I found out that I had qualified for this race about a year ago and thought I would head over and do it. Qualifying meant not sucking at the 2009 Moonride 24hr Solo, this also happened to be my 1st 24hr solo race and I ended up in hospital after it (but I didnt suck). Figured I had a year to train and prepare, but really, how do you train for a 24hr solo event aside from lots of long rides?
The year went pretty quickly, I figured I would head over and compete in the race and not get too serious, I was going to have fun and that I did.
I would have never imagined I would be racing a course like this for a 24hr Solo event, my laps were around 1 hour 25 minutes and the course was very technical. All quite different to the sub 30 minute laps and flat, smooth course the Moonride offered. But this was a World class event!
I shared a site at the race with a friend from Wellington which kept setup costs down. We were all very organised, the whole event was very well orgainsed.
The race started at 12pm and we ran a short distance to our bikes and soon we were on the singletrack. The course was 18kms long and consisted of what I would call 4 sections. The 1st section was a technical uphill with lots of sharp switchbacks, rocks to climb over etc, I think I liked this section best as I found it the most fun to ride. This climb took us to the top of the course, we would cross this path again later on in the lap. Section 2 was the downhill section that followed, it was technical and rocky. On this downhill section we would meet a track called Pork Barrel, this was a very technical track with dropoffs and all sorts of things to climb over and negotiate. It took me a couple of laps to get properly comfortable riding this whole section with my seat up. Seat down would have been a breeze as this is how I often enjoy the technical stuff, but I figured in this sort of race I should ride with it up. Once at the bottom we would get onto section 3 where we had some wide 4WD track, some long uphills, a few short downhills and some good pinch climbs. I found this part of the track particularly boring. Section 3 would take us back up to the top where we would cross paths with where we were with the top of section 1, a bridge had been constructed over the track. There was also the only aid/fuel station at this point. Section 4 followed with some more single track and then onto some very fast smooth flowy track that would take us back down eventually to the event village.
I raced from 12pm to 10:30pm at night, I stopped each lap for a new bottle, I ate some food and had a gel. I believe my hydration and feeding was very good and well organised for the event and this was thanks to my partner Candice. I would usually stop for around 3-4 minutes.
I pulled into the pits at around 10:30pm, I had just had a rather sketchy lap, I was tired and fatigued, it was dark and I no longer felt too confident riding down the technical downhill, I felt like I would make a mistake and I had had previously plenty of close calls. I was racing this for fun after all and decided I would get a sleep in, I thought I might as well get a decent sleep in too and slept until 4am. We had stretchers to sleep on that were borrowed from a friend in Canberra, they were ideal.
I was back on my bike and racing again at 4:30am, I managed to get 4 more laps in finishing the race at 10:30am. I could have got another lap in and the race allowed you to finish up until 1pm but I felt like packing it in. I ended up with a result of 11 laps which meant I had come 39th in my category (out of 50) and 282 overall (out of 264 starters).
I didn't see any spiders or snakes or other nasties out there while I raced, I did have a Kangaroo leap out in front of me though and I did see magpies dive bombing other racers.
Awesome event, definitely world class, the organisers did a brilliant job!
This was the hardest race I have ever done and an awesome experience too.
