The "Other Bike Brand" 24 hr
As most will know, the Scott 24 was on this past weekend in Canberra. The trip up the Hume is never a very exciting drive, and this weekend was no exception.
Scott and Jarrod had the pleasure of each others company in the Felt van while I followed along behind with my CD collection to keep me company. We arrived in Canberra on Thursday night at the Canberra motor village I think it was called. After a long day in the car Scott and I decided to head out for a quick spin before heading out to get some dinner. I would have been happy with a roll around the roads in the area but the park backed on to some bush so fire roads were a more attractive option. With the sun rapidly setting we strapped on some lights and jumped the fence to go for a spin. Much to our amazement the patch of bush that we had picked was filled with some really fun single track, we ended up spending almost all of the half hour ride riding single track which seemed to branch off all over the place. Unfortunately we didn't have time to explore too much and didn't end up making it back, but it looked to be worth a second look next time.
Friday we headed out to Mt Stromlo to secure a spot and do some practice laps. Troy Bailey, who was racing in the pairs category, had managed to secure a spot for us in a prime location. Some how he managed to get us into the pairs section so we were nice and close to the action
Friday morning
Saturday morning, the new tents were looking good.
Friday afternoon we were sent on a wild goose chase by our navigator for the weekend, Tom. Tom was a nicely spoken "man", but most of the time didn't have anything remotely useful to say and the target of quite a bit of abuse for his efforts. But he cam through with the goods in the end and found us some great pasta to sink our teeth into, so good in fact that both Scott and I surprised the chef when we went back for more!
Saturday finally rolled around and it was race day. For this years race the organisers had decided to change the fastest lap competition for a prologue race the morning of the race. An invitation only field of 20 riders were to test them selves in an individual time trial format to see who would take home the cash. Scott and myself were selected from out team to join the field which included a couple of solo 24 hr world champs, a few XC Australian champs and a few other hot shots. Lets just say it was a tough field!
I was sent off 7th which Scott getting a better start of 10th. The prologue lap was to be the "red" lap which climbed to the top of Mt Stromlo and then came straight back down, times were expected to be around the 30 to 35 min mark so it was a pretty long prologue. Scott had a good ride to finish in 7th place, I was a bit further back in 13th. With that bit of punishment out of the way it was time to start thinking about the main event.
With Paul taking it easy for a few weeks after his jet setting adventures in Europe we were lucky to secure the services of his older brother, Neil, for the weekend, expect to see more of those curly locks in the future. Neil was sent off to do the first lap followed by Mark, leaving Scott and I to bring up the rear and give us some extra recovery time after the prologue.
Neil finished the first lap in a good position and to the outside observer appeared to have a good lap, however we were to later learn that he had had a bit of a tumble early in the lap. A coming together with another rider trying to pass where there wasn't room caused the two to get tangled and crash, Neil was unlucky enough to be hit in the back of the calf with his chain ring which left a nasty gash in his leg. After a visit to the St John (not St Johns) he was advised that it would be needing more than just first aid, so off he went to the hospital to get himself stitched up.
This left us with only 3 riders and was a huge hit to the moral of the team. Three riders racing for 23.5 hours in the pro male 4's category just wasn't going to cut it. We dropped the pace back a notch to conserve some energy. I had a flat tire about 6 hours in to the race which was the straw that broke our races back. In hindsight we made the wrong decision as riding it out as a team of 3 would have been more satisfying, but at the time we just didn't have it in us. We decided to ride out the rest of the race for fun and get some sleep over night. We each did some night laps and then got some sleep ready to start fresh in the morning.
The results from the weekend show us in 4th place, but quite a few laps behind. I would like to think that with four riders we would have given a podium place a red hot go but it just wasn't out weekend. There's always next time, and next time we will be back to giving it everything.
The next race on the list, up the same exciting stretch of road, is the Gravity 12 hour near Beechworth. The guys up there always put on a good show so we're all looking forward to that one in a few weeks time.
Thanks for reading.
Scott and Jarrod had the pleasure of each others company in the Felt van while I followed along behind with my CD collection to keep me company. We arrived in Canberra on Thursday night at the Canberra motor village I think it was called. After a long day in the car Scott and I decided to head out for a quick spin before heading out to get some dinner. I would have been happy with a roll around the roads in the area but the park backed on to some bush so fire roads were a more attractive option. With the sun rapidly setting we strapped on some lights and jumped the fence to go for a spin. Much to our amazement the patch of bush that we had picked was filled with some really fun single track, we ended up spending almost all of the half hour ride riding single track which seemed to branch off all over the place. Unfortunately we didn't have time to explore too much and didn't end up making it back, but it looked to be worth a second look next time.
Friday we headed out to Mt Stromlo to secure a spot and do some practice laps. Troy Bailey, who was racing in the pairs category, had managed to secure a spot for us in a prime location. Some how he managed to get us into the pairs section so we were nice and close to the action
Friday morning
Saturday morning, the new tents were looking good.Friday afternoon we were sent on a wild goose chase by our navigator for the weekend, Tom. Tom was a nicely spoken "man", but most of the time didn't have anything remotely useful to say and the target of quite a bit of abuse for his efforts. But he cam through with the goods in the end and found us some great pasta to sink our teeth into, so good in fact that both Scott and I surprised the chef when we went back for more!
Saturday finally rolled around and it was race day. For this years race the organisers had decided to change the fastest lap competition for a prologue race the morning of the race. An invitation only field of 20 riders were to test them selves in an individual time trial format to see who would take home the cash. Scott and myself were selected from out team to join the field which included a couple of solo 24 hr world champs, a few XC Australian champs and a few other hot shots. Lets just say it was a tough field!
I was sent off 7th which Scott getting a better start of 10th. The prologue lap was to be the "red" lap which climbed to the top of Mt Stromlo and then came straight back down, times were expected to be around the 30 to 35 min mark so it was a pretty long prologue. Scott had a good ride to finish in 7th place, I was a bit further back in 13th. With that bit of punishment out of the way it was time to start thinking about the main event.
With Paul taking it easy for a few weeks after his jet setting adventures in Europe we were lucky to secure the services of his older brother, Neil, for the weekend, expect to see more of those curly locks in the future. Neil was sent off to do the first lap followed by Mark, leaving Scott and I to bring up the rear and give us some extra recovery time after the prologue.
Neil finished the first lap in a good position and to the outside observer appeared to have a good lap, however we were to later learn that he had had a bit of a tumble early in the lap. A coming together with another rider trying to pass where there wasn't room caused the two to get tangled and crash, Neil was unlucky enough to be hit in the back of the calf with his chain ring which left a nasty gash in his leg. After a visit to the St John (not St Johns) he was advised that it would be needing more than just first aid, so off he went to the hospital to get himself stitched up.
This left us with only 3 riders and was a huge hit to the moral of the team. Three riders racing for 23.5 hours in the pro male 4's category just wasn't going to cut it. We dropped the pace back a notch to conserve some energy. I had a flat tire about 6 hours in to the race which was the straw that broke our races back. In hindsight we made the wrong decision as riding it out as a team of 3 would have been more satisfying, but at the time we just didn't have it in us. We decided to ride out the rest of the race for fun and get some sleep over night. We each did some night laps and then got some sleep ready to start fresh in the morning.
The results from the weekend show us in 4th place, but quite a few laps behind. I would like to think that with four riders we would have given a podium place a red hot go but it just wasn't out weekend. There's always next time, and next time we will be back to giving it everything.
The next race on the list, up the same exciting stretch of road, is the Gravity 12 hour near Beechworth. The guys up there always put on a good show so we're all looking forward to that one in a few weeks time.
Thanks for reading.
posted by Jack Lamshed at 6:32 pm
1 Comments:
great report Jack.
NEXT YEAR we'll kill it!
Pay Back!
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