Sleepless in the Saddle. It rained nearly everyday for two weeks before the event. As I drove down to the event on the M6 doing 40mph the rain was lashing it down. I took the rigid single speed, two lots of mud tyres and a few spare sprockets. Of course the weekend once we’d all arrived and setup camp was dry, which was actually a good thing, because there was already enough mud and the course was that slow you down sticky mud in a lot of places – akin to treacle.
Rigid singlespeed may sound harsh, but it could have been rigid fixed singlespeed with daft handlebars. Hands hurt the most, even with carbon bars. Perhaps I should have tried harder to get a steerer for those Z2 forks before the event. Anyway the lap times were respectable in my book – no prizes for guessing the night and breakfast laps. More results here.
After another brief spell of ‘I don’t think we can go on’ and ‘I feel like I’m going to be sick’ and ‘I fell off and hit something in the dark but I don’t know what and now my chest hurts’, a trip to the medical tent and being prescribed a bit of kip in the night, the rothar.com team emerged revitalised (sort of) and more motivated (slightly) and actually went on to finish a respectable(ish) 38th in the pairs class. It’s definitely the most fun I’ve had at a 24hr race and it was great to catch up with some old friend and put faces to some names. There’s a rather shonky photo gallery in the racing section of the site.
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