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...

Before the race...

This will possibly be my last post before the race. Today I've got to; sort out the gear, do the shopping including finding some Larson UST tyres somewhere, charge the lights, and double tipple check everything is ready to go.

More on the trail...
The course has a couple of twists on the typical 24 hours routes. First of all it longer, being 20 km. This is made up of a 15 km loop for all racers then just before the end the soloist branch of for another 5 km of more ****ing climbing and mainly fire road. The extra length might be a good thing as it will mean less opportunity (temptation) to spend time in the pits. There a few points where they make use of the bridges left from the Olympic Nordic ski course to allow the course to cross over it's self at several points. Just adds to that heightened sense of disdisorientation! What else, I've already mentioned the seemingly endless climbing. There is also a small 'wall' of almost unridable near vertical fire trail. This will defiantly be a walker, even while I was fresh during the ride yesterday it was impossible.


A couple of things from the official site...

They're blogging the race http://24adrenalinlive.blogspot.com/

And from the Course Map WSC 2008
The 2008 course will feature a great mix of climbing (37%), descending (43%) and flats (23%). The length of the course is ~ 20 km or 12.25 miles, including a solo only section of nearly 5 km. A feed-zone right in the middle of the solo course, while not a true figure eight it does provide a perfect support opportunity for riders. The Feed-zone is located a 3 to 5 minute walk from the solo pits. Total elevation gain per lap approximately 2,100 ft.

On coarse...

Still hard on the training...

To give you some idea of how step the coarse is check out the mountains in the background. Also looks like the training is paying off...

The event site now has rider profiles...

The 24 Hours of Adrenalin site now has profiles of racers. No photo's yet but they're going to take them at race rego. So you'll be able to check out how ugly the sport really is.

One tough trail...

Just arrived in Bannf after two days of very solid driving; Canada is a big place. Meet up was Megan and Thomas (from the NZO) in the Bannf YMCA. All very friendly and it is always nice to meet some more racers from the same side of the world!

After checking in I headed over to Cannmore to do a lap of the coarse. Everything the other bloggers have been saying is true; this is one tough trail. There is a lot of climbing most of it is just plain long and hard work but some is also technical and steep. Worst of all, most of the descending is either over rooty trails or straight down loose shial fire roads. I predict they'll be plenty of offs. Hopefully, "I'll get see the carnage rather than being the carnage" so to speak.

I've tried to capture a few snaps to give some idea of the trails, not great but...

Made it and still alive after hitting the radness of the North Van

Well I made it through the flight here; geeps it was a long one. I end up sitting just behind John (with the busted wrist). The famous Jason English was also on the same flight; resplendent in a BMC shirt. There was also another guy from Dirty Works. While I was waiting to collect my bike at the over sized baggage collection I meet a NZ girl off to race some rounds of the down hill world cup. Any more mountain bikers and we could have chartered the plan!

Yesterday I put the bike together. Today I headed for the hills to check out some fabled North Shore. Sh*t it's scary stuff. I did find a ridable XC trail. While I was doing this I meet some Slovenian guys who said this particularly black dimond run (PINGU) was ridable on a XC bike. Like hell it was; a fair bit of it was hard to walk down. Halfway down I meet a Canadian and downhilling Aussie chick. They both thought my style was hilarious and pressured me into putting my seat down; it still didn't help. I did make it down but I managed to double pinch flat on the front. I also saw the arse end of a black bear running into to the woods. And on the home run I meet a Canada guy who'd spend 6 years living in Sydney. So it was an adventures day.

Off to find some beers (and not bears)...

All ready making friends

I just meet another Aussie heading over to the Worlds; he was just in front of me at the Air Canada check-in. The bike helmet was a bit of a give away so I introduced myself. When I went to shake John's hand he announced that he had broken it a couple of days ago in a road riding accident. So we did that sort of odd left-hand shake thing that never really works.

Apparently he's still going to race - that's tough!

Only 6 hours to depature...

Spent most of the day knoodling over the packing. Why does simple stuff like throwing some cycling gear in a bag take so long?

Anyhow, it's the witching hour and that means 6 and bit hours before I fly out from Canberra. Over and out...

Get a Twitter account so you too can get instant updates…

While I was setting up the Blog I also got a Twitter account. Twitter is a free microblogging service that lets subscribers send & receive short text messages. I’m going to try to use this to get sendout some rapid updates of my adventures. In Canada and the USA the SMS feature is free so hopefully someone at the race will be able to send those “@rse is fine - still riding” type of instant updates that you all want know about. And if you subscribe to Twitter these will be automatically forwarded onto your mobile via SMS.

OK enough hype: now the details.

• www.twitter.com
• My id is “zippy2000”

All very Web2.0...

Off to bust my *rse in Canada...

Today is my last day at work before heading to Canada for the World 24 Hour Solo championships. Using my last evening usefully I thought I’d put this blog together. I’ll be at moooooooooooom’s place tomorrow packing and flying out on Saturday morning – yeah to the 06:45 flights.

A quick overview of the itinerary:

1. Get up extra early Saturday 19th and wrestle with domestic international transfer thing.
2. Fly to Vancouver and spend a couple of days hanging out. Hopefully I’ll get to check out some of the north shore radness.
3. Leaving on Monday and taking a couple of days to head over to Banff.
4. I plan to arrive in Banff on the Thursday; this gives me a couple of days to meet up with the other racers, rego for the event and pre-ride the course.
5. The big race is on Sat 26th & Sun 27th.
6. I’ll then spend a few days recovering in Banff before heading back to Vancouver and flying home on the 31st.

For more details on the actual race www.24hoursofadrenalin.com - follow the link to the “World Championships”. I'm in the 35-39 age group. I’m not sure if this site will have live updates during the race. However, I’m trying to sort out some sort of SMS or microblogging so I can get a live race update out. I’ve got a vision of someone firing off hourly SMS messages: “He’s not in last place – @rse is not bleeding – all is good”. Also www.cyclingnews.com often has race reports of major USA MTB events so keep your eyes on the site (it will be somewhere in between the stories of Cadel wining the Tour)

I’ll be checking the hotmail regularly during the trip. And it would be really great if you wanted to fire me the odd messages of support. I'll try and keep you posted with interesting stories of my adverntures!

And finally, the other great news is a couple of nice Canadians have offered to help me out during the race. So say hi to Mark & Frances for London (Canada)!