly and Stef managed 25th. All in all a massive surprise to all us 24hour first timers.

My next event although tiny in comparison was last night Bungay 2up 10mile TT, that I rode with Simon Millard, a regular riding companion and powerhouse. A good start by us both was spoilt a little by my suffering of a massive stitch just after the 5mile point, which lost us about 30secs, and left Simon on the front for the majority of the final leg home. Still a P.B. for me of 22.58, and more importantly, we beat Josh (23.10). Making a point of signing on straight after us, and calling me his "carrot" just meant that I had to rode myself stupid just to make sure he wouldn't catch me.