I was a bit nervous when Lawrence asked if I was interested in racing in the CLIC24 - especially when he mentioned that it was a 24 hour team endurance event based on top of the Mendips! After the initial shock I decided it would be a good laugh and agreed to join him, Nathan made up our final team member and we entered under the team name "The Good, The Bad and the Ugly" (we never decided on which one was the latter!).
The race took place at the end of May and we were part of a field of 400 riders of which a majority were in teams with the remainder being mad solo riders. The course was approx 10 miles long and took in sweeping single track, loose fast descents, stream crossings and a small amount of country road to finish off. The race started at 12:00 midday on Saturday and finished 24 hours later. We had already estimated an average of 1 hour laps by looking at the course map contours mixed with our average mile-per-hour calcs. I voluntered to start and we had a race strategy of one lap each in the day then one lot of 2 laps each overnight in order for us to get some rest!. The first lap neede to be good as we didn't want to get caught up in all the traffic going through the single track sections, I managed to get in the right place on the start line (based on race numbers) and we were off. First lap was fantastic and to my pleasure I had managed to not get caught up in the traffic so I had pretty much a clear lap, the fireroad climb was another good oppotunity to do some overtaking and then before I knew it I was on the road heading towards basecamp! from what I remember lap 1 was just under the 50 minute mark. Next out was Nathan who also put a sub 50 in and then Lawrence. The single laps worked well and we were hovering around the top 10 all day!
Night riding has been a new hobby of mine and Nathan's and it really put us in good stead for this part of the race, Nathan struggled with digesting a pasty whilst trying to sleep and really felt it on his 2 lap stint, but fair play he did it and managed to let us other 2 get a well earnt break. Lawrence managed to pick an argument with the floor on his descent and is still carrying the injuries which makes me think the floor won! I had great fun with my laps and managed a total of 1:45 for my laps which finished at 01.45 am!
At the end of the night stages we were in 17th (I think) which was a bit disheartening after being around the top 10 for most of Saturday, still we had 6 hours of racing left. We finished in 13th place in the end which is a really good achievement for 3 old boys on hardtails.
A couple more laps each and it was all over, what a fantastic event and on the way home in the car we had already decided to compete in 09 and Nathan was working hard on his food and drink strategy!
Final results are Here