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Cracking race, loved the course, especially when it got wet. Lack of motivation to change tyres meant our whole team were riding on Crossmark/Ignitor combo's till daylight, worked OK till the mud started to thicken and mud tyres became the only choice.
Folk on the course were great, apart from that one guy on the descent down to the RH hairpin at the marshall point, who insisted I would only have to wait 'a second' till the fireroad. I counted 35, so about 15 more than it you'd let me past, ya mincer!
Martyn's excuse making on the podium for the second and third place teams was pretty funny, almost like it's amazing that a team can come from Scotland and beat some big names. Maybe it's just they don't expect us to be the best at looking after our health and making sure our bikes don't break halfway round a lap.
We'll likely be back next year, doing a rain dance.
Similar enduro type events coming up in devon (or nearby)?
Newnham 60 at the end of September. Off-road sportive around Newnham and up onto Dartmoor. Coincides with the National XC and floodlit SW cyclocross on the day before. Should be a good weekend.
There's also the last round of the SW xc series (Okehampton, 15th August) if you fancy something a bit shorter?
Great event and I really enjoyed my 1am lap in the mud, although taking it slow to eliminate any possibility of a fall.
Unfortunatley all three of our team suffered knackered rear mechs, my hanger snapping somehow on the first climb on only my second lap - managed to resize the chain but still walked plenty of what turned out to be a 2.5hr lap. Come 5am and a few hours sleep the other guys ended up taking their bikes for a long walk on consecutive laps after inflicting some serious damage and by 9am i didn't fancy risking my new mech so we called it quits.
Cracking course. What I like about Bonty 24/12 is that they listen to the riders to make the course a proper riders course. The course was fully rideable and the muddy rooty sections were great fun.
Especially when you contrast the Bonty course with Mayhem. I have done three Mayhems (solo) and the I would say Mayhem is more tiring/tough because of the climbing but Bonty is more fun with more technical sections in. IMO this year Mayhem was oversubscribed and if it had rained it would have meant walking around 30% - 50% of the course easy no matter how good your technical skills are as faster riders will be held up by less confident riders walking. By illustration the first wooded section of Mayhem was a complete WTF moment...
The Bonty coure was sloppy but held up fantastically so this post is a big thank you to the course designers for making it fun. The mix of singletrack and fireroad/passing points was also spot on.
Won't be doing Mayhem next year, I will be spending my money on another Bonty entry!
The SSMM clag was one of the reasons I built up an alfined hardtail and I'm glad I took that with me to 24/12 instead of the lrs, the 12-3am slot was particularly tricky as all I could think of was to ration myself so I had the fine motor control required to scoot down the muddier sections.
Really chuffed that I managed all my little self set challenges too.
No dabs/stops on a lap.
1 lap under 1 hour.
2 consectutive night laps before my lights died.
4 laps (managed 5).
Really enjoyed the company, did my best to stay out of the faster peoples way (always moved too soon at night though) and give plenty of room to the few I passed.
Mucho kudos to Jonny, who was once again recruited to the team and gave us a much needed respite as two of our faster team members had to drop out. His bouncy cheerful appearence in the morning gave me the will to go out on a final (in fact our final) lap and give it socks.
Cheers sponging machine, can anyone enter the xc series?
Also fancy the brecon beast 😀
Yep. Details [url= http://www.fullysussed.co.uk/index.php?p=1_7 ]HERE[/url]
There's also [url= http://www.exmoorexplorer.com/Explorer/Home.html ]EXMOOR EXPLORER[/url] in a couple of weeks.
spot on cheers, i work at haldon so had better enter the fully sussed stuff.
entered brecon beast too... sweet!
thanks
What do you do at Haldon?
This was how 24-12 was for me: http://www.cyclistno1.co.uk/blog/amateur-mtb-marathon-gary-rode-24.htm
And cracking pic from Joolze, was actually making a little hip jump out of this but I've not quite taken off when the shutter went...
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It went well for me, managed to catch up with lots of friends, stayed off a bike all weekend and didn't really miss taking part.
Well perhaps a little bit!
We even got [url= http://www.itv.com/westcountry-west/bikers-saddle-up57450/ ]ON THE TELLY[/url], innit.
GaryLake - excellent write up! Well done on the result & the money raised!!
Ah, it was you who kept asking how Julie was going, we were like 'who is that bloke? Does anyone know him?' Small world eh.
I canned my 24-hour solo after about ten hours, was going well but made a strategic decision to be alive for SITS plus my right leg hurt from someone thoughtfully knocking me off coming through the camp site. Yes, you were 'a bit close', I thought that was pretty obvious given that we were both left in a tangled heap of bike and rider after you ran into my handlebar... Never mind.
BWD: yeah, when you get used to seeing the same people each lap it gets amazingly distressing when you stop seeing them, it's like it becomes part of your routine...
Yep, I know what you mean. I seemed to spend a lot of time chatting to women soloists for some reason. Blokes seems less inclined to talk. Anyway, good ride, mate, and a nice write-up.
Sounds like you were a more sane man than me - still hurt so much!