July 26th, 2006
Twentyfour12
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Camp
Courtesy Drac |
Twentyfour12 is a brand new twenty four hour race on the calendar, and with a nice relaxed feel. It was reminiscent of Mountain Mayhem or Sleepless In The Saddle in their formative years. Or even an event.
A cheeky enclave had been formed by the side of the track and pre-race preparation consisted mainly of wine and beer, and fettling the forks settings of the Singletrack test Turner Flux that I was planning on riding. Initial impressions were very favourable, definitely more suited to XC racing than the 5 spot.
Solo Racing is sooo 2004
Or so I have been attributed as saying after two laps as I rolled up to the lorry and decided that this was going to be a ride not a race. The course contained plenty of singletrack fun and the Flux was so good that I had decided to use it for all the race instead of swapping to the 5 Spot or Burner. Indeed I’d declared it so damn good that it was out of bounds to Kirsty.
So why not continue? Frankly, I’ve had enough of slogging round seemingly endless laps. I wanted to enjoy my laps instead of suffering them. Teams. That’s where it’s at.
Oh, and I’d be able to drink beer, eat proper food instead of bloating up on carbs, and get some proper sleep. I call that a result.
Foolishly I’ve viewed 2006 as some sort of solo comeback year. This event proved I’ve lost it.
Morituri Te Salutant
And then it rained. Grey skies had provided plenty of warning so I decided I’d get a lap in before the rain came. Too late. No sooner had I passed through the timing chips than a rainstorm of biblical proportions hit us. Within minutes the track had been transformed from dust to snot slick mud.
That’s not good when your wheels are wearing fast rolling small knob tyres with already limited cornering capabilities. After laughing my way to the bottom of one treacherous descent I took a lead from another guy who was letting air out of his tyres. With about 15psi in the rear some semblance of grip was regained, though the few technical descents on the course became rather, erm, interesting. I even managed to stay upright better than a certain Mr G. Fisher who was riding on gayer wheels AND full suspension. The rain only lasted for twenty minutes at which point the mud immediately became sticky.
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Courtesy Simon Barnes
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It was odd riding corners which had a thick crust of claggy mud that would be picked up and jammed behind the fork brace, revealing a perfectly dusty line for the rider behind. Even now photos of the cack that Britain suffers after a bit of rain are being sent to Specialized as “design advice” for their FutureShock E150 fork and it’s laughable tyre clearance.
The mud caused carnage and despite early intentions to fit in a night lap or two I decided to call it a day for Saturday and make serious inroads into beer, chips and Jelly Beans. I was not the only one. The number of 12 hour racers passing by the camp dwindled in inverse proportion to the size fo the queues for the jet wash and showers.
Faintly drunk I made the effort to walk over to the course to watch the twinkly lights through the trees. Actually Kirsty made me walk the dogs or I wouldn’t have bothered :-) I could hear from the cursing and see from the interesting patterns of light that even as it dried out the course was still causing plenty of problems for those tired riders with more willpower than I could muster. Slip on a root, slide a wheel out, slam into a tree.
Sunday dawned hot and sunny and I managed a couple of cursory laps. Course conditions were now absolutely perfect, so the 17 hours that I am credited with my first morning lap doesn’t tell the whole story. In fact the Flux was the first XC bike I’ve ridden in a long time where I’ve used the big ring rather than cursed the unnecessary extra weight. Some folk had obviously gotten extra grumpy in the night and Gavin Atkins* from Extreme Endurance was making an abusive cock of himself, expecting everyone to move out of his way.
I timed the second morning lap to pick up a beer before crossing the line just after the hooter had blown.
Aftermath
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Courtesy
Joolze Dymond |
Various folk have put pictures on the web should you wish to try and spot yourself or get some idea of the carnage that the mud caused.
o Phillip Diprose
o Simon Barnes
o Drac
o Joolze Dymond - follow the enduro events
o Rothar Chris
o Flickr - tagged twentyfour12
Results are also available. Don’t look too hard for my miserable position :-)
I’ve already spoken to the SITS crew and sacked off my solo entry. Instead I’m joining a slack team.
Update
I’ve amended the name of the Extreme Endurance rider to Gavin Atkins as Rob Lee has kindly pointed out below that I’d collared the wrong bloke.
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July 26th, 2006 at 5:17 pm
Beaten by the badger. The shame :)
July 26th, 2006 at 5:25 pm
Hasn’t he changed his nickname to Mr Showboat yet? His dramatic performance as he came across the line should earn him an award from his local amateur dramatics society at the very least.
Kirsty finds it very amusing that due to the number of Cheeky and Sideways hecklers at the line I got a bigger cheer as I finished than Gary Fisher.
July 30th, 2006 at 8:05 pm
shame people have to publish stuff on the web without getting their facts right.
James Leavesley has never abused anyone, verbally or overwise to my knowledge.
The rider in question was Gavin Atkins and I think you need to know that he had a bike mounted camera on his bike durring the incident you talked about - fair enough he could have been a little more refrained but then again you could have made a bit more effort to give way to a rider who was clearly going way faster than you and who made more than a little effort to go around - even off the main track.
It’s probaly also worth mentioning that we had a video camera filming in our pit when you rode past and shouted “arseholes” at us - not so righteous after all eh?
Rob Lee
www.extreme-endurance.com
July 31st, 2006 at 7:47 am
OOh so now it’s turning into a playground taunting match.
I think you’ll find it’s always the responsibility of the overtaking rider to get passed and pass responsibly and safely. If your trying to pass slower riders, especially late on in a race, you’ll find that they are waaaay more spaced out than the faster rider and may not really know what is going on.
Fair enough if he got it wrong on the person but you really need to make sure your riders don’t abuse other riders as it looks bad on your team and sponsors. I still remember the Evans teams from the early nineties who abused every other rider as if they didn’t belong on the track. Funny that they didn’t win a bean and the guys who did were always so good and polite at passing people.
July 31st, 2006 at 11:10 am
Sorry but I fail to see how presenting the two sides to a story makes it a playground taugnting.
er, maybe the tape is corrupted but it sounds very much that the abuse was a 2 way thing.
Totally agree that riders shouldn’t abuse each other and we do take this sort of thing seriously which is why it is one of the core values within our team.
Strange Tom, that you don’t have anything to say about people riding past other teams pits and shouting abuse?
The commissaires at the event were involved after the incident and felt that there was no case to answer to. Our sponsors have no problem with that.
Rob
www.extreme-endurance.com
July 31st, 2006 at 2:27 pm
What you should have done is asked Nick to contact you and sorting it out in private would have done you much better than throwing allegations (?) back at him in defence.
Not knowing anything about the incident first hand I would not feel able to comment on whether that tag is justified or not for the actions that were seen. Remember that some people may have only seen your rider being abusive and not the other rider and vice versa so felt justified.
Nicks comment may show up his lack of judgement as the same could be said about the 2 riders lack of judgement.
At least your video footage has got a bit spiced up from the event.
July 31st, 2006 at 3:26 pm
yep, fair comment Tom.
I guess I could have handled things differently, but then so could Nick - he does have my email address, I guess he felt wronged enough to air his views in the public domain.
I have since contacted Nick, offered an apology (of sorts ;-) from the team and an invite to share tea (or beer) at our pit some time.
Hopefully we can put this behind us
life’s too short.
July 31st, 2006 at 3:40 pm
The internet would be rubbish if all of these things were resolved privately :)
August 1st, 2006 at 9:05 am
Rob,
I’m happy to see the video of the passing incident, even if it does show that I sank to Gavins level. I notice that you say you have the incident on video rather than deny outright it took place. As Tom points out - it is the responsibility of the faster rider to get past, not the job of slower riders to get out of their way.
That said Gavin wasn’t “clearly faster”. He was only a little faster on that lap then I was, and that mainly because I was happy to sit behind riders in the singletrack rather than barge my way through. If you look at the video you’ll see that there is plenty of traffic in front of Gavin. I was happy to sit in that traffic, knowing that a wide climb and opportunity for trouble-free passing was coming up.
I’m genuinely sorry and ashamed of myself for abusing your whole camp at the end of the lap, but at that point I was steaming mad after Gavins antics.
Like you says life’s too short. I’ll seek you out at SITS and offer an apology for my behaviour. But I expect one from Gavin.
August 1st, 2006 at 6:05 pm
no worries Nick
yep, the footage does show a bunch of other riders (and some of their comments are also a bit fruity ;-)
I think it’s just one of those things - I’ve been on both ends and sometimes I think that helps as, whilst I don’t condone what happens I realise why.
The reasons you shouted at our pit are not actually that different to why Gav lost his cool when he reached you guys.
You sound like a reasonable guy who likes riding his bike, we are just the same, no real need to apologize but as Gav won’t mind and you don’t either it’s all cool, so yeah drop by at a race some time and have a cuppa.
all the best
Rob