Mountain Mayhem, the biggest 24 hour event in the UK with 600 odd teams turning up - mixed 5 person or single sex 4 person teams, solo riders, singlespeeders, unicyclists... you name it. Never the most technically demanding of courses but enough to keep you interested, this year they expanded the singletrack through the woods and had 2 options, so you could vary it a little, see which line was faster (neither) or pass that slowcoach safely. This year was the 10th Anniversary, so all the finishers got a neat wee medal.
Weather-wise it was wet all week, with the event coinciding with the Glastonbury festival it seems fated to attract rain, with dire predictions for the coming weekend. A couple of days before reports were coming out that the nearby towns were risking flooding and that more rain had fallen than they usually see that month. Mud tyres might be handy then...
As part of our preparation (this year I rode in a Welsh team known as the Ice Weasels, with another Vorber – JimB also known imaginatively as “Welsh Jim”) we were to arrive at the site on the Friday afternoon prior, as a keg of finest ale and an enormous quantity of sirloin steak and lamb shoulder had been procured – along with the monster BBQ to feed the masses. In our section of the grounds we had planned for 10 teams to set up shop, many sharing the BBQ, gazebo space and workshop facilities. The number of gazebos erected attracted some criticism early on, but quickly proved their worth over the next 24 hours.
It rained steadily overnight on the Friday and a few people were pre-riding the course in the morning and coming back a bit muddy. None of the Ice Weasels would indulge in such a profligate wastage of our energy, so we sat around and discussed tactics, practised our heckling chants (we were next to the race course) and took bets on whether the gazebo would last either the weather or the flames from the BBQ underneath. Our strategy was simple, to do 3 hour stints at a time dropping to 2 hour stints at night. One small side effect of this was that one rider would be effectively learning the track at dusk, but they would have the glory of coming in at the end to be personally congratulated by the organiser.
The race started at 2pm with a Le Mans style run of about 800m. Somewhat foolishly I had volunteered to start for the team, the run nearly killed me (a decidedly non runner) in cycle shoes with a camelback of water on my back, and I started in the back third of the 600 odd riders. The first lap wasn't too bad, a bit slippery and alternating between very hot and humid and brief showers, but I got round in a reasonable time with my (only) mud tyre at the rear doing well and my standard XC tyre at the front just holding it’s own.
My second lap was a bit slower and the course was definitely showing the effects of the rain and hundreds of riders, my front tyre had turned into one almighty slick by halfway. It was certainly fun/challenging when you were regularly slipping down the off camber hill traverses and weaving through the tree sections (full of wet tree roots of course) had to be done in a particularly careful manner. As soon as you put the power down on some sections the back wheel just went sideways and I had a couple of good "crashes" in the slippery ferns area, one on a particularly lethal and slippery corner as I attempted to turn and the front wheel slid out without warning, the other when I just went plowing off the track into the ferns as I tested the "speed will keep you straight" theory. It did work, until the front wheel followed a rut off the track, nothing I could do, I ended up neck deep in the ferns (still on my bike) about 2 metres off the track. I wasn’t the only one, a lot of bikes finished the ferns section trailing decent sized pieces of vegetation. I was pretty happy to hand over to the next rider and make a start at clearing my bike (and borrowing another mud tyre).
Unfortunately the weather proceeded to get a bit worse (while I was off getting a leg massage and checking out the various trade stands in my 9 hour break) with occasional showers and it got muddier and muddier, while never quite getting wet enough to wash it away. Combined with the grass the mud was the consistency of clay bricks, and remarkably tenacious (see pic).
My next stint started at 4am-ish, and I managed one lap in 1 hour 30 or so, and had to call it quits as I was absolutely knackered (pedalling through 6" mud, walking through 6" mud, clearing about 10lb of mud off the bike 3-4 times during the lap etc). The other guys heroically managed to do 2 lap stints after that (they were fitter than me) while I crawled back to my sleeping bag to try to get warm and stop coughing as the remnants of my head cold came back with a vengeance. A few hours later it had stopped raining and was clearing up, which didn’t improve ground conditions any and even the best mud tyres were finding it hard to clear as the riders literally crawled through the sticky goop. Crashes a plenty in these conditions, with more than a few mech hangers breaking as the mud built up. Of course after the race finished it got nice and sunny, at least our tents dried out before we packed up.
So another fun 24 hour event, most people aren't in it for the racing but the social side, which certainly didn't disappoint. With the big screen playing movies in the main arena, plenty of parties, BBQs and people around to talk to for the duration it was easy to stay up too late drinking beer, talking bikes and cheering each rider as they went past.
The welsh guys and girls did well, the Sport Women team won their category again for the third year straight and the Elite Men came 7th – considering that none of them even race XC and they were in the Sport Men category last year, that’s a superb result. The Ice Weasels finished 177th of 293.
Joined: Dec 14, 2002 Posts: 2,585 Location: An Island off Europe
Posted: Thu 28/Jun/07 11:22pm Post subject:
Lamedoggo wrote:
Didnt turn into a boat race then?
parcpy weather in the weekend.
No, despite the rain it just turned into a quagmire in sections but no running water. Apart from the water splash of course, which afforded hilarious views of people crashing on the steep slippery chute leading into it.
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