First Podium

This was the first 12 hour for me and my mate JB, so we really didn’t know what to expect. We had planned on entering this race as training for the Angry Doctor and the Scott 24 hour. We had both done a reasonable amount of training leading up to the race, but we really hadn’t anticipated what was going to happen yesterday.
JB started and when he crossed the start line I think he was in with the last 10 riders, so nice start mate, but when he came down the final descent he would have been up in the top 20 riders. Our intention was to start with double laps and then change to singles when we got tyred. JB got in after a good start with a couple of low 30 minutes laps and off I went.
Disaster for me 10 seconds in to the race. As I accelerated way from the transition area I heard a ping noise from my rear wheel that I have heard only twice before and both of those times I have come to a stop to find a broken spoke. I continued along the first section of fire road and I could see the rear wheel was out of shape. I kept going on my first two laps and thankfully the wheel held on, I didn’t really hold back too much as I knew I had a spare wheel in the car and like I mentioned we weren’t really there to race, yet!
We kept on going as we had planned and after 6 laps each we decided that we would try single laps, as 20ks at full pace was starting to get a bit hard. After a enough time to have a coffee and change my jersey I saw JB coming down the final descent and it meant a sprint over to transition for me. When JB came in he said “oh forgot to mention we were in third a couple of laps ago” I couldn’t believe it.
It was probably what I needed to kick me on as 60ks in about 3hours 10 minutes was starting to take its toll on this old body.
We carried on going with the single laps as night fell and after JB had completed his 10th lap I could see that he’d had enough, and I must admit I was not looking forward to what was going to be my last lap. We could see on the event computer that two laps earlier were 25 minutes ahead of 4th place and we were a lap down on 2nd, so we were fairly confident that if my lap was the last we would be good for 3rd place even though there would only be 10 minutes still left to get out on another lap.
While I was on my last lap I started to get a bit concerned and I was thinking that it might be safe if I continued on and completed a double to make sure we did get 3rd place. But about 6ks in to that lap I knew I had no chance of completing another!
So there it was 11 hours 50 minutes of riding and 20 laps for the two us, enough for our first podium.
I’m still a bit shocked!
Chris