The idea of doing a 12 hour in a 3 person team was floated several months ago, as a method to get us out training (riding) more. Having competed in a number of 12 hours I knew that this was going to be a real challenge for the team, but would be achievable with work and some planning. The training for this went really well for about 6 weeks, then for a number of reasons fell off. The race managed to sneak up on us and I was really scared. As for planning, we were better organised then any other team I had been on, with beds, a plan and lots of food organised.
A scare early in the week after one of the team members having an accident had me worried. I thought we would struggle with three, let alone two riders! Fortunately he managed to race for the day making the job a little easier.
Race day rolled around and we had an early start to get to Taupo and get set-up. As a 3 person team we had planned on doing two lap stints and being a smaller team planned on 30 minute laps, with an overall goal of 24 laps for the team to complete. The tent site was looking good and the weather was looking like it would be on our side.
The start of the race was very fast, as expected and Perry was much faster than planned which had me wandering if we had targeted to low. In a way I was worried, because based on his time I would be having a much smaller rest between laps! Kah went out and kept the pace up which was impressive and had the pressure on me.
I managed to keep the pace going and it turned out that we were more than a lap ahead of our plan after our first 6 laps. We also found that we were recovering well which was a good sign that we might hold on. Despite discomfort from various things throughout the day our pace kept up as we prepared for night, which was also very pleasing.
A wander over to the results board showed that we were floating around 4/5/6 which was very surprising, we just wanted to survive. From what we were seeing there was no real chance of us getting up to the top 3 at that point in time.
Our planning, being our food, well set up camp site and range of food really worked well. It was good to get out of the sun, sit down and have a variety of food made it much more enjoyable than other twelve hours I had been involved in.
By the time night fell we were beginning to hurt a lot. Perrys knee was starting to cause him troubles and our lap times began to slow. Personally I was very tired and sore and was struggling with getting a focus on racing, as I couldn’t see an end to it. After coming in from lap 8 I was told that I had at least one lap, possibly two left I told the boys I was done. It wasn’t long before I was keen again, especially after working out that I had one lap left and knowing it would be the last lap. Thinking we were sitting in a comfortable 5th I thought that it didn’t matter if I was 5 min slower (I was under no real pressure to finish by 12 hours and we definitely didn’t have time for another).
Before my last lap I had a few requests for wheelies, which I thought sounded like fun, I had been doing them earlier in the day, so why not do them at the end of the day? I went out and was riding what I thought was okay. Then my lights fell off my helmet – three times before I fixed them properly, which annoyed me and showed in my final lap time and lost me a number of places.
As I was getting closer to the village I got excited and managed a pretty average wheelie past Paula (after her request, but I think she missed it), had a nice long wheelie past my camp site and managed a few other good ones before the finish as well!
Once I was finished we dropped our plates and transponder off and checked the results. After 11 hours we were sitting in third, by a small amount. It was a big surprise. I then began to worry. Had losing my lights cost us 3rd? Had my wheelies cost us 3rd? There wasn’t a lot we could do so we finished packing and went back to prize giving. We watched the Pink Ladies collect some prizes and heard our names called out for 3rd, which at the start of the day was unexpected and was a relief after we knew we were so close.
As a quick summary.
Things that went well
• We were very organised with food, race planning and had our sight set up well which really helped
• Shock result of 3rd
Things that need could be better
• Less commuting (1.5 hours before and after the race)
• More fitness, it hurt lots! |
