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Mountain Mayhem 2010

June 21st, 2010 - Posted by Mike - RKC Owner

Well last weekend was the return of Mountain Mayhem at Eastnor Castle in the Malvern Hills, and what a weekend it was. We had two teams entered, the Red Kite All Stars (Nick Dunn, David Eaves, Deborah Whitehouse, Ben Thomas and Adrian) in the open mixed category and a four man team (Rich Harding, Thom Phillips, John Laughlin and Euan Adams) in the open men.

Our support crew headed over on the Thursday in order to set up camp at a good spot near the halfway point on the course, next to the lake. Most of the riders arrived on the Friday after work/uni. A pre ride in the afternoon showed us that there were few new sections to course from last year, with a really muddy bit of single track in the first half due to rain that day. The course was also longer than last year’s with more climbing to boot. This meant thta, according to our Garmins,  a lap come in at just over 9 miles and we estimated lap times of between 50 min and an hour.

Race day dawned and the course had started to dry out a lot with people pre riding past the camp looking much cleaner than we did the day before. As with all 24 hr mtb races, it started with a le Mans style run start, with triathlete Thom starting for the men’s team and shop manager Nick starting for the All Stars mixed team. Thom put in an awesome run to come in in 17th to pick up his bike and start his first lap, with Nick coming in around half way through the pack.

After the first lap Thom passed the baton on to John who set out on his Whyte E120 to put in a solid, lung opening lap to hand over to team captain Rich and then on to Euan, who put in a seriously fast lap of 45min. After Nick came in (still suffering from the run) he handed over to Dave ‘Mr Consistent’ Eaves, who then handed over to Deb. The All Stars team had to manage with 3 riders for a few hours until the remaining riders arrived after work.

The rest of the afternoon passed without major incident with everyone putting in solid lap times and most importantly really enjoying riding in a beautiful spot. After 8pm all riders had to leave with their lights on whether they used them or not,  although wasn’t really dark till well after 10pm. Thom was the first rider to do a proper night lap and had to do the first half of the lap without his light as he couldn’t turn it on, a quick pit at the Red Kite camp changed that and he went storming round the rest of the lap. As the darkness came, the temperature plummeted and staying warm in between laps was vital to conserve energy. At 12.30am Euan headed out on his first night lap to record one of the fastest night laps only 3minutes slower than his fastest day lap! Despite the darkness and low temperatures everyone managed to keep pretty consistent with their lap times, making good progress up the results sheet.

As the sun came up at around 4.30am, riders spirits did too, giving everyone a new lease of life after a cold dark night. As everyone was now all awake at the same time, it gave them a chance to calculate roughly how many laps they had left to do and see who was going to be doing the last lap. After a quick bit of maths it looked like it was going to be Nick for the All Stars and Euan for the men’s team. Nick was able to ride comfortably round without having to worry about times and enjoy his last lap. Rich came in with 46minutes to go to hand over to Euan, which meant if Euan put in a really fast lap they would be able to go around again (although there was no offers to do the extra lap) and possibly move up the results. Euan rode hard but got held a little towards the end of the lap by riders counting down the timer and came in in 48min to just miss the cut off, and thankfully not go out again.

The All Stars completed 22 laps in 24:01:48 to take 24th place in the Sport Mixed category and Red Kite Cycles Men’s team completed 25 laps in 24:02:58 to finish 14th in the Open Men’s category. Everyone had a fantastic time and are already planning for next year. A massive thank you to all our helpers (Mike, Sarah, Anita, Ben ‘Man Up’ Harding) over the weekend whose support and heckling was invaluable.

Bring on next year!

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