12/06/05
Today I am feeling pretty tired and sore; but not unexpectedly following a 12 hour mountain bike race yesterday! I had to get
up at 5am to drive to the event in Bristol, and was struggling to keep my eyes open on the motorway, but fortunately there was very
little traffic at that time in the morning. I won the race last year, so was returning to defend my title - a nice touch by the
organiser was my start pack bag saying Rob 'the champ' English on it! I was on my own for this one, unlike last year when Duncan
provided excellent feed and morale support, so just had a big box full of bottles and food to leave by the trackside. The weather was
okay - not that hot but it stayed dry all day. At 9am we were off. I got a good start, and came round at the end of the first lap
in fourth place; and with the three in front all team riders, I was comfortably first solo. The course was similar to last year, with well
over half being technical singletrack - great fun but hard on the upper body and you had to maintain concentration! My plan was to
try not to stop, short of pausing to pick up fresh bottles, as training for the 24hr. And, apart from a necessary 'comfort stop' at
nine hours, that is what I did, maintaining a fairly consistent pace - my last lap was only four minutes slower than my first (with an average
lap time of around 26 minutes). I was able to stop after 11 hours and 38 minutes with 26 laps completed, knowing there wasn't time
for another. I knew I had won, but hadn't had any information during the event to know what was happening behind me. It turned out I
was three laps up on second place in my class, although the winning single-speeder was actually ahead of him with 24 laps. The winning
team did 30 - but I would have come 10th in the team competition! All-in-all it was a remarkable uneventful ride; no crashes, no punctures
(apart from my front tyre going soft in the last half mile, perfect timing!), and no major physical problems - just the usual sore hands and
feet and legs and arms.....
