A couple of weeks earlier a large box of Conti tyres and Sram
stuff arrived at work…
Monday Night: it was of to Gav’s to rebuild the race
bike…most of the drive train had been stolen of it for the training bike, so it
was to get all new kit.
Tuesday Night: was
fitting up tyres and swapping the rear cassette and chain on my bike (my wheels
are Judes spares normally fitted up with muds ) and loading up the trailer
Wednesday Night: servicing, the training bike (or the spare
for the weekend) new cassette, chain, brake pads, forks etc etc then loading up
the van, no we don’t travel light but it is a metric shit load less gear than the first one
we turned up to with!
Thursday: a casual drive up to Rotorua stopping in the
Reddies for Jude to do a couple of shake down runs on the bikes…all ok, I headed
into the forest latter that evening with Dean for skidz &wheelies in the pissing rain…….well actually it
stopped by the time we got into the trees, good times were had.
Friday… the last minute "Stuff" and the next thing you know
3pm has rolled around. Time to head out to the venue with last minute pick ups
on the way…..you know the stuff you forgot to get earlier…usual mayhem at the
venue actually it seemed a bit worse as the still didn’t know the answers we
had asked via email earlier..trivial stuff but still nice to know …we manage
to annoy a marshal on the way to find our tent site, we were only doing as we
had been told at sign in…guess it was a little different to what he had been
told….I sympathize with the poor guy and
felt a bit sorry for him
It all worked out ok in the end and we found a good site not
down hill from the tap where every munter decided it was a good idea to wash
their bikes during the event soaking about 30meters of up hill track
While Charlotte (my partner in crime for this 24hrs) and I
set up camp, Jude and Timmy went and pre rode the track. It took them about
35mins-ish and one look at Jude's bike told me quickly it was going to be muddy
at least for the night anyway so time to
swap out the tires on the race wheels as it was not raining and it seemed it
prolly wouldn’t, the cup & cone XTR’s were still going to be the way to
roll.
The front tyre didn’t want
play ball and was losing air after about 30mins or so it was in with some
more Stans pump it up and ride it around the grass doing figure 8’s for about
15mins……hard work when you normally ride a 19” frame (Jude rides a 13”) lucky it
was dark
Like always for me the start creeps up and before I know it
Jude is off on her bike in that direction….First mistake I had forgotten to let
the tires down…..I remembered about ½ through her second lap…So did Jude when
normal first lap flurry had settled down
The first lap was about a 36min lap, I did a quick mental calc and
I said to Charlotte "right we are in for about 40 laps"…….little did I know
For us the night went pretty well other than a battery
failure 1.5hrs sooner than the planned stop, Jude had about a 20-25min lead at
this point so it was not worry but then
after that 2nd place started
putting in a few good lap and closing the gap
to about 15mins. Time to wake Jude up but how without worrying her…..I
cant remember how we did it but it worked Jude picked up her lap times
Charlotte and I took turns getting some shut-eye during the next
few hours
With about 2 laps to daylight I worked out Jude was about
12mins off lapping 2nd, lap
times for everyone had blown out Jude was doing 40-45min laps the track has
clearly blown out
It went through my mind how cool would it be for Jude to
have lapped second place before light but quickly thought the gap was far to big….but
little was I to know….the next lap Jude rolled into the tents right behind
second…..who then promptly headed for the showers.
Jude rolled into the tent about 9:55am exactly the wrong
time, I gave her the option of a break now as she would end up amongst the 12/6
hr start mayhem but she opted to carry on it ended up being a long lap as
muppets blasted past and promptly fell off or stopped and walked in front of her,
all rhythm out the window
About 3pm Jude came in saying she couldn't shift gears, one look at
where the rear mech was supposed to be explained why…15 second with the hose and
I found it again. Blasted it out with some degreaser, applied some lube and she
was on her way again.
By about 4pm 2nd had pick up the pace again and
even though Jude had a 3 lap lead I
didn’t wont a mechanical or crash or anything stupid to cost Jude the race. I
decided to ask Jude to pick it up again…but how…. As track got worse Jude was
coming back to the tent with more and more left in her bottle so the stops
were getting longer, I suggested it would be a good idea if she could try and finish
her bottle out on the track…….
The next lap Jude caught us napping she not only had finished
her bottle but rode faster too, 'Nice'. Quickly giving her a new bottle and lubing
chain it was a quick stop, the next lap was lights on and by the end of that
lap she was about to put another lap on second who pulled the pin with a little under 4hours left to go. Jude said she
“its rapidly becoming not fun out there with the amount of walking” (even the
pro-elite’s racing in teams were running the climbs) but she headed out for another
lap with the plan of doing at least 2 more but asked for a coffee at the end of this
lap
When she came in she got off her bike and within a
very short time she was having trouble standing and was shaking…..I immediately
questioned had we under fed her? What can I do? when she looked at me and really sadly said "can
I stop now", there was still 3 hrs to go
and Jude turns up to do a 24hr event, I said “If you really want to stop you
can…Jim (2nd) has already stopped and is in the showers”. Jude had a
5 lap lead which was even if Jim went
out again she would never catch up and 3rd was some 10 laps or so
behind Jim.
Personally I felt other than personal pride there was no
point in grinding on any further
It was clearly not fun. I could see no good reason to push
her out again, so she headed to the showers (and got a hot one) while we packed
up and Timmy who had been in the forest all day turned up with pizzas for
every one.
Looking at data afterwards while we were down a little bit
on the food in her bottles, Jude had taken on enough other food, so that was
not the problem, after talking to some other riders, reading the comments on
various forums and seeing Pete Marshall's photo’s the answer quickly became apparent , basically Jude hadn’t trained for pushing her bike up tacky
thick mud climbs for a distance equal to about 1.5 Marathons while competing a
24hr MTB race…..I don’t think there are any un-answered questions
Jude just pushed herself further and in a way she has never
done before!
Something about 24hr racing…there is “Teams” and there is “Solo’s”
Teams is a bunch of individuals cutting out laps as fast as
they can, while what each member does out on the track effects the overall
result, it doesn’t really effect much what the others do, there is a little bit
of tactics to who goes out when….
Solo racing while there are a few that do it unsupported and
some do that ok, to do it well you need a good Team, and what each one of these
members do directly effects the others, we mess up in the tent and it can have
bad affect on Jude, Jude has a mare out on the track and we have to figure how
to over come it, change plans etc etc……
24hr Solo racing is team racing at its best……..on that note
I would to thank every one who helped with this result Charlotte, Gav, Tim,
Dean, oh and Jude
Next year ? who knows maybe we are still chasing that
perfect moonride………
Photo Cred : Pete Marshall & Myself
Photo Cred : Pete Marshall & Myself
