Mont 24 Hour - October 9 and 10, 2004

by Yarro 

The long await weekend arrives, the first Mont 24hr for the team Short Guys, John O (Team Captain), Richard, Paul, Iain, Matthew and Yarro.

John and I departed Sydney at 9 am arriving at the Kowen Forest campsite just after lunch.  The facilities were all setup and all we had to do is find some flat ground to setup our campsite.  An hour later we settled on campsite at the south end of the course.  After establishing camp we registered the team (a very well organised affair) and prepared for our practice ride.  A flawed assumption was made after carefully studying the course contour graph. This is going to be a piece of cake, easy 70min laps, the young lads could be doing sub 60’s, HA!!!, we completed our first (and last) practice lap after a mere 80 mins, sounds less than 1 hour and twenty minutes.

The contour graph is a little deceptive, the first half of the course is a constant climbing single track with a few short down hill relief sections.  The track ensure that you had to keep on pedalling, there was no relief, (Graham would just love this track).  The second half of the 19 kilometre course was a little easier as long as you avoided the trillion pot holes, how people ride this course on a hardtail is beyond comprehension. So after a recovery period and a beer, John and I decided that we should re calculate our lap times for the team and reduce our goal to an achievable value from 24 laps to 18.

A apt short description of the track would be, a 19 kilometre circuit pf which 16 would be hard work technical  single track peppered with stumps, roots, potholes, a few small drop offs and soft dirt winding it’s way through pine forest, the remainder is flat fire trail of which only two sections where down hill of no more than a total of one kilometre. This track is a test of stamina and bike handling skills; this is no easy ride as first thought.

Earlier in the week I had discussed with Matthew who would be the first rider considering that the start of the race is a 800 metre run to your bike.  Matt’s instant response was, “Iain is a much better runner than I”, so on the day Iain told Matthew your rider number one, brotherly love; the oldest always wins.  

The adrenaline pumping, the sheer excitement of the event saw all riders improve on the initiate estimates calculated the previous night, with only one mechanical failure we still achieved an additional lap. The main highlight of the 24 hour event is that we all came through without any major mishap.  Once again the ride was hard work but the sense of achievement at the end of each lap saw all return, albeit a bit “red in the head” but smiling and full of success stories.

At the end of the 24 hours, we all were very please with our achievement, tired but happy we packed our campsite and drove home via the usual Mac’s stop for a salt intake.

Weekend awards:-

Results

16^th  position in our category Male 35-45 - Short guy’s

Photo Gallery

Some great photos can be found at http://www.johnfraserphotography.com/images/cycling/MTB/mont%202004/mont%202004.html