Scott 24 - First Time Solo

I was introduced to 24hr races back in 2009 in a team of 6. I raced in the Scott 24 Hour for the first time, since then the Mont 24 has been raced a couple of times as well as the Scott 2010, which was run alongside the World 24 Hour Solo Championships. After seeing the WSC I decided to race the Scott this year, solo.

Putting a plan together for training, it included racing in the Singletrack Mind 8hr Enduro Series and trying to ride about a 1,000kms a month.

This would give me 9,000kms prior to the race, hopefully enough conditioning. I managed the 1,000kms a month only once and reached 6,500kms of the planned 9,000kms. Work just seemed to get in the way of my well laid out plans...

The big day arrives.

As the event manager for the Albatross MTB Club I had organised a team of 6 for this years Scott 24 as well as some guys to come down as my support crew.

But due to work commitments, I ended up with just the team of 6 as my support crew, not ideal. Come to the rescue Crummy who was willing to help out as support crew, mechanic and motivator.

My race plan was to take it easy from the start and see how the body survived. Being that I had not ridden for more that 8 hrs before.

First lap was the red lap and it was beautiful sunny start to the race, this was going to be fun in the sun. First transition was a nice and fast as it was straight through the transition zone and not going through the camping site until the crowd died down a bit.

With the entry for the Scott we got a nice camp site down in the transition area for the team of six so I decided to run all my transition through there, and it worked well.

With 10hrs down and keeping an average between the 2 laps to an hour each it was looking good. I then had a bit longer of a transition on this one to get some pasta in and get some warm clothes on.

I put in four more laps with some longer transitions and started to feel buggered, so I pulled the pin for a couple of hours to get the head down and try and eat some more food.

When I got out of bed I very slowly started throwing down some food and started to feel much better.

In this time Crummy was giving the Giant a clean and lube and found that I had crack in the bikes frame. I had the spare bike ready to go, hard tail 29er , but Crummy offered up the his Team Enduro Pulse Yeti ASR-C to get me through the remainder of the event. I liked the idea of ridding on a dually to finish of the race.

So at about 0700 in the morning headed out again on the Yeti to finish of the race, as I came back into transition this was the only time I looked at the score board and my lap time was 5:42 and I was in 12th place. Lap times were good for the next 5 hours averaging the 1 hour laps again.

The guys gave me some lap times in transition for the rider behind and the one in front, they told me I had 40 mins on the guy behind so keep doing what I was and finish in 12th, I was very happy with that for my first solo 24 hr.

I was lead to believe there was about 1 hr to 11th place and I was not going to make that up, in the next hour. So I just settled in to a nice rhythm towards the finish of the race, the final laps was a blue lap and enjoy the ride. I ended up crossing the line at 12:01, with no need to go back out.

I somehow managed to pick up two places in the last lap, (could have been some dodgy info from the boys in transition), so I finished in 10th position with 18 laps under the belt.

Awesome day and night of riding and I can’t wait for the next one.

Thanks to Mark for being a sport, giving us an insight to Enduro riding with his words and photos.