Well having never done a 12hr ‘event’ before, Mayhem solo was interesting! And bloody hell was it hilly! Seemed more so than recent years when I’ve been in a team.
Based myself out of the solo tent, however my longest stop must have been 10mins to change clothes (was getting sore!) and to get a quick curry down my neck! Other than that stops were all 5mins or less to change bottles and grab snacks from my pit bitch wife. 2.33am was emotional but fought through. Stayed on real food, mainly fig rolls and bananas, pork pies etc until nearly 7 in the morning when eating became a chore so finally succomed to some gels to get me through the last few hours. Glad I did it that way as another solo chap was complaining of bad guts when all he eaten was gels and energy bars for 14hrs!
Drinks were Torq, flat coke and 7up with plain old water in between.
Was about 45mins or nore down on the chap in front of me but only 30mins up on the one behind me so had to dig deep to go out for my final lap at about 11.10am, glad I did as 2 riders behind me both went out again! and I would have dropped 2 places if I hadn’t!
Anyway well happy with 7th overall for my first 24hr solo, but consider the 24hr itch well scratched and will be back in a team next year!
So how do you recover from a 24 anyway????? Guess national xc at the weekend is off the cards!
Thanks for the advice guys staying out is the only way!