English
After a punishing race at the Tour de France VTT, I was hoping that I would be recovered in time for my very first 24hr event that is the Mountain Mayhem. I’ve always wanted to be part of a 4 man team for Mountain Mayhem as I’ve heard that the experience of the event is certainly something not to be missed! Our team consisted of myself, Matt Page (last years solo winner & UK 24hr Champ), and Team Wiggle mechanics Andrew Delahay and Ben Jeffery. Our pre race plan was simply to have fun and soak up what the event has to offer while racing in the open male category. Unfortunately for Dell he was the man to start the race with the run, as he wasn’t around to stick up for himself when the discussion of ‘who was going to run’ came up, so we all voted him. Sorry Dell!
For the first half of the race our transitions were very laid back, and at one point I came into the transition to find that my replacement (Ben Jeffery) was in the toilet and that he wont be long. This was pretty much the tone for the weekend really, all having great laughs, and to be honest it was little things like that what made the event great! We stayed at one lap changes until it got to the night where we changed to 2 laps until the morning, so that it give some of us a little longer sleeping. During the night session around 12:30am I managed to come across the Kenda climb, which when all the lights are flashing (which they were) the timing chips record every riders time it takes to get from bottom to top. This was the only time that I was on course that the lights were flashing so I give it stick from bottom to top, then carried onto finished my 2nd lap of my two lap night shift. I managed to get around 4-5hrs sleep after that which I’m sure made a big difference come the morning.
My first morning shift came around 5:30am where I managed to do my fastest lap time so far, which was quite a refreshing start to the morning, as up until that point I’d felt a little bit sluggish. It wasn’t until after my second stint of the morning that Matt page made us aware that we was in 11th and that a top ten was now our new aim for the race. We all give it our best from that point on (not that we wasn’t trying hard in the first place mind) to try and pull back 10th so that Team Wiggle/Focus would make it onto the big screen as only the top ten in each category made the cut. I was really pleased with my last few turns in the race, as I was still lapping consistent lap times where I was expecting the last few laps to be my slowest. It was planned that Matt was to be doing the last lap but our slightly quicker lap times put Matt to come in slightly before the final 2pm hooter, meaning that I may have to go out for the last lap.
I stood in the transition zone looking towards the end of the finishing straight where you could see the riders coming into the last but one corner of the lap. Every rider that came around the corner that wasn’t Matt give me a sigh of relief as deep down I really didn’t want to go out for another lap. The timer counted down to 10 mins left, then 5, then 4 then 3 and I really thought that I was going to be safe from doing another lap and with that Matt came around the corner less than 3 mins before the finish.
I remember giving Matt a few choice words, before I set off for my last lap, but I wasn’t aware at the time that I would record my fastest lap of the whole race, so going out for that last lap didn’t seem so bad after all. So I’ve decided that 8hrs warm up over the course of 24hrs is the key to feeling good for a race! All our teams hard effort payed off by giving us a finishing position of 9th in the open men. Good finish! I found out at the finish that I was the fastest up the Kenda climb during the night with a time of 42 seconds. Cool!
Mayhem turned out to be everything and more than I expected and will look forward to being part of another in the future! Thanks to Jason and all the Wiggle lot for making my Mayhem experience a good one!
Mayhem Results
http://www.osmountainmayhem.co.uk/
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