English
Gorrick 12 hour enduro
Being a solo racer I’ve done several 12hr races, but this weekend I entered the Gorrick 12hr as a pair with fellow Wiggle sponsored rider Lee Williams. The style of racing in a pairs event is much different to a solo race and not something I train for as the pace is much faster with just a small time gap between laps to recover. It was the first time I’ve raced in a team or pair for several years. For Lee it was the longest race he has entered, so we were both a little unsure of how we would get on but were obviously hoping for a good result.
We both arrived on site on Saturday afternoon and headed out for a practice lap just before it got dark. The course was quite typical of Gorrick courses, being very tight and twisty with lots of tree lined singletrack which was also bumpy and loose in places. It seemed like it would be fun and a good course to hold as there were enough passing opportunities. I had taken my Focus First Extreme and Raven Pro, but decided it would be best to use the First as I didn’t want to aggravate my back injury.
After a pretty good nights sleep I woke up ready and raring to go, but as the morning progressed I became very apprehensive and far more nervous than I ever get before a solo race. I really didn’t want to let Lee down, as I knew he was flying this season and I didn’t want to be the weak link. We agreed that it would be best for Lee to start, as he is faster so would hopefully give us a good position and is better at mass starts. We also decided that we would do double laps in order to get enough recovery between stints.
Lee made a flying start and at the end of the first two laps we were not only leading the pairs, but were leading the whole race, which also had teams of 4 and solo racers. I started my first two laps and tried to be as quick as possible, which was strange for me as I normally pace a race rather than go flat out. 2 miles into the first lap I was caught and passed by the leading team, but as we were not racing them I was happy to let him go. No one else passed me during my two laps, so when I handed back over to Lee we were still winning the pairs by a couple of minutes and 2nd overall! During the hour or so break between stints I had just enough time to do a short cool down, get some food down me and sit down for a bit and recover before doing a 5 minute warm up to get the muscles working again.
My lap times were OK, but slowing slightly as each lap went by, but as other teams were doing the same I was not too concerned. At the end of my 4th lap, just before handing over to Lee I punctured, but I was very lucky as it was on the final corner, just a few meters from the handover area. I changed the tyre while Lee was on course as I had put a cut into the sidewall, but with limited time I wasn’t able to properly check the tubeless seal. We were still holding the lead in the pairs and the lead was starting to grow slightly over second and were comfortably ahead of 3rd. Starting my 3rd double lap I was still feeling OK and hoping to get into a steady pace that I could hold to the end, but I had more tyre problems as the new tyre was leaking air and I had to stop twice on each lap to add air. Luckily I had an Innovations Big Air canister, which was quick and easy to use and held enough to keep the tyre inflated until I handed over to Lee again. Luckily for us the problems I had didn’t cost us any time over 2nd place.
It started to get dark around 7pm in the trees and this was the time that lights were made compulsory. We were both running Lupine Betty 7 main lights, which made the night laps a breeze as the amount of light on offer is simply amazing and we could both keeping attacking the singletrack without fear despite it being Lee’s first time racing at in the dark. After 4 sets of double laps each around 9 hours into the race we decided to switch to single laps, as we were both starting to slow during the second lap and as we were nearing the end of the race we didn’t need to eat as much. My lap times became quite stable around 39-40 minutes which I was really pleased about, as it showed my endurance was still good even if my climbing wasn’t particularly strong. On one my laps towards the end of the race I was passed by the team in second place and as hard as I tried I wasn’t able to stick with them, but they were understandably fresher than us having three times the rest we have between laps. We were pulling out a sizeable lead over 2nd place in the pairs, which was obviously much more important.
Into the final few laps we knew that baring a major problem that the race was ours, but neither of us eased up at all as we wanted to get in as many laps as possible. We finished the race with a total of 20 laps, split equally between us and won the men’s pairs by over 20 minutes, lapping the rest of the field. We would also have finished 3rd in the men’s team, only a few minutes behind the second men’s team so finished 3rd overall. Not bad for our first outing as a team! I’m sure we will team up again future races, as we both really enjoyed a change to our normal racing style.
I’ve got a few weeks break now, then I have 2 final races to end the season, the Maxx Exposure at the end of September then Dusk ’til Dawn in October where I will be aiming to defend my solo title again.
Cheers Matt for being a great team mate! Happy Days!