My First 24hr Event

I’ll start by saying I had an awesome time for my first 24hr event. The team members were (alphabetically) brakeburner, Brian, craked, Logan, loki & Rob. Rob has been out injured so we weren’t expecting many laps from him and he didn’t disappoint .

I arrived Friday mid morning to find we had a spot in the overflow area. At first I was thinking WTF, the grass was knee high and if you’d laid your bike down you would lose it. Anyway, it didn’t take long before it was starting to get trampled and ended up being a really good spot.

After we got the camp site sorted I headed out with Jon for a lap. I really liked the course but I was surprised with how dry and dusty it was. Before I headed down I was going from reports from the Capital Punishment that it was very slippery. With this in mind I put an Ignitor on the front. About half way into the lap I was thinking I should go back to crossmarks front and rear so Saturday I did just that.

So come race morning; cooked up some bacon and eggs for breakfast; showed Dan how to change a tyre without levers and even seated it (UST) using a floor pump; reset the bearings in my lefty and set the sag front and rear then before I knew it was ready for the start.

I must say, I had never seen a start like this and there was such a buzz with getting the bike in the right spot for Andy to get a good start. Once the confusion was over of were the riders would be running down to get there bikes we were sorted. Andy did well and got off at the front of the pack and put in a scorcher.

I ended up doing a lap Saturday afternoon, 2 night laps and one early morning Sunday. It was on my lap Sunday morning when it really started to rain about 6kms in. I was lucky as the track was still in good condition. Jon was next and while Dan was waiting for Jon at transition we were deciding what to do. I wasn’t keen to go out but Andy was itching to get out. He decided to do a double but by the time he got out there it was just a mud fest so he left it at one.

Overall I thought the event was awesome. I loved the track and loved doing the night laps except for forgetting my glasses on the second night lap. I took a heap of pasta and ended up living on pizza as it was so good.

A big thanks to my team and the guys I camped with. Our camp had heaps of cover, lighting and even mountain biking movies for inspiration.

Below are my lap profiles.