MONT24

Well I’d always wanted to do a 24 hr race and now I have. Part of a Brady Bunch team with Hawkeye, Hans and our three sons (sounds like I’m channelling old TV shows there….)

What we thought might have been a fairly social category was pretty hotly contested and our 16 laps were only good enough for 8th out of 8 teams!
I did the lead out extended lap and two night laps before a loss of hydraulics had me virtually without a rear brake for much of the third lap. That and the lack of sleep from sorting out my son’s lights for his night lap between my two meant that I didn’t front up for a fourth lap on Sunday morning. A full 24 hrs of racing might have had us as high as maybe 7th place….

Props to Hans’ son Ben, who got faster every lap, finishing with a 58:58 dawn lap. The rest of us weren’t "quite" that fast, with Hawkeye fastest of the dads.

Anyway, while the whole tent village thing is a buzz and the track was a great selection of sweet Kowen sniggle, I think I’m a bit over the whole “being passed by lots of people and passing a few as well” doing laps on nice but tight sniggle track. Maybe that’s an over-reaction to a slow 4.30 am lap with bugger-all sleep or rear brake. Not sure whether or not I was hallucinating, but it seemed like there were a lot of rubber snakes on the track that last lap....

If I was faster, I might enjoy it more, I suppose. However, although there is plenty of room for improvement in that regard, I’m thinking that it’s unlikely to eventuate. I think I’ll stick to the half XCM format where, after a bit of sorting out from the start, you largely end up riding with folks doing a similar pace. And maybe aim to ramp up the training a bit more when I become eligible for Grand Masters…..

Thanks to Hawkeye for organising the team and to Hans for organising the night training rides.