Bontrager 24/12 Virgin…

Thinking of doing a the team 12 hr with a mate in July, I’ve only done the margam park and Builth Merida before any advice on the 24/12?

Is it a good intro to 12/24 hour racing, i get the feeling it is quite serious compared to say the SITS??

i guess its not that hilly, well compared to my local Welsh rides!

in laymans terms you have to do as many laps as you can in 12 hours, swapping with a team mate after every lap?

just need to book something to keep focus and get me out more.

cheers

its excellent! Not particularly more serious than SITS OR MM though there are of course sponsored teams trying to win stuff there are also large groups of amateurs.

I should mention that last year Newnham was bone dry (oooh, there was about twenty yards of sticky mud in the whole course if i am brutally honest) and yes the hills are short lived.

And yes the relay/swapping thing is exactly right. Last year each team had a little blingy anodized aluminium tube to pass between team members as a baton.

24/12 is an ace way to start that kind of racing exactly because you can do the 12hr. SITS and Mayhem are the full 24 only. I actually though 24/12 was a much more chilled event that the Mayhem’s I’ve been to recently.

cheers, how long would it take to do a lap? is it the same course each year?

I guess it would be circa 40 – 50 minutes. I believe the course will change a little each year & its the mutts nutz

Excellent event last year. Very chilled out. Blue skies and dusty trails, & we were camped next to Mr Bonty himself. Nice bloke.

I did the 12 hour solo. 11 laps if I remember correctly. Knocked off at around 11:30pm for beer.

Great course that took around 40 to 50 minutes for a lap with a stream crossing, and weirdly, more downhill than uphill.

Much more fun than SITS or Mayhem.

24/12 was great last year and the best course for that type of race I’ve ever been on, in fact Newnham and the SSWC2006 course at Aviemore are my 2 best courses. Great singletrack and not massively busy like MM so you can actually enjoy the trail at your pace for most of it.

As for the relay, you can swap the baton after how ever many laps you like, so you could do 2 or 3 then hand over if you fancied it. 1 lap at a time is prolly the most common though.

last question……. 😉

is it mostly singletrack or is it quite open? at margam there were a good few singletrack bits and there was a lot of “ELITE RIDE ON THE LEFT!!!!!!”

Don’t worry about them just do YOUR ride, if they are worthy then it will work its self out. Should 2009s event be half as good it will be great. Go on do it…

yes loads and loads of singletrack. Which is all utterly ace btw. The climbs were almost all doubletrack or fire road so very overtakeable on. I don’t think anyone shouted ‘elite rider on your left’ to me last year. But then by my usual standards i was pretty fast on the narrow bits so maybe no one needed to :).

And yes oddly it did seem like there was more downhill than uphill: some of the interesting snigletrack is actually a little bit uphill and there was a lot of very gently climbing bits eg through the middle of the shooting ground and out round past the river, actually went up a bit but didn’t really seem like it.

cheers again, i guess after a few laps everyone finds their speed/level etc

A good choice for a first event – it is the first event me and my mates did last yr adn it was great.

Most of it has been covered already.
I should add that there is an excellent repair service that you can make use off if you knacker your bike – obviously they aren’t going to be fixing anything major, but I had a really weird mechanical that left my chain with a kink in one of the links limping round at 1:15 in the morning. The repair tent had me going again in 10 mins after buying a new chain from the stall next door.
Also the catering was great with a wide selection all reasonably priced and ranging from full on stodge to carb loading pasta stuff. The Rocky Road was great!!

The course was great with plenty of overtaking opprtunities for the quicker riders – to be honest, I am not a quick rider by any stretch of the imagination, but didn’t hold anyone up in the technical sections.