SITS camping area…

all the marshalls were ace mate,on a night lap that fire the one had in the first bit of singletrack looked so inviting,proper torture

Nice to see you hang around and give Tim a hand packing away! 🙂

me and Dave raced in the pairs. It was going well. We were in the lead with a 5 min gap after 3 laps.
happily tearing round and loving the course for once.
It rained for about 20 minutes and the course immediately changed to a slow slog. No fun really, just grinding it out. Not ‘racing’ any more.
We knew from experience that once wet, large sections of the course would either be loose clag or sticky, draggy plasticine.

if we bailed at that point, we’d still have a chance of packing up, getting home and then riding somewhere else the day after. so that’s what we did.

it’s a shame, because Pat knows how to organise a 24 hour race better than most. this almost pig-headed perseverance with sites such as Catton and Eastnor however is threatening the reputation of his events and driving people away. Both sites are far too weather-dependent and in the UK that’s just silly.

Apart from Bikefest, I dont know of any others.

I can think of 3 besides that. One of them is held in January.

From (bitter) experience, it’s the type of soil at Catton which is the biggest problem. Something with a higher peat / less clay composition would wash off and stick less. Having that type of mud and then picking up forest litter and grass cuttings on the way round is simply asking for trouble.

I just wanna say thanks to the two girls who were Marshall’s at the top of the muddy wood trail. Who were the most cheery happy people from the whole event. It was a real pleasure to see you throwing so much into it in those conditions. I know a lot of riders who would like to thank you

+1 & congratulations on staying up the full 24 & still be smiling when I passed on the last lap this afternoon.

I just wanna say thanks to the two girls who were Marshall’s at the top of the muddy wood trail. Who were the most cheery happy people from the whole event. It was a real pleasure to see you throwing so much into it in those conditions. I know a lot of riders who would like to thank you

agreed those two spurred me on at 2am and it was much appreciated. Thank you

In terms of all weather venues, that can handle large events, there’s obviously the Olympic venue at hadleigh farm?

Presumably someone has plans for this and the potentially huge south eastern audience/entry it would appeal to?

Or am I way off the mark?

These 24 hour events, any organiser can tell you they rely heavily on fresh blood. After the Last two years this must be . Moving to the south east on an all wear her course, with it’s Olympic heritage would surely be a no brainier?

Or is that going to be too expensive? Perhaps some of the ridiculous prize fund of several thousands would be better spent on an all weather course! Do I really give a monkies if the top few teams won’t bother coming if there’s less prize money up for grabs? No, I don’ t think so.

I’m sorry, but I think it might be time for a bit of fresh thinking regarding organising endurance
racing if it is to thrive for another ten years.

I think that only Mayhem has prize money and that is only for Elite mixed and solo. Other cats have nothing. SITS has nothing at all, save a few quid in Wiggle vouchers. I think several thousand tonnes of gravel plus manpower and planning would cost a lot more than the £8k-10k prize fund. Also, Eastnor has a rule about the trail having to ‘disappear’ I seem to remember.

The Olympic track is a bit short for a 24hr race. Not sure how long these new trails post-Olympics will take to appear.

Bikefest-esq courses would be perfect but try to find that in an area with 25 acres of camping, water, access, cheap enough…

GB

Lefty and super skinny tyres ftw. 15 laps solo and apart from a knackered knee, it was fine. Yes, it would have been better dry, but it wasn’t – deal with it. Give up if you like – just means others get a better position 🙂

To be honest if the organisers don’t do something they might find themselves in serious trouble if next summer isn’t much better.

It is one thing to do one of these and to have bad weather, but at what point do people just not bother?

As it is numbers are down this year, and with the switch in the bike market from MTB to road, the pool of riders willing to do these events may growing smaller.

It’s a shame both venues are so weather dependant as I LOVE 24hr racing and the feel at Mayhem and SITS, it’s just I’m over pushing my bike for 10 miles to get a result. Been there, done that. The first couple were character building but nowadays I just lose the will to live. I am happy to save the £200 a time these events cost me and have a nice ride locally instead rather than take the risk of another push-fest.

I’d love to see people trying the A line of Dean’s drop on the Olympic course at 2am! 🙂
Catton isn’t great, Eastnor is usually bearable but this year was exceptional.

There are very few places that can handle the amount of camping needed and other facilities as well as having a good course. 24/12 took 3 or 4 years to get to Plymouth, the previous years were awful.

What about dalby/north York moors area?

I gather there was prize money in Expert men this year at SITS.

Adderstone field at Dalby is nowhere near big enough and also Dalby was always the most expensive venue in the Nationals, I heard once.

Matt – I’m not sure which Eastnor you’ve been to over the past 7 years… That said you know how much I hate pushing.

GB

I really enjoyed SITS this year – my first lap was ace, apart from the torrential downpour towards the end of it. I got absolutely drenched, and the off-camber section turned to mush almost instantly. I was supposed to go out at 10.30pm, but my teammate was late back, two of our chaps knackered their bikes (one mech ripped clean off), and after ending up in physio after my 5 hour + lap at Mayhem, I just thought, “Nah”, and went out this morning instead.

Some sections near the start and the very end were still riding really nicely, but the middle section was trifle claggy. Not as bad as Mayhem though! 😀

Nice to see you hang around and give Tim a hand packing away!

i needed to get some food mate..honest

So you enjoyed the event having spent the majority of the night in bed. Says it all, really. Surely a fun 24hr race is one where you don’t spend half the race asleep?

i needed to get some food mate..honest

The septic said he had loads…. 😆

So you enjoyed the event having spent the majority of the night in bed. Says it all, really. Surely a fun 24hr race is one where you don’t spend half the race asleep?

Last year, I did night laps, and I really enjoyed them, and if the course had been solid I would have been out like a greased whippet. However, as we were already two riders down because of broken bikes and my legs haven’t really worked properly for 15 years (and the condition was made worse after trudging around Mayhem), I felt that yes, not going out in those conditions would be better for both myself and the bike. I don’t mind riding in the rain, and I don’t mind getting muddy, but pushing my bike around for hours on end – less fun. I’m not going to hurt myself or wreck my bike just for bragging rights (well, I did that at Mayhem this year, didn’t turn out too well…)

First mtb event of any kind that I’ve done and it was ace fun in the sun, obviously it was a little bit muddy at night.

Also thanks to the guy who gave me 15mins of vitriolic abuse for ‘cheating’ when I stupidly started to take the wrong turn just after leaving the start/finish area. That was pleasant. I really had just got them mixed up 😥

there was a guy screaming at my mrs saying report rider 774(not sure if that number s correct) he’s a cheat he’s a cheat 😆

there was a guy screaming at my mrs saying report rider 774(not sure if that number s correct) he’s a cheat he’s a cheat

Heard someone shouting cheat in one of the woodland sections where the trails crosses quite closely, and when I passed the marshalls they were repairing some tape. Looked less like someone trying to cheat and more like someone had Benny Hilled off the side of the course…

Yeah that sounds like the one 🙁

I dumbly made a wrong turn shortly after leaving the start/finish area and stopped when I saw a water tanker at the top of the track, just after I had turned. He thought I was taking a short cut though and just wouldn’t believe that I had got mixed up no matter what I said.

To be fair I think he was 12 laps in at this point but it was a bit much and not very pleasant. He was telling anyone who would listen I was a cheat etc, I kept expecting a bunch of marshalls to come and rugby tackle me off the trail any minute 😕

unfortunately some people don’t forget to pack their shitty attitudes 🙁

Wow, there seems to be a lot of STW heros at SITS his year! If you choose to sleep then so be it. You do get a choice you know. Shame the weather made the course unpleasant at times. We (I) jacked at 12pm. To me, it seemed little point in pushing my bike around the course. Started again in the morning. Crazy to think times went from sub 45mins to over 1:30hrs. Still enjoyed ourselves esp my last two laps. Remember kids, we do this for fun!

i wouldn’t be surprised to see this event retire gracefully.

Back home now and we’ve got a LOT of muddy things to clean.

Two members of our team packed after a mech breakage and a nightmare lap just after the rain hit. I managed to not break my bike by donning my walking boots and carrying it over any thick mud, which made for some really slow and frustrating night laps.

I can’t fault the organisation of the event but so much of the course just turned into chod. A couple of short sections appeared to have had some building work put into them (like the singletrack through the woods at the end) and surely this is the way to go if these type of events are going to keep running through what passes for summer these days.

I was there in 2008 and Pat came round the camping area the following afternoon for a chat/feedback. He told us how it was all going to be improved for the following year, with a proper track put in.

I’m guessing he says the same every year…..

Mrs Toast – not a dig at you at all, it was meant to be a dig at the event… At least you turned up and raced – we decided we couldn’t face another 24hrs of pushing and wimped out entirely.

The section in the Bluebell woods was armoured years ago, shame the rest of the lap was never done but it must be massively expensive and wouldn’t help with the miles off grassy slog round the fields.

In terms of all weather venues, that can handle large events, there’s obviously the Olympic venue at hadleigh farm?

Presumably someone has plans for this and the potentially huge south eastern audience/entry it would appeal to?

The Olympic course is about 3km long (if that). For a 24hr race, you need a course that’s at least 12km, ideally 16km. Even once it’s redeveloped and the more hardcore lines and trail features taken out of it, there’s no way you can get that length of course into it. I’d guess it’s also too hilly to be a really fun 24hr venue that would appeal to the masses.

24hr race venues aren’t easy to come by – if they were, there’d be more events. You need a massive area of private land with easy access and that will cater for thousands of cars, water tankers, toilets, showers, trucks etc, still have space for camping, be able to knock up a course that can be ridden by tired people in the dark but still provides enough of a challenge for the Elite teams.

I’ve always quite like the course at SITS, raced there many times both at SITS and when they used to use it as an NPS venue. In the dry it’s blindingly fast; you’re right about the rain though, in the wet it is soul-destroyingly awful.

…in the wet it is soul-destroyingly awful.

Does anyone know a sports shrink? I let a few people down this weekend… … not helped by a 2hr walk around Derbyshire at 2am in the morning :-/

Managed to get my team up to 4 strong with 3days to go. Is year will go down as the year of mud racing. I built up a giant anthem for the race. Did first 2 laps on it and loved it, then on the 3rd it turned into an immovable object! Switch to my single speed with mud tires and never looked back. People that don’t have mud tires only have themselves to blame. Single speed spare bike is a perk if u can afford it.

Unloaded my car this morning, seem to have brought back a few tons of Catton mud with me.

The course, atmosphere and fellow riders were all awesome.
Amazed me how much the course changed when the rain came. The event then became a challenge of the mind for me.

Big thanks to the kind rider who gave me a magic link out on course. Without your help I’d still be out there sobbing in the woods.

Since I’ve had some sleep I now feel a bit more human and able to elaborate further on my experience.

Firstly, the event was fantastically organised. Having done D2D the last few years, the facilities were really good – showers, clean toilets and a fantastic food tent made everything much more enjoyable. The camp site was ‘moist’ after the rain but I had no issues getting out of it and even my brother who came to watch in his silly Datsun with track-tyres and no ground clearance could get out.

As for the track – I’m not sure of many places that would take that volume of traffic for 24 hours and not start breaking up, once the rain came it was only going to go one way. It got to a point early on where it became apparent that even if it didn’t rain any more, it still wouldn’t really recover. That’s when the well prepared people broke out the super skinny tyres on the single-speeds. I really liked the venue and thought the course was pretty good for an enduro event. You don’t really want massive drops and jumps when you’re knackered at 4am and from that point of view it was challenging enough without being dangerous.

I also found that it was just hilly enough so that at the point where you were just about to blow, it pointed back down again and you could recover.

I think it comes down to preparation – those that wanted to continue riding after the rain brought the correct bike with the correct tyres. Even then there would have been a fair bit of pushing, but this would have helped no end. Unfortunately I think most people don’t want to have a specific ‘mud bike’ (I don’t) and therefore it’ll put a lot of people off.

I’ll be back next year, better prepared and aiming for a decent finish. Its inspired me to give the next national a miss (that I’ve paid for) and enter Torq 12:12 instead. And I’m building up a ‘mud bike’…

Mrs Toast – not a dig at you at all, it was meant to be a dig at the event… At least you turned up and raced – we decided we couldn’t face another 24hrs of pushing and wimped out entirely.

Sorry, got a bit surly and defensive! 😛 Just a bit annoyed with the mud, I was hoping to do more laps than last year, not less. I wish the courses were a bit more weatherproofed, but I’m guessing the venues don’t want too much permanent stuff there, and there might be an element that it’s all part of the fun…

Overall I still really enjoyed SITS, atmosphere was great and everything else seemed to go smoothly – showers worked, toilets were always clean, and the central arena wasn’t a mud pit. Plus there was a really nice poodle called Clover, which made everything better.

I quite enjoyed it. But then I loved Mayhem and soloing at 24/12 as well. I feel guilty saying this, but there was a cosy familiarity to the whole mud thing that I’m starting, unaccountably, to enjoy… I like the way different bits of the course become unridable between stints, so it’s always different and the variety of muds and the different skills you need to keep going.

I like the pantomime anguish of people who’ve spat their dummy big time – not in a nasty way, but it seems so futile – and the oddness of it all. Why do folk feel the need to render their bike spotless between laps when it’s going to be a 40lb mud leviathan within minutes? And how is it that people can arrive at changeover simultaneously with completely different takes on how the course is riding?

I’m not saying I’d choose those conditions. Or that a dry, dusty weekend wouldn’t have been better, but it is what it is, so you may as well make the most of it and ride in the moment.

And finally, the guys I was racing with were quietly brilliant in a calm, efficient, unassuming sort of way. No chimp behaviour even when we lost a mech and a lap in the trenches in the small hours of the morning.

And whatever you think of the course conditions, the bogs were as brilliant as ever 🙂