Last weekend I had my first experience of supporting others at a 24 hour mountain bike race. I spent the weekend supporting Jennifer taking part in a ladies pair with Catherine at Sleepless in the Saddle, the second of the two blue riband endurance races in the UK (the first being Mountain Mayhem).
After arriving on Friday night, setting up camp and having a barbie, things were going well and I even had time to do a quick couple of laps myself before the race started. It was a hard dry course with only short sharp climbs and plenty of nice singletrack through the trees.
The race started and Catherine and Jen were reeling off the laps. Jen soon put in what would turn out to be her fastest lap of the race. After dropping both of her water bottles on one lap I handed over a camelbak replacement. Then the following lap she zapped past me shouting “I need your bike”, meaning the first emergency of the weekend.
Fortunately, as Catherine headed out for her second three hour stint, her husband, Bruce arrived in camp, after having spent the day working in Red Planet. He arrived with all the bits and pieces we’d been requesting, including a new bottom bracket and set of gear cables for my Santa Cruz Nomad.
I cooked dinner for Jen and myself (after throwing half of it on the floor by accident), then Bruce set about changing my Nomad’s bottom bracket using only my headtorch for lighting. Very impressive. Within 5 minutes of Jen’s return to the course, the bike was in full working order with lights, number and, yes, a pink saddle, all fitted!
In the meantime, the heavens had opened, dumping most of their damp contents on the course and those on it, including Catherine, who finished her wet weather stint visibly shaken by the number of mishaps people were having. Despite this, Jen headed out for her stint and I set about cooking for Catherine and Bruce (no dinner thrown on the floor this time).
At about 2.30am, with the rain still falling and many teams quitting the race (yes really!), Jen returned to the Red Planet campsite and we decided that everyone should get a few hours sleep and start riding again when it was safer to do so in the morning light. At 5.30 I got up and made sure the bike was clean and ready to race. A number of people walked past me asking if we were mad to still be racing at this stage – obviously not understanding the girls’ determination to eek out a result.
Jen headed out for an early morning set of laps, soon to be accompanied by more steady rain. After a gruelling couple of hours she returned and Catherine took over to take the race to completion. Throughout the race, Jen and Catherine had been racing in second place in the ladies pairs category and chasing a pair of riders that we’d spotted early on. Unfortunately, as the race neared completion, it was clear that the other team would win, but only by a lap or two, so Catherine pushed on and sure enough, the girls ended up finishing a very close and extremely creditable second.
When the girls collected their prizes on the podium, we were all shocked to find that the team that we had thought was winning was actually not, and instead the winning team was a completely different team to that which we’d been tracking for 24 hours!!! This, along with the fact that I’d thrown another perfectly good meal (breakfast this time) on the floor, completed what was a very entertaining, tiring but rewarding weekend.
Well done to Jennifer and Catherine for their awesome determination in adverse conditions.
