Victory

Entering this race with man down might have been seen as in a negative light but as we won our class in the most recent 24 hour JetBlack race we thought we had a good chance of at least making the podium of Masters 4s. I was in a team with Carlgroover and Whisperer. Carlgroover was positive we had first place in the bag before even starting!.

We started off in the lead and kept it all the way through. There isn't much to say about our laps really, they were pretty uneventful other than the usual things that happen at races. Steve had a puncture after putting a hole in a side-wall on one of his laps but fixed it in record time so we only lost around 8 minutes I think. On my first lap I got lost twice (which can be seen from my GPS track) which brought me in a couple of minutes slow. There were a LOT of people getting lost on that lap, I do think the signs could have been better, yellow arrows on a white back ground are hard to read at speed.

I really liked the track. For me there was a good mix of everything, and I think the longer fast stretches worked well with my current "training program". The downhill was great fun and Whisperer manages to set up camp with a great view, providing some excellent near misses, some riders getting very loose over a jump next to a barb wire fence. I did see one off there, some chap on a crosser who was thankfully ok.

We never backed off as the second place team were pretty close after the puncture but obviously we are all happy with the result considering there were only 3 of us.

Kudos to Gav for coming in third on the first lap and setting the fastest night lap (I think) of 27 something. No mean feat on that track.

Man it was cold but the vibe around the massive fire was great. All in all, a top event