Fancy having a go at a 12 or prob a 24hr solo.

Never ridden one before either team or solo (have done ironman tri’s and other silly endurance events)

Any thoughts on whether to ride ss or geared full sus as a first time effort?

Cheers

James

If you have both bikes then take both. I use geared F/S as the main bike for comfort and skill compensator at 4 in the morning with a S/S set up for very wet weather / mud duties (think Mayhem or SITS).

My first ever race was a 24hour solo. Ride what ever you feel most comfortable on. Do not get tempted to race against people who are riding as part of a team. Take lots of different and possibly weird food stuffs – I ending up only eating tangerine sections in syrup and Ginsters pasties. Enjoy it.

Cheers, seems entering solo best then and take both bikes (as in don’t enter solo ss)

Basically depends if you want to make something which is already going to screw your body up that much harder by doing SS.

Personally I’d do as Dave says, intend to use the FS, but have the hardtail ‘just in case’.

You almost certainly won’t win, so just enjoy yourself!

I thought it might be quite a good laugh – afterwards at least anyway!

I enjoyed my ride (afterwards). I only signed up for it after a few beers 9 weeks before. I broke my hand/wrist on the first training ride and only had the cast taken off the morning of the ride. I stioll ended up 9th out of 24 in my category.

WCA, how much distance did you manage? I figure this is the best indicator of effort rather than placing. Tempted to do a 12 (don’t have the time to make a 24 even close to enjoyable, 4 hrs is a long ride for me at the moment) toward the end of the year, but I’m never sure what sort of distance people are putting in.

BTW, ss or not depends on the course for me .. when I rode Thetford I wished I’d brought SS as that roller coaster would have been easier to pump through on a rigid, and the gears made little difference other than the fire road (and who cares about that other than those genuinely in with a shout of winning). Set2Rise I’d want the full suss but more importantly lots of gears for the 5 am climb up that road.

I rode SS for my first 24. It was Clic 24 and it peed it down for most of the race. SS is a worthwhile option if you don’t have a pit bitch who is handy with a spanner.

I would also add that a 24 is more of mental challenge than a physical challenge if you do a “proper” 24 and don’t sleep on the job.

Edit: I have only done one 12hr with gears and hated it, too much too think about. All other 24s and 12s have been SS and I prefer this setup as you can just pedal like a mindless zombie. Braking and cornering is done by instinct.

I swear by SS and rigid for doing 24 hour solos. Minimises the maintenance so you can concentrate on riding or resting. You really don’t want to be losing riding time to adjusting or repairing derailleurs at 3am. If you have a support team and spare bikes, then obviously it’s different.

It also means you can get off and walk instead of grinding up slowly at the same speed – and it’s amazing how much you can rest while walking like that.

Measure out your fluids and make sure you get them down – I use water bottles because it’s easier to keep track.

Golden rule – keep going, don’t stop.

As Jimmers said, you’ll be a mindless zombie, so make preparations that a mindless zombie can execute.

Clic 24 – 23 laps but can’t remember the lap length

how long do you 24hr solo guys find it takes to recover to full speed after the event? Obviously it’ll be affected by fitness etc, but whilst I’d quite like to have a stab at one, I don’t fancy sabotaging my normal training for 2+ weeks afterwards.

I was a bit tired driving home but couple of beers and a few hours sleep and I was out as normal. Having said that, normal is slow and knackered. I guess about a week to properly recover. I found the riding the weekend after the event surprisingly easy

cheers WCA. Recovery beers are sounding like a plan.

I’d say take both bikes as well, that’s what I do, a Rohloff and a SS, so maintenance isn’t too much of a problem for me.
I’ve had a tyre bulge after hitting a rock and had a pedal insert come loose in a carbon crank.
It’s so much easier to swap a wheel or a complete bike than faff around trying to fix stuff like that when you just want to be out on the course riding.

WCA, you must be younger than me. 😀
I’ve got Erlestoke 12 and Bristol Bike Fest on consecutive weekends, followed two weeks later by Mountain Mayhem, all solo. There’s no way I’m going to be fully recovered between events.

Brassneck, as a rough guide to distance, 145 km in 12 hours got me top third at BBF, 190km in 24 hours got me top half at SITS.

See you at MM – Team Bullheart and sleeping in the back of my pickup