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Almost eight hours
What a day, I had a blast. I'm already looking forward to the next round 
Everyone was so friendly, especially the race winner Mark Tupalski and one of the KOM shop riders I'm pretty sure it was Chris Smith. Each time they would overtake we would have a chat and they would always offer encouragement.
The track was in better condition than I was expecting, there has been a lot less rain at Appin then there has in the Northern Beaches over the last week.
I didn't really have a race plan, during the first lap I decided to do doubles before pulling into my little pit area to restock and clean the driver train. Which worked well with the lap length being around 10km.
My lap times were pretty consistent, due largely to the AMBC clinic I had done the day before. As the laps went on my cornering and lines got better every time. For the last 6 hours the only time I was using the front brake was when entering into technical sections.
My lap times
1 48:46.2
2 46:54.4
3 51:54.1
4 47:34.1
5 56:32.5
6 48:57.5
7 1:01:14
8 51:48.5
9 1:04:14.4
The 7th lap time is long as I had to fill up my bottles at the water station, after doing so I then forgot to put one on my bike. Also during the 7th lap I stopped to lend another rider my chain breaker and a power link, didn't get much good reward for this good deed. My saddle bag was still muddy from Ourimbah, making it hard to close, 3km on the zip burst open and spread my tools on the trial.
After finishing the 8th lap I waited 10 minutes before heading out on the 9th lap as I really wanted to see 8 hours on the finish clock, missed that by 2:04.
One embarrassing thing, for the first two laps my Garmin was showing miles which I didn't realise until I stopped after the 2nd lap. Every time I looked at the computer during those laps I thought I was in for a long day, if I was struggle to get the bike to an average of 10km/h.
PS. I having finally collected my NobMob jersey and wore it for the entire race today 
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Good work Jay, and well done for getting your bike ready in time for the race...
Yeah, 9 laps of Appin is an awesome effort. I take it they had a few the technical rocks and stuff in there and it wasn't laid out to be a super smooth ride? Which makes it even more of an achievement.
How good was the track!!!
It was so grippy apart from the fire road.
especially after the constant rain on the manly side of town
I was so prepared to get soaked for the race.
I was having a great battle with 7th place,
until
After the 1st creek crossing on the 4th lap I managed to snap my chain,
A kind soul stopped to lend me his so I fixed it and continue on.
Then, on my 5th lap, at the furtherest section away from transition,
the chain snapped again, bummer it was along walk back to base.
so i stopped to drink beer and socialize.
The track was very technical. The only section taken out was the rock drop that leads onto the bridge, they replaced that with the rough downhill fire trail to the river crossing.
The track gave my arms a good workout, was quite a few step-ups to pop the front wheel over.
Shaun, I didn't need to do any prep to my race bike, I'm glad I took both bikes to the AMBC clinic.