Right I’m doing Mayhem solo, I’ve got a very good base fitness and spend hours on the bike no probs. Completed SDW sub 10hrs the other week no probs, not to worried about it as after about 15hrs it’ll be mind over matter.

Anyway my question is on recovery, I’m tempted to go and do Bristol Bikefest 12hr on Saturday, is this too close to Mayhem? bearing in mind it’s 2weeks after this event! or is it just right as a final long ride prep?

I’m fairly confident this will work and I’ll be fully recovered but am hoping to do well (top 20) at Mayhem. What does the STW collective think?

Alternative is stick to Plan A and do Southern xc series race on sunday and BMBS the week after. then complete rest other than a short pootle to work.

If Mayhem is your main goal then I wouldn’t advise doing the Bristol 12hr. The 6hr race might be more suitable.

I am looking forward to seeing you being successful at Mayhem and would strongly recommend you do Bristol in the spirit of being well prepped for The main event!

In reality I look forward to seeing a totally wasted Si! Not something we often see!

Thought as much, will pass on the 12hr and just do a 6hrish steady ride, saves the journey over there as well! Training till now has been spot on just seem to have lost my way in the final few weeks!

And for you Mr Shortcut I’ll ensure there is some proper dribble based wastedness. 😉

Have you done a 12 before? there is a massive difference to riding the SDW at leisure and a competitive circuit based 12/24 hour endurance event. If I were you I would do Bikefest to find out all the problems you will encounter at Mayhem, rather than finding them out at Mayhem.

I am doing Bikefest, did Erlestoke last weekend and doing Mayhem Solo. 2 weeks is plenty of recovery time, imo.

Oh ok I though 100 miles cross country with a fair amount of climbing 😉 would have been fairly good training, if 9hrs 47 mins is leisurely then I’ll be seeing amt27 dissappear off towards the podium at Mayhem! Remind me not to try and hold your wheel!

12hrs 2 weeks before, assuming you actually race for all 12 hours and don’t spend hours mincing in the pits, is too close to a 24hr in my opinion, assuming you want to be competitive.

Take plenty of different food if you’ve never done something like this before. Wet food is good – soup, rice pudding etc. You will have weird cravings at about 4am… Beyond about 18hrs its just about not stopping.

GB

Cheers for the good advice Gee, I’d like to think I’ve got some idea of what I’m doing, the food mountain will be impressive, no fears there! and like you say after 18hrs mind over matter and don’t stop!

Will be aiming to break it down to 3hr blocks with 5/10mins break, then couple of mins a lap once/if that gets too much.

In the back of my mind having race teams there for a few years, I’d like to do 1hr/lap conditions dependant obviously, but will be happy to finish.

Most of the 24hr riders I’ve spoken with say they rarely ride much over 5/6hrs in prep, some of them fairly competetive!

Will be aiming to break it down to 3hr blocks with 5/10mins break, then couple of mins a lap once/if that gets too much.

Don’t plan to stop at all.
5 minutes will soon become 10. 10 will soon become 30 and before you know it you will be asleep in a nice warm sleeping bag and that will be the end of riding.

dissappear off towards the podium

i wish mate,

my point is, the best prep for an endurance race is other endurance races, my first was Bikefest last year, it’s taken me a year to ween out all the problems and ride a good race,
i used to train on the SDW, unfortunately there are no gates at Mayhem

Good luck Si! I would love to come and support you (ant the rest of the team) but I’m staging on and I’m out innless than 5 weeks now!! Shaun

Don’t go in the solo tent. As Matt said – stopping is a bad idea. Time flies past when you are stationary.

GB

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!

well done pal, I did 2 laps and retired, suffering from 2 big crashes at Bikefest (suspected cracked rib), however I am proper aching from the le mans start,

Well done – 7th 😯 how many laps was that? I was beaten at 7.5 laps & retired to my sleeping bag at 2am – just couldn’t face another ascent 😳

National XC is probably not a good idea after a 24 solo… Although well over half of the elite field were there in teams – which is considerably easier and less painful to recover from!

Just added together my garmin data had to use 2 as they only run for 15hrs! Didn’t seem like I was stopped for over an hour I’ll tell you! Must try harder next time! (There won’t be one!!!)
Anyway totals
moving time 22:21:19
dist 284.27kms (177.6miles)
climbing 7744m (25406ft)

17 laps and can’t even imagine how Ant White managed 21, he lapped me first time at the 11hr point! at least that was the first time I saw him pass me!