Thetford Summer Enduro 2013

On the run up to the Summer Enduro the weather had been very dry, but the night before it had rained pretty hard.  I had some tyre choice concerns but stuck with my Racing Ralfs which ended up being a good decision as, if anything, the course could have done with more rain and was tyre deep with dusty earth in loads of places!

This time I had entered in the 10hr pairs race with my mate Stu, after a quick chat we decided I'd go off first and we'd alternate laps from there on.  Stu claimed he'd not had chance to get as much training in as he'd have liked,  but he certainly seemed quick enough to me :-) 

- Lap 1 - I got a good start from the 2nd row and managed not to be overtaken too much.
- Lap 3 - I'm not sure why but this lap contained many silly mistakes, including overshooting corners and in one case missing an arrow and going about 50yards off the course!  Despite this I still managed a decent enough time.
- Lap 5 - There were fewer silly mistakes this time, however halfway around the course I clipped a root while overtaking someone and I hit the ground pretty hard.  I jumped back on the bike and pretended I wasn't hurting as much as I was.  Shortly afterwards I was caught by my mate Winger who was soloing and he "beasted" me back to the changeover with cries of "Come on ya faggot,  get a move on" which helped get another good time in :-D
- Lap 7 - This went OK but a bit slower, the pain in my side was starting to surface.
- Lap 9 - Can only be summed up by the word agony.  It was clear I'd hurt a rib in my fall (as well as scraping the skin off my hip) and the adrenaline (or whatever had kept me going that long) had worn off...  At the change-over I told Stu that this would probably be my last lap.

After talking with the other GRT guys I visited the first-aiders and got doped up with pain-killers and ice-packs and was advised to retire, which I fully planned to do, until...  Just before Stu was due back in, the pain-killers kicked in so I thought I'd see how another lap went...

Lap 11 - Unsurprisingly I was off the pace of the previous laps but only by a few mins and the pain was bearable.
Lap 13 - Pretty much a copy of lap 11...

Stu got in another lap, but it was clear another one wouldn't quite be within the cut-off time limit (I'd already decided I'd done myself enough damage and had got changed) so we called it a day at 14 laps.

Until Lap 6 we were battling for 6th/7th place but the lost time left us in 10th which, all things considered, I'm very happy with 

Mike and Paddy got a cracking 3rd place in the same cat, and the various GRT teams were pretty much all over the rest of the podium with very convincing wins for Lewis, Wingnut and Ady and Carl in their cats.

Many thanks to the GRT boys and girls for their help, banter, support and pain killers...

All in all a "cracking" day...

TimeLaps results linked here;
http://www.timelaps.co.uk/assets/uploads/Thetford%20Summer%20Enduro%202013.pdf

Thetford Dusk Til Dawn 2012

I've ridden D2D 3 times before but usually with a view to have fun rather than properly race. This year I entered as a team of 2 with my mate Steve (Stumpy on here) who I've done a lot of riding with lately and we were keen to do as well as we could but realistically we had no aspirations of troubling the podium or even being anywhere near it.

The weather had been fairly poor in the days leading up to the race and I wasn't looking forward to riding in the rain again (2008 and 2010), but on the day the rain cleared around 7am and it stayed dry and bright. We arrived at High Lodge around 5:30pm, too late to have a proper pre-ride but we got signed in and had a quick spin over the first couple of sections of the course. The rain had left a fair bit of mud, but there was considerably more fire-road than usual so hopefully it would hold up better.
I was volunteered to do the opening lap so queued up on the start line with Andy1 at around 7:30pm in the freezing cold. On the lead out section I managed to stick to Ady's wheel but misted up lenses caused me to faff my way through the first section of singletrack and he left me for dust, erm mud...
The "simple" course set-up meant I didn't see any of the queuing problems that there's been in previous years and my Racing Ralphs managed to cope pretty well through the mud (other than in one section that I doubt will dry up again this century).

I tried to eek 2 laps out of my batteries but unfortunately they both packed in about 2/3rds of the way through lap 2 meaning my Hope Twin was blinking on low power mode and my Fenix helmet light had dropped to it's dimmest setting. Somehow I managed keep riding with low light levels and despite the problems the lap-times show I set the overall fastest lap time for my category
I'd borrowed 2 spare Hope batteries from a mate, so with mine now on charge I used one of his for my 3rd lap, unfortunately it had been sat doing nothing for ages and it also died after about 20mins (despite me charging it the night before) and I had to survive on the 180 lumen helmet light alone!
The following laps were battery-problem-free but for the last mile or so of lap 4 I started to suffer cramp in my quads; a quick massage afterwards helped but the rest of my race was a balance between pushing on and fighting back cramping muscles.

Both me and Steve were managing approx 45-60min lap times which was just long enough in the pits to eat, sort out fresh clothes and batteries, service the bike and then wait for the next turn. The weather stayed dry but it was much colder than I'd anticipated fortunately the GRT boys and girls had a gas heater which was a god-send.
Unfortunately after my fourth lap I lost the ability to add up and somehow overestimated how much time I had by about 15mins and Steve had to come and find me and kick me back out onto the course...

Through the night we managed 7 laps each and we were constantly swapping between 6th and 7th place (of around 50 teams in our category). I made it back from my final lap at around 7:45am to find we'd dropped back to 7th. Steve went out for one final lap and he managed to bump us back up to 6th!

I'm exceedingly chuffed to have had a top 10 finish, it's by far my best result and is much better than we had expected we'd do.

Many thanks to all the TROG and GRT boys and girls for the hospitality, banter and support and to TMTBR for putting on another cracking event. And well done to all the others for some excellent results