After a transition

An organised pit crew is the key to successfully supporting your solo rider. At the World 24hr Solo Championships, this was the rationale we worked with, and what helped keep our solo rider going.

Before the race, my solo rider sat down, and planned out the required nutrition and fluid intake, bike changes, lights, etc, and put all of these elements together in a chart. I took this chart, laminated it and stuck onto the table at the race. This became our (the support crews) point of reference throughout the race.

Making sure all of the required items are laid out on the table, stop watch on the ready, and whiteboard marker to make any necessary additions to the outline, we were ready to go. Race starts, stopwatch starts, and the race is underway, not just for the rider, but also for the pit crew.

The aim throughout the race was to make our solo rider's pit stops as limited and as smooth as possible. For the first few laps, when all the rider needed was a change of water bottle and food, we spaced ourselves out along the pit area. As the rider came in, he would throw his empty bottle, first pit member, hand him a new bottle, and second pit member, hand him food/gels. All without the rider needing to stop and put a foot down.

For longer changes, such as lights, we would ensure that the other bike/helmet was set up and all the rider needed to do was get off one bike and straight onto the next. This system worked really well. The amount of time spent by the rider within pit row was limited through our preparation.

As soon as the rider had left, we would reset the timer, mark off on the chart what we did and the time, and then prepare for the next time the rider came around, so that we were ready - then just wait out the time.

Although we were on the edge of pit row, we were in a really good position as we could see the rider coming through transition before coming on to us. It also meant, that we had limited interference from other teams and riders in transition.

The after race is just as important. While we have some aspects of this working well, this is an area I think the solo rider and I need to look at for future races.

At some stages throughout the race, we possibly had more pit crew members than we needed, and this may have caused some problems for the rider. There were a couple of times when he came in and were bombarded by all of the pit crew at once, all asking questions and trying to provide information. This is not ideal. After this occurred a couple of times, we decided to allow only one person to speak to the rider. It works best if everybody within the pit crew have their specific jobs and they stick to these.

While I feel that the World 24hours had some good aspects, such as being well organised, at good set up, and great, easily understood timing, I do feel that pit row lacked atmosphere. If almost felt as through the solo riders were a tag on to the team riders form the Scott. We were separated from the transition area, separated from spectators, and although there was a big screen, with the way the pits were organised, it wasn't really visible. There were plenty of announcements, competitions and recognition for the team riders, the soloist and their support crew were largely ignored throughout the race.

As a pit crew, we were very successful in supporting out solo rider in obtaining his fantastic results at the World 24hr Solos.