WADDINGTON WINS! - The Insight Online

Mountain BikeMayhem“How was it?”“It was horrendous, the worstconditions I’ve ever seen loadsof people dropped out”“So you’re not doingit next year then?”“Ok”“Yeah, you should do it too!”It’s probably fair to say thatI went into this without fullyunderstanding what I wouldneed to do to compete in a24 hour mountain bike race.Mountain Mayhem is probablythe best known event of thistype having been establishedfor a number of years with a diehard following. The weather hadturned the 2012 race into a testof survival rather than a mountainbike race, this year the racehad been relocatedto GatcombePark the homeof Princess Anne. The geologymeant that it should stand upbetter to inclement weather andtherefore a circuit of roughly7 miles had been created onpreviously un-ridden trails.Corporal Richie Nation (Dep OIC)was my guide having done lastyears race on a singlespeed (nogears) and finishing in the topten. You can enter as a team of4 and do laps in a relay style,this is the more sociable andless tiring way to do things. Oryou can enter as a solo rider andgo it alone for 24 hours doingas many laps as possible, this iswhat we would be doing.Time to start training, looking fora bit of guidance on line I founda number of articles which allstarted like this “I’ll assume thisisn’t your first 24 hour race andyour doing it solo as that wouldbe stupid”. Hmmm, a quick phonecall to Richie and he assured methat if I just do 200 miles a weekfor the next 3 months I’ll be fine.My commute to work wouldform the basis of my trainingwhich is a 23 mile round tripon roads and tracks, the mostmiles in a week came to 92.Another phone call to Richieabout food resulted in him tellingme about his nutrition plan, minehad always been to just eat lotsas we would be burning around850 calories per lap. Findingthe right bike was a bit easieras the club had recently had avisit from Scott bikes and theyhad kindly offered to let me usea bike for the race. This was aScott Carbon Spark 920 whichas it turned out was the perfectbike for the race. The first testof our relationship was 4 lapsof Sherwood Pines, the bikeperformed brilliantly and the29 inch wheels certainly madea difference as I went round inrecord time.Race day came round quicklyand like all things workcommitments had meant thatthe last few weeks of traininghad involved only a handfulof rides. Registration is on theFriday and we arrived afterimage © shutterstock/L.V. Erickson6 InsightMAGAZINE