A (very late) Sleepless In The Saddle 2007 write-up

Better, late than never, as the saying goes. I finished my write-up from the 2007 Sleepless In The Saddle 24hour race many months ago but then never made time to publish it, so here it is.

After an eventful and not entirely successful introduction to team XC racing at Dusk ‘Til Dawn 2005, I convinced my team mates Roger and Andrew to have another go at Sleepless In The Saddle this year, adding in former colleague Steve to complete the “2.5 beards, an Aussie and a Dutchman” line-up in Sport Men. SITS was to be Roger and Andrew’s second ever race, and Steve had never had a number on his bike at all, so we were hoping the step up to our first ever 24 hour event wouldn’t be too big. The main aims for the event were to have fun, complete the 24 hours, and have a rider out on course at all times.

Leaving London in the early afternoon on Friday left plenty of time for a relaxed drive up to Catton Hall, and a supermarket trip en route to stock up on pasta meals, cereal bars etc. Arriving at Catton, the non- trade/soloist camping area was already really busy, and it took a few laps of the site to find a pitch, but it was a good one, near to the change-over area and the high quality toilets/washrooms, complete with shiny brass door handles – no standard Portaloos here! After setting up the tents, we went to registration to collect our impressive number boards (Roger may well frame his) and vouchers for free Fibrax brake pads for discs/V-brakes of your choice – a nice touch to have options here. We were also happy with the ‘baton’, a vaguely glow-in-the-dark rubber wristband, which would be much harder to lose than the glowstick we had at Dusk ‘Til Dawn in 2005. A quick detour to buy a mixed box of bars from Matt at Torq and it was time for an early night.

Saturday morning saw clearing skies, bright sunshine, and a chance to pre-ride the 7.2 mile course. After an opening long, flat grassy farm track section with some fun high-speed corners, the hard work started with a steep little climb heading into the single track. Much of the course was the same as EnduroPlus 2006, the last time I was at Catton, with the addition of a new section across the public road which had been shut for the event, and was a mix of farm tracks, twisty sticky singletrack, off-camber loose descents, small sharp climbs, a lot of bumps, and some long, thankfully fast and smooth, grassy sections. It wasn’t particularly technically difficult, although definitely harder than my team mates had been expecting, but we were confident it would be fun.

Steve’s jinxed weekend began halfway round the pre-ride when his left-hand crank arm fell off. After much searching around in the mud until we found all the pieces, we abandoned the pre-ride and headed for the Shimano gazebo to fix his bike, which didn’t leave us enough time before the rider briefing to complete the rest of the pre-ride: the second part of lap 1 for each of us would be ‘blind’.

We decided on a 2 lap strategy, and I drew the short straw and had the pleasure of the Le Mans-style start, an 800m run to pick up the bike followed by the opening lap. Looking for a reasonable start to avoid getting stuck in single track blockages, the run went well, and the field soon spread out over the first few minutes of flat racing. Approaching the first climb however, roughly 75% of riders had gone off far too quicky and were walking up it, meaning those like me who wanted to ride it had to politely request they move out of the way between gasps for breath. The course proved to be as much fun as we had hoped, with plenty of overtaking possibilities, loads of high-speed corners and a mix of surfaces.

One of the highlights of the lap was what we called ‘the corkscrew’, a series of inter-linked 180 degree turns up and down hill, with cross-country horse fences to bounce off if you got things wrong. Another favourite was the penultimate descent, which soon gained a crowd of bloodthirsty spectators hoping for crashes and heckling/supporting those racing, depending upon how they rode the downhill and the sharp left corner immediately following it!

The first 2 laps were over soon enough, and it was time to use the well-designed change-over area, where riders continuing to another lap walked through the left side of the timing tent, and those finishing their stint used the right, walking with the bike to hand over the wristband baton to a team mate who could join the course further down the main straight.

The early part of our race proved to be uneventful, only enlivened by our only puncture of the entire event for Andrew. We were lucky to only pick up one – the thorn hedges were freshly cut and I lost count of the number of riders changing tubes by the side of the track.

Andrew, Roger and Steve all completed their first sets of doubles, and as dusk fell, it was my turn again. Unsure of how many watts I would need later on, it was possible to turn the lights off altogether on the open sections on lap 1, but lap 2 saw a mix of 5W and 15W in the singletrack, and even this wasn’t enough in places – time to invest in some new lights…… The night laps were great fun, except for being thrown over the handlebars at 3mph when my back wheel jumped out of the frame – all the bumps must have loosened the QR. Had it happened 15 seconds earlier, in the midst of a 30mph gravel descent, it would have been a lot more painful! After another change-over to Andrew, I headed to bed for a quick 4 hour sleep, expecting to be out on course again at 4:10am roughly, so set my alarm for 3:45am.

Two more consistent stints from Andrew and Roger while I slept left Steve with his first night lap, and his cursed weekend continued. Not only did the forecast rain turn up as a short sharp shower, coating his bike and the course in mud, but his lights failed completely early in the lap. Even using other riders to illuminate the course, a few crashes resulted, and doing a second lap was not an option. Cue Steve riding to our pitch 30 minutes earlier than expected with the baton, and handing over to a still sleepy and half-prepared me. 20 minutes of delay and a swift Red Bull later, I was back on the course, which had miraculously dried and was hardly muddy at all.

Meanwhile, Andrew had slept really badly after his last session, so when I walked through the timing tent to hand-over to him, there was no-one there – he was still in his tent and in no fit state to go out. I did not fancy a third lap of my stint, and Roger and Steve were also sleeping, so we took an executive decision to have a break. Andrew got some breakfast and more sleep while I cleaned all the bikes, and we resumed with Roger’s stint, leaving Steve and Andrew to make up their missed laps later.

A quick position check from the commentary position at around 10am found us in 117th place after our 2.5 ‘lost’ hours with no-one on course, having dropped from 99th to 101st earlier. Time to get a move on..

With the sun shining and blue skies again, the final hours of the race were great fun. Andrew handed over to me at 1326 and, keen to get as many laps in as possible, I produced my fastest lap of the event to get through the timing tent with 3 minutes to spare, overtaking a number of lurkers enjoying the sunshine at the top of the last descent in the process. The final lap was very relaxed and with hardly any riders on course, the singletrack was flowing nicely, and all too soon I found myself crossing the line for the last time and receiving a handshake from Pat Adams. The 24 hours was over! We ended up 109th of 142, with the final lap bumping us up a few places.

For our first ever 24 hour event, it went pretty well, all things considered. The atmosphere for the whole race was really friendly, numerous overtaking places meant there was very little aggression in passing other riders, and the weather was great for most of the event. Granted, we didn’t manage to have a rider out on course for the entire 24 hours, and the 2.5-3 hours we lost could have been used for another 3 laps or so, but the whole team had fun and learned a lot.

Thanks to Pat Adams and everyone involved in organising such a great event, the marshals and support staff, Salsa/Thetford MTB Racing for fixing Steve’s brakes, and Shimano for adjusting malfunctioning gears.

Spring is in the air?

It's still January but the sun was shining today and the trails seem to be drying, at least for the moment. The Gorrick spring series started today, and the dates for most of 2008's races are already available.

One target for 2008 is to improve my speed, particularly downhill, and I've been trying to really lean the bike over in corners with my weight over the outside pedal, and the crank at 6 o'clock. I've definitely seen some improvements recently, but I got it a bit wrong today. Trying to carry a lot of speed over a wet wooden bridge, I ran out of grip, washed out, and sent my bike cartwheeling towards a group of runners who didn't look best pleased with my riding! Apart from a grazed hip/shin/ankle, no damage was done, and it's another lesson learned :)

I've been testing the Torq gels over the last few months, and although I like the Orange And Banana flavour, and am getting used to the Forest Fruits With Guarana, the clear winners are the Strawberry Yoghurt and Black Cherry Yoghurt, which are absolutely delicious! They remind me of Fruit Corner yoghurts, they are that tasty. I've no idea how well they work compared to other gels, but they certainly work and I'll be staying with Torq for 2008, having used Science in Sport gels the last few years.

Having lost our 12h/24h team member Steve, who has returned to Australia, it looks like we have a replacement lined up, and we're finalising our racing plans now. The aim is to do the below races as a team of four:

21-22/06 Mountain Mayhem
09-10/08 Sleepless In The Saddle
04-05/10 Dusk 'Til Dawn

I'm really looking forward to racing as a team again, but need to get some new tyres and better lights before then. The new Hope Single LED model is looking favourite at the moment for the latter.

A quick update

The days are short and it's cold outside but looking back at photos and video footage from this season and earlier is keeping me in the mood to get out on the bike.

The Panaracer Trailraker mud tyres got their first outing of winter 2007/8 last weekend, in Swinley Forest. The weather forecast was for stormy weather and heavy rain, which luckily didn't materialise, but it was definitely a wet ride all the same. Leon and James, two old work mates who raced across Costa Rica with me in February 2006, also came along for the ride, and we all got in some good practice on the wet roots, thin mud and short steep climbs and descents. The riding area at Swinley is larger than I though, and there are many more trails we didn't get to explore, so I'm looking forward to a return there in early 2008.

On an equipment note, my Truvativ Stylo Team GXP chainset is still doing well, with no play in the cranks etc. but the bottom bracket is creaking a little every now and then. I'm going to leave it as long as I can and hope it gets through the winter/spring before buying some replacement GXP external bottom bracket cups, now available from Chain Reaction and other good bike shops. After getting many hours of riding in on it to adjust to a relatively unpadded lightweight saddle, I'm now really happy with my SLR XC saddle. I'll let you know if the saddle rail snap problem others have reported happens to me!

Winter riding and looking forward to 2008

DSC01130 Rosara Joseph
Originally uploaded by Eldrik

Well, it would appear my concerns about a lack of progress on who would run the 2008 British Mountain Bike XC/National Points Series were unfounded, with the announcement that Thetford MTB Racing (http://www.thetfordmtbracing.com) will be taking over from Martyn Salt and his Inevent team.

I know how well run events managed by Frank and Paul etc. from Thetford can be, both from the Marin Winter Series enduro races and from Dusk 'Til Dawn, and am sure the series is in safe hands for 2008. It will be interesting to see which venues are selected, especially if, as suggested, there will be a return to Scotland for one of the rounds.

2008 will be a massive year for XC racing, in particular because of the Olympics, but also at national level. It looks fairly certain that there will be 2 Elite Men riding in GB colours in Beijing, with Liam Killeen and Oli Beckingsale the most likely candidates. Oli deserves to ride in China for the amount of travel he did in 2007 alone while chasing UCI qualification points! If Oli gets back to his 2005 and 2006 form, and Liam is fully fit, I am hopeful GBR will have a chance of some high finishes, not only in the Olympics, but in Italy at the Worlds, on a climber's course which should suit Oli.

At national level, particularly amongst the Elite Women, the competition is really heating up, with Amy Hunt now a real challenger to Jenny Copnall as British #1, and hopefully there will be more world class racers like Rosara Joseph (pictured) and Mary McConneloug making the trip to race in the UK.

On a personal note, I've not been out on the bike as much I would like, but riding round Richmond Park in SW London at night is a far better experience than during the day, with no pedestrians or dogs to slow down for! I've finally got round to putting more air in my forks so will start experimenting with the best pressures from now on.

What will next year's British national series look like?

DSC01131 Oli Beckingsale chasing Burry Stander
Originally uploaded by Eldrik

After a break of many years from XC competition, I started going to XC races again in 2005 including the national events, then known as the National Points Series, which became the British Mountain Bike XC Series for 2007. The series under both titles was run by Martyn Salt of Inevent and supported by Trek and others, and was characterised by a wide variety of courses, spread over England and Wales mainly, with good facilities and a friendly atmosphere. It compared really well to the early to mid 1990s when I used to race, has been growing at around 15% per year in numbers terms, and had begun to attract top class riders from Europe and around the world, such as South African champion and top U-23 racer Burry Stander, pictured leading Oli Beckingsale at Thetford this year.

However, it is all change for 2008 - Trek will not be acting as a major sponsor, and British Cycling are seeking a new organiser to run the series, and to build upon the good work done by Inevent. BC made the announcement seeking new organisers a while ago, since when there has been no news whatsoever. There are no British national series races listed on the UCI calendar for 2008 (not even dates with venue TBC) and the final cut-off point for inclusion in the UCI calendar is approaching fast.

It would be a disaster for XC racing in the UK if the national series went backwards, with no UCI points and/or a step backwards in organisation etc. I hope for the sake of the sport that there will be some news soon, and good news at that.

Marin Dusk 'til Dawn 2007 review

DSC01661 Jenn Hopkins
Originally uploaded by Eldrik

After D2D 2005 and Sleepless In The Saddle 2006, we were confident as a team that we had learned enough about team enduro racing to make D2D 2007 run smoothly. Oh how wrong we were.

We started out well enough - I got the train up to Brandon, despite the best efforts of Network Rail imposing engineering works on the route, and claimed a pitch near the main arena and close to the portaloos. The rest of the team shared a van, stocked up at the supermarket, and arrived in good time to prep the bikes, fit lights and pre-ride the course.

While they were making final adjustments, I had a look at the Chelmer Cycles stand, and took the opportunity to test-ride £5250 worth of final prototype Cannondale Scalpel team replica (http://gb.cannondale.com/bikes/08/ce/model-8VP0.html). I hadn't ridden a Scalpel before, so can't compare the new shock position for 2008 to that of older models, but the full build (with Crossmax SLRs, X0 etc.) is incredibly light and feels super fast even with high volume Maxxis Crossmarks fitted. The carbon Lefty fork meanwhile felt buttery smooth, at least to my untrained senses. I've fallen in love with this bike a bit.....

The course itself was around 11.7m long, and in contrast to the 2005 D2D, had very few climbs of note, but had gained 4 bomb holes to make up for it. Initial feedback from the likes of George Budd was that it would be very fast, and a quick practice lap supported this.

To the race itself: having learned from past experience how bad the single track queues can be at Thetford, I joined the grid really early in the hope of making a (rare for me) fast start. The race began with a 1 mile or so section before rejoining the course proper, which did a good job at the front at least of creating room to race. With fresh legs and fully-charged lights, the course was an absolute blast to ride.

I soon found myself following in the tread marks of Jenn Hopkins of Minx/Kona (pictured), the 2006 Solo Women's winner, on her singlespeed hardtail Kona. She would escape from me on the singletrack only to be reeled back in on the fireroad. Except for the occasional horrendous piece of riding by me slowing down those behind, I stayed with her the entire lap, a sobering thought when she was to ride at that pace for 12 hours non-stop. Very impressive.

A clean, delay-free first lap saw Steve start lap 2 with us in 15th place of the 52 four man teams - nosebleed territory! Unfortunately it was all downhill from there, starting off with Steve's high speed fireroad crash which cost him time before handing over to Andrew. Steve went off to get patched up by the excellent Extreme Medics (http://www.extrememedics.com/) staff. Meanwhile, out on course, Andrew was making good use of his training and the most powerful lights combination in our team to heat up the lap time rivalry between all of us which began at SITS with an impressively fast lap.

Roger was the final team member to go out, and despite having had little chance to get used to his new bike, bought the night before the event, he had a good first half of the lap and was looking strong on the second part when disaster struck. An unseen root/rock/obstacle sent him crashing heavily to earth, broke 1 light completely and damaged the other, and cost a lot of time.

Following on from Roger, I then punctured, but couldn't get the CO2 canister plus sealant to fix the problem completely, so had to ride with very low tyre pressure which made cornering interesting. Luckily I was near the end of the lap, so I ran the final bombhole and into the arena to try to minimise any damage before handing over to Steve. My Mavic XC717/DT Revolution-spoked front wheel was still almost straight surprisingly - good strength from some quite lightweight kit. With a horrible sense of deja vu from SITS, Steve's helmet-mounted Cateye lights soon switched to flashing mode, a sure sign that the batteries were running out, which didn't exactly help him picking out the trail. Andrew obviously used up all his bad luck at SITS meanwhile as he had another fast, uneventful lap before handing over to me.

Meanwhile, at the head of the field, an unflustered-looking Jenn Hopkins was going head to head with Sally Bigham in the Solo Women, while Andrew Patterson and team mate Jenn O'Connor appearing to be in 2 places at once in the Mixed Pairs, they were lapping so quickly. Yuri Hauswald, flown in from the US by Marin and riding a heavily-stickered titanium machine, was battling with Matt Page and Ant White in the Solo Men. Leading the Team Men's event for Whyte Racing, Billy Whenman was seemingly making the most of the on-site masseurs, going out every lap with freshly oiled up legs.

In unplanned solidarity with Steve, my batteries also ran out earlier than expected, so I spent the entire lap sandwiched between 2 other riders, kindly providing me with light. By this point, I was not particularly comfortable on my new Selle Italia SLR XC saddle. I'm sure it will be great, and it does weigh a mere 187g, but I'm not used to riding on such an unpadded seat yet! On returning to the change-over area, I had no team-mate to swap with, with Roger's crash-related injuries, Steve's lack of lights and Andrew resting after recently doing a lap, so we had an enforced break for a while, before Andrew went out in the dawn light for our final lap.

Despite not exactly going to plan, it was great to finish D2D this time, and to pick up even more knowledge about team endurance racing which no doubt will be useful in 2008. Thanks to my team mates for getting on with it and not complaining when things went wrong, and to Extreme Medics for patching up Steve and Roger after crashes.

Marin Dusk 'til Dawn 2007 preview

After a disastrous first Marin Dusk 'til Dawn (www.thetfordmtbracing.com/) in 2005, when we suffered punctures, broken bikes and broken riders, we're having another go at the fast-growing 12hr overnight race this weekend. The event has grown a lot in the last 2 years, is sold out this year, and has attracted some strong riders such as Jenn O'Connor who raced for NZ at the 2007 World Championships, Kate Potter the BMBS Marathon series winner, and some fast men's team such as Whyte Racing. The course has grown too, at around 11.5 miles per lap, but with roughly 400 riders on course at any time, it's going to be busy. The organisers believe it will be around 68 riders per mile - that's a lot of overtaking.

Our team is the same as in 2005, with Andrew and Roger Wesson and myself, plus Steve Chadwick who joined us for the 24hr Sleepless In The Saddle (www.konasits.co.uk/) this summer. With the experience we gained over 24 hours at SITS, plus the lights failures and mechanical issues we suffered, a mere 12 hours at Thetford should be relatively easy. The weather forecast is good for October, from around 8 degrees Celsius at night to 16 degrees during the day, and little chance of rain, so the mud tyres can stay at home and I'll be on my favourite Maxxis Flyweight 490s. Last time we raced here, both Andrew and I were on fully rigid bikes, and Roger was on a supermarket special so-called MTB, so some serious bike upgrades and front supension should help.

We won't be anywhere near the top 20 men's teams, but are aiming to finish higher in % terms than at SITS, and certainly higher than we did at D2D in 2005, which shouldn't be difficult! It's only Steve's second ever race, and Roger and Andrew's third ever, so we're still learning as a team.

The only concern at this point is that after having his bike stolen recently, Roger hasn't found time to buy a new one yet. He is going shopping today, but I'm not sure buying a new bike the day before a 12 hour race is ideal preparation! Oh well... I also broke my saddle last weekend, and am looking forwards to trying my new Selle Italia SLR XC (www.selleitalia.com/eng/index.html), but am not exactly used to it yet. On the plus side, Andrew has just invested in an Exposure Joystick helmet light (www.use1.com/exposure/products/exposure_joystick/index.php) which, combined with his 10W/15W Cateyes, should provide plenty of clarity in the dark.

We're team number 458 - keep an eye out for us if you are at the race.