Bright Enduro – Oct 2009

This was a fun race with a local describing the course as ‘mentally tough’. The single track on the whole was tight with a lot of short sharp dips and climbs though bomb holes. The 30 d plus heat and the constant short sharp burst required to ride the single track made for a challenging race. I finished 5th in the 40 to 49 group and one lap down on 1st and 2nd. So this was 9 laps, 107k at an average of 17.3 kph. Full results are on the Alpine Cycles Club site.

Getting it all wrong
I went out way too fast for the first 2 laps, blew in the 30 plus heat in the middle of the race, and the lap times went pear shaped from there. I then spent most of laps 5 & 6 trying not hurl or curl up in lactic ball at the side of the course. The pace and heart rate was way to high for the first couple of laps.

Next time follow a plan...
So if I'd gone slower and steadier at the start I think I could have managed a much better result. At least a 4th and perhaps even a 3rd. Dam it! Have a look at how steady 4th place road.
What I should be have aiming for was an average speed of 18.2 kph. At this speed I'd have been able to complete 9 laps in the 6 hours and then been able to get out for a tenth lap. I'm going to have to work a lot more on the head space side of things.

AY UP 24 - Rotorua - March 2010 - The basic plan

The plan would be fly out to Auckland (via Sydney) the week before the race, do the race, spend a week and Easters sight seeing, then return to Oz sometime in the following week. This gives 2.5 to 3 weeks in NZ.

So in a little more detail
Ideally we would need to head out to NZ the week before the race, perhaps flying out on 20th Saturday or 21th Sunday.
The return trip could be any time after race however, it would seem like a no brainer to use the 'free' paid holidays of Easter. So the suggested return would be anytime in the week commencing the 5th April. My suggestion would be planning to travel out as group or meet up in Auckland. Hire a car and travel to Rotorua together to race etc, then after the race split up do some traveling on your own.I'm thinking of returning on Saturday the 10th of April. But the flights can be more expensive on weekends, so it may be cheaper to fly on Monday or Fridays.

More on flights
Preference would be to flying into Wellington but the flight seem a little more complex then Auckland, i.e. there are more flights to Auckland.
Cost can be as low as $400 each way. But some care with hidden costs, i.e. bikes are generally free on Qantas but on discount carries like Virgin can often charge extra for bikes. Flights may be still cheaper if we fly on week day. I'd be budgeting on $500 each way.

Proposed itinerary
Saturday 20 March - Fly to Auckland
Sat / Sun 27/28 race Rotorua
3 to 5 April - Easter

Key dates
AY UP 24 / 12 Hour Rotorua
27/28 March 2010

Easter
3 April 2010 (Friday)
5 April 2010 (Monday)

I made the news well sort of...

http://the-riotact.com/?p=8167

Lap No	Race time	Lap time
1	12:00	1:33
2	14:58	1:25
3	16:25	1:27
4	18:03	1:38
5	19:51	1:48
6	21:59	2:08
7	00:27	2:28
8	04:20	3:53
9	08:45	4:25
10	11:43	2:58

Offical time splits

The works part II...

Sunday: race time 15:00...
I made it back to the pits some time around 3:00 and man was cooked. I was in the land way beyond f***ed up. I just sat down and started shivering. After a while I wondered around the pit row and found a gas heater. Eventually the support crew who owned the gas heater decided I was OK and booted me out saying I should go and do another lap. They were right of course and I head out for lap No. 9 at around 4:20. Sun was up but a night of racing had churned the track into a hill swamp. Didn’t really matter as I was doing a sort of zombie shuffle up the hills.
As I completed lap 9 the crowd of spectators and race officials were still cheering and ring those dam cow bells. They’d done this for every lap and every soloist for whole race. It made me feel really special. And as is usual I get very ‘tied and emotional’ at about this point so there was couple of tears in the corner of the eyes (and it wasn’t ‘cause of the mud).

Sunday: sometime around 20:30...
Completed lap No 9 and worked out I had enough time for 10 laps which would make 200km. The goal was in sight, so all was good. Still wasn’t sure of the place but I was fairly hopeful I’d gone top ten. Sat down in the pit area for a while and then eventually dragged my arse out for one last long walk of the course. To brake up the walk I did do some riding ;]
As I head out on the last loop of the course for one last time I went past the funky Scottish med student from the hostel. She was cheering and saying nice things. These things seem to really matter after a long night.

Sunday: 23:47:35 and my race is finish…
Thank god it was over. I ambled around for a while and washed the bike down. Russ Baker was still there hanging out and rushed over to take another photo which helped to heighten the feeling that I’d achieved something special. For most of the post race time it was all a blur really. The final offical result was 207 klicks and 7th place in my age group. My arse was intact so things had turned out OK. It did'nt feel that special until few days latter when all of my friends start emailing me and telling how amazing it was and how awesome I’d done. Here comes the gooey part… it was the comments from back home which made me reflect on how I’d gone and really put my achievement into perspective.

What a year; 3rd outright in the NZO and now a 7th in age group at the Worlds. I guess I’m not such an average rider after all ;]

Post race tripping…
After packing up the pit I headed back to Banff. I stopped in for some race recovery Macers. I drove straight into the pick up lane and had to back out and start again in the order lane. Then I drove back to Banff where I fell asleep at the traffic lights. I woke up, the lights were green and the cars in front had driven off and about eight cars waiting behind. Wooops!

The works with the lot...

So here goes with the full race report, as best as I can remember a week after the event. Images are from Russ Baker's photo site and Mark Diggins (a Canadian solo nutter who helped me out during the race). BTW it’s pouring Vancouver on my last day in Canada so sitting in an internet café is looking like a good plan for the day…

Before the race...
Like all of these things the race starts a day or two before the event. I arrived in Banff a few days early, this gave me plenty of time to get the bike setup and pre-ride the course (see the earlier postings).

Friday: race time minus 24 hours...
In the morning I had a last minute panic about not having tubeless tyres so ducked into the local Banff bike shop. They had nothing useful on the floor but the mechanic made a trip back to his house to pick up a pair of Kenda Small Blocks for me, he said these were the ones to have as it was going to be dry. He’d been keeping these aside for his riders in the Trans Rockies (starting next week), so he was doing me a favor (arh those nice Canadians!).
In the arvo before I headed out to Canmore and regoed. Then I had to sit through an induction of riders into a ‘hall of fame’. There was a lot of clapping and speeches. I guess this is more of a North of American thing as most of the Aussies didn’t seem to get the point. Then we had the race briefing proper. Man those guys were disorganized, the rules changed about three times during the briefing! The two important things were;

• The race started at 11:45 to allow us some space before the team hacks started racing, and


• There was to be no MP3 players as this would stop us hearing any angry bears just before they attacked (seriously)

I managed to find Mark and Francis who agreed to give me some help during the race. It turned out I was also just down the pits from most of the Aussies and Thomas. So there were some other there to lend a hand. Finished the day off with the usual pasta gorging session and then off to bed.

Saturday: race time minus 6 hours...
God dam dorm accommodation; I woke up at 5:30AM and could get back to sleep because of the snoring backpackers! Got up, did some eating, gear checking and then tried to work on getting into the right head space. Headed out to race central around 9 and got myself set-up. Added the “24 solo’ sticker to top tube, matching blue, it looked the goods along side the Australia sticker, the important stuff.

Saturday: race time minus 1 hour...
Time to start the “chamois time” and get dressed up in the CORC race gear. I think I was the only soloist not covered in sponsorship. Anyhow, I felt proud to be wearing the club colours. Noodled about for a bit then it was time to get over to congregate in the timing tent. It was all a bit vague but as everyone else was there I couldn’t really go wrong. It turned out we were to run out of the tent in reverse number order and run up to the start line. This was a kind of parade for the spectators and they announced the riders name (mispronouncing Remely) and country as we ran through. Then we all hung around the start line. Nobody seemed to really know what was happening, we’d worked out that there was small run and 7 km prologue lap through town. Just as I’d started to come to grips with this they announced that they were just waiting for the helicopter to getting to filming position and they’d start the race. And we were off!

Saturday: race time 00:00...
Jogging along in the crowd thinking; "calm stay calm and don’t let the Worlds thing amp you up". On the bike and racing, still more selftalk about keeping the heart rate down. I got into middle of the bunch and this felt about right. I did a roady tuck to get a free draft through town and conserver some energy. Up the first climb and man did I feel good. This was going to be OK, I even passed a few guys without having to work. The race headed up for the first lap of the course. It was all good. The Kenda tyres were ace and the Anthem was even better. Just keep riding. I was able to settle into a rhythm and apart from stopping for fresh bottles I was able to just keep lapping until dark. The lap times were steady; 1:33, 1:25, 1:27, 1:38, 1:48.
Willo passed me couple of times with Tinker about an inch from his wheel. He did say some nice things about CORC rider and “go willo” was my cry in reply. Other folks were saying "go Aussie" to me and more stuff about Canberra. The CORC gear was a good choice as the other Aussie all knew were I was from.

Saturday: race time around 08:30...
Starting to get tired and the constant climbing was getting tough. Time to get the lights on and keep turning. I opted to run the six hour batteries with the idea I could change for the last part of the night. Marcello (Thomas’s mechanic) sorted the battery on the bike and gave the chain a quick oil. He’s one calm guy which makes such a difference when you’re getting worked up about riding. The course wasn’t really much harder at night. But I did manage to mix the lights up and had wide angle lamp on my head and beam on the bars which sorted of made the single track a little trickery. Something to get right next time (this is first time I’ve thought there might be a ‘next time’).

Saturday: race time around 10:00...
It was really dark, I was tried and it had been rain raining really hard. They was sh*t in my face and was getting it in my eyes and mouth. The tyres were glagging up; Kenda’s good in the dry - sh*t with a cherry on top in the wet. The rooty descents had turned nasty and I was walking most of the climbs and some of more demanding downs. Better to be in one piece then smashed into a tree. This was also the time where my guts started to play up; too much goo, sport drinks and pain killers. I had heart burn and wanted to chuck. Things were starting to go pear shaped.

Saturday: race time sometime in the witching hour...
The course just seemed to be endless goop. I was struggling to walk the ups but I was still OK on the downs. Sometime around 2AM the body decided some protest action was called for and I was forced to endure a “sit in” at the top of a particularly nasty (walking) climb. There was some strong negotiation between management and the labour and after about 20 minutes just sitting by the trail watching the race go by we all went back to work. All I needed to was get back to pit area this was getting ridiculous.

More in part two...

Post race pain...

It's 19:30, I've had shower and a snooze. Popped out to town for ice cream! Time for a quick race report.

It was brutal...
There was heaps of climbing, really technical descents, and several sever thunder storms around 10 PM last night turned most of the course into a massive mud bath. I was going strong till around 3 PM and was riding steadily with around 10 minutes break between laps. During lap 8 it went pear shaped, my body had protest at the top of the first major climb and I was forced to conduct an "unofficial sit-in besides"the trail! I think I got the food/drink wrong and without a knowledgeable support crew it was impossible to get back on track. I did manage to get back out on the trail around 6:30 AM and manage another two laps. But I was staggering most of the way and grinding along slight inclines in granny.

So how did I do?
The Unofficial results are up. So the age group winner was 60km ahead, 3rd place was only a lap up, and there was probably only minutes separating the rest of us on 10 laps. So all in all I think I performed well. I'll post a more detailed race report some time tomorrow...