falling off bikes since 1975

Another year, another Mayhem, another Hecklers Corner.

Turns out they were right too.

My head was all over the place at the start of the race. A shortened course and more rideable climbs - actually do-able on 32:16 - should have made this a great solo 24 hour comeback event. So much for theory. In practice I just couldn’t be arsed. The course was fast dry and dusty which is good. The heat was less good.

Then as evening fell so did the temperatures and I started to enjoy the laps more.

Duelling it out with Chipps. Photo courtesy singlespeedwidow

I had a little racing incident on lap 7 (think Sete Gibernau and Valentino Rossi at the MotoGP) as I touched wheels with another rider at the bottom of a gravelly descent. He managed to ride out of it - which is a relief because to be honest it was my fault - while I threw myself under my bike and exited stage right across the path of two other riders. Naturally the gravel did it’s thing and gave me road rash from my shoulder all the way down to my calf. Oooh tender. Not only that but I twatted the ground so hard I bent the bars.

I finished the lap rather gingerly and swapped bikes. Although this had been fettled just two days previously Californian design met British weather head on and lost. My featherweight and unsealed bottom bracket decided that the middle of a 24 hour race was a good time to start binding. Despite this singlespeed having a lower gear (32:17) with the extra drag on the cranks it was like riding with the back brake on. My mood fell back to the floor. Once back at the pits I debated whether to swap chainsets or bars onto the original bike - settling on bars, and spent longer than necessary doing so.

By now it was dark so I went out with the iPod set to stun. Mentally this helped a lot, though I probably got some strange looks urging people to pay their rates as I walked up the long Kenda climb. On my final lap before dawn the lights started to brown out and I switched to head torch. I was immediately blinded. Instead of illuminating the trail the torch just lit up al the dust we were kicking up. I couldn’t believe it. No wonder I was struggling with my breathing.

Finally at 10 o’clock in the morning I broke.

Good and proper broke.

No go in the legs. Shaking hands. Mentally head all over the place shattered.

Photo courtesy Singletrack

I sat down for some food and kept having comedy head-nodding moments as I dropped off/woke up in a start. I must have been proper shagged because instead of calling me a poof and sending me out on another lap Kirsty let me have some rest. The next four hours felt like five minutes as I sat trackside waking occasionally to cheer on fellow soloists, then falling straight back to sleep.

Turns out I’d done one more lap than I figured anyway so I was pleased with that.

One of the best bits about Mayhem is the post race get togethers. We hadn’t wanted to park the wagon at Hecklers corner for fear of getting bogged down if it rained, so Kirsty had had a lonely race, looking after me every hour with no visitors. (Can you believe that although we camped right by the end of a three ambulance descent - the TFTuned Final Fix - Kirsty didn’t take a single picture of riders stacking it into the ground/trees/tents). On Sunday night we wandered over with beer and wine and spent hours reliving the event and the heckles with friends. We called it an early night at midnight while the hardy ones carried on drinking.

Turns out I won’t be riding a bike for a while yet. Leaving the udder cream at home was a big mistake and the inside of my shorts looked like the sanitary towel you find under pre-packaged steak.

Still, one more Mayhem under the belt. Next year will be Mayhem X and I can think about retiring. I shouldn’t be doing it solo next year as we have a cunning plan.

I have less than a month to heal my arse and still fit in enough training to get some physical and mental strength to have a good crack at twentyfour12, especially if I’m going to do it singlespeed.

Linkage

Results are here.

The Singletrack gallery is here.

All flickr photos tagged ssmm2006 are here, mine are here.

Thanks are due…

Sideways Cycles for support and bling bicycle parts.

singlespeedwidow for photos that capture the spirit of the event.

Cheeky Trails for heckling/moral support/beer.