The Mont24

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 The Mont24 is a fantastic race, there’s just something magical that happens when you mix over 2000 happy mountain bikers with 20km of fantastic single track and a paddock full of tents, caravans, swags and tarps.

This year the weather was kind, those that arrived early on the Thursday were treated to an early taste of winter but by later on Friday the sun had come out and the rain and dust mixed to form hero dirt on the trails.

Morning dawns at the Mont24

This year both Tim and I joined the Newy Coghead crew and entered a team of mixed 6, which was formed to be competitive in overall standings. Normally in mixed 4s riding in a 6 was going to be a little different in terms of tactics, it can also be a hotly contested division depending on which sponsored riders come out to play. Unfortunately not long out from the race we lost a rider to illness and so we were just five come Saturday morning as the fog lifted from the campsite.

First lap decisions were made easier this year with the run replaced by an extra couple of kilometres of firetrail riding, about time event organisers realised that if we wanted to run we would enter city2surf! We sent Stu out first, despite being not on top form he still smoked most of the field and came through fairly well placed from first lap giving Ian “Bill Smith” a clear track – at least until he caught the slower people still completing lap one. Unfortunately he had a passing incident on course and henceforth became known as Kill Bill, he had to explain himself to the race directors but it was all deemed unfortunate but Kosher and we kept racing. Both Stu and Kill Bill put out fast sub 55-minute laps and Tim went out next with my prediction of a 58-minute lap proving to be spot on.

Team planning is serious business

Going out 4^th rider I was hoping traffic would have cleared a little but I still seemed to be doing a lot of passing on the gentle climb out of transition. The course this year utilised an adult sized mechano set to build a bridge allowing a figure-of-eight configuration. This meant we headed out into previously uncharted trails for the Mont24 in the Far East of Kowen. Fast and flowy descents were awesome fun but also seemed to attract trains of riders, as passing was difficult in these sections where even “slower” riders were still moving fairly quickly.

The single track itself was Kowen goodness, fast and smooth hard pack with tree roots, flowy corners and even the addition of some interesting boardwalk A-lines. One climb in particular seems to suck all your speed and send your heart rate sky high but mostly the climbing was gentle and the descents whoop-worthy.

The 29er dually was a fantastic steed for the course, while rear suspension was perhaps not strictly necessary, it took the roughness out of the roots and small rocks and the bike just seemed to maintain momentum.

Ready for race start - the motley crew!

Soon the track returned to more familiar trails, the descent down Kowalski slide show is always a favourite and to finish with the descent down beer garden almost makes you want to do a double… almost – the lap was 20km long, that’s a long double!

Coming into transition I was just a touch over an hour, and sent Keith out onto his first lap of his first ever mountain bike race. At this stage in the event the leader boards are misleading so I skipped the results tent and instead hit up the massage tent for some legwork – bliss!

There’s a special kind of time zone at 24hour races, everything revolves around lap times and transitions… eating, sleeping, toilet breaks, clothing changes… it all revolves around “when am I due out again” rather than social norms. Back at camp the usual activities were afoot with bikes on work stands, lubed up, dusted off, and lights being fitted.

Consistency is the key!

I hadn’t used my new bar light before, it’s a 1200 lumen GloWorm light and a fair bit brighter than my AyUps at 400 lumen. A testament to the light then that this next lap was my fastest of the race, it was also the fastest female night lap of the whole race. I think it had something to do with having a little less traffic, still having fresh legs and having now seen the course once but in the end I was gutted to realise I’d crossed the line the time of one hour and one second – that one hour barrier would elude me for the whole race!

Now the differences of being in five became clear, we opted to stick with single laps overnight whereas I’ve always had to do a long and cold double somewhere in the middle of the night before. With a shorter break off the bike I opted for more massage and lie down rather than attempting to sleep and felt remarkable fresh for my next lap around midnight, surprising myself with another lap of just over an hour – so far my laps were all within about 40 seconds of each other.

Early in the morning the fog rolled in, as it always does at the Mont – it hung there suspended in the beams of your bar lights or as a large orange cloud around the spotlights for the toilets. It condensed and dripped off the multitude of gazebos and awnings and it made everything just a little more chilly. It also made dawn late, and my predawn lap stayed a lot darker than it otherwise would have been.

Overnight we had kept things on track, Stu had one puncture but that just meant his lap time was similar to us other mortals and the rest of us kept up consistent times. We were in first position with around half an hour on second place come dawn, then the other team started playing tactics.

They had three fast guys on their team who were just slightly faster than Stu and Kill Bill, their other teams members were slower with two guys a bit slower than me and their girl a good 7-8 minutes slower than me. At around 6am they pulled their 3 slower teams mates off the track and cycled through their fast guys in attempt to pull back the half hour we had on them.

Deb helped the boys win over 40s mixed 6s as well!

We would have been safe except that in our 3^rd last lap Tim had a puncture and lost around 8 minutes, which meant I went out on second last lap later than expected. I pulled out yet another consistent lap and came back 12 minutes before cut-off to send Keith out on a nail-biting last lap. Second place came through with one second to spare and sent their fastest rider out to chase Keith, all we could do was wait and calculate lap times hypothesising about the finish. In the end Keith brought it home, just two and half minutes ahead of the chasing team – what a way to end your first ever mountain bike race!

So there we go, 1^st place in mixed 6s with five riders – we all completed 5 laps each and all my five laps were within 54 seconds of each other. I got fastest female night lap and 5 of the top 13 fastest female laps overall in the race. Awesome work  

Capital Punishment XCM 100km

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Capital Punishment takes in some fantastic Canberra singletrack in one 100km hit, initially touted to be the first race of the 2013 XCM series it was bound to draw a strong field. Yet with the recent collapse of the series (hopefully to be resurrected later this year) it became a little harder to predict who would be racing in the pointy end of the female field.

With only three females entered in elite I upgraded from age group category to elite the night before the race. The thing I was most nervous about was that being in elite meant starting in the first race wave, elite plus those who rank themselves in the top 10% of the overall field. Starting out in Kowen forest means you head into single track fairly early in the race and was worried that there would be a lot of fast guys behind me wanting to get past.

Canberra was incredibly kind with the weather this year, not only was it dry but the 7am start was very mild by Canberra standards, I lined up near the back of the first wave start and pretty soon the gun had gone and we off and racing. I had my eye on two of the other elite girls, Nienke Oostra and Michelle Ainsworth, and entered the single track just a couple of riders back from Michelle.

Despite my worries about the fast wave start, I found myself enjoying the pace of the single-track conga-line. I even found myself calling track on a few guys who were obviously not top 10% material. The Kowen single-track rocks, it’s flowy, bermy and today it was also very dusty and before long everything was coated with powder fine dust. A quick lap of some Kowen trails and we headed under the Kings Hwy and into the Sparrow Hill trails, the whole time I was keeping pace with Michelle who was still about 3 riders ahead of me. Nienke was somewhere behind and of course Jenny Fay was out in front.

Then I saw Tim stopped on the side of the track ahead and called out to him to see if he was ok, he’d had a flat and was fixing it so I kept and into the next smooth corner… not so smooth it would seem, something snagged my rear tyre and there was the sudden sound of rushing air. I stopped and my rear had suffered yet another sidewall tear, much smaller than the last time, and it had almost sealed with sealant. In the interests of time I tried reinflating with CO2 but annoyingly the tear refused to seal. By this stage the elite girls were gone and people from the wave starts behind we starting to come through, I pulled out tyre levers and my tube and set to work.

Back on the bike I knew I had lost serious time, Sue Thompson had come through and she’d started at least one wave start behind me. I started chasing, but now I was in a much slower area of the field and getting past groups of 4 or 5 riders in single-track was getting difficult and time consuming.

A few minutes later and I passed the first timing mat, the snazzy electronic timing tells me that at this point in the race my virtual position was 562^nd overall and 23^rd female, and compared to the people I was keeping pace with before the flat I had lost about 12 minutes.

We headed back to Kowen and I continued to claw my way back through the field, passing scores of riders on the single-track and blasting past people on the firetrail. There were several longer sections of fireroad in Kowen and a moderate head wind on some of them, at one point I came up behind a train of 5 or 6 riders, all happily sitting on the wheel of a female rider who was putting in the hard yards. I hope what I said shamed those boys into pulling a turn on the front, but unfortunately I was on my own as everyone riding my pace was still well up ahead.

The first feed station this year was well within Kowen and I passed that and over the second set of timing mats. By this stage I’d clawed back over 200 places, sitting in a virtual 329^th and 9^th female, but still far from the 3^rd female position I’d been sitting in before the flat. I say virtual position as the staggered wave starts make it impossible to know on the ground where you stand compared the person you’re passing, the timing takes all that into account but it does make you feel a little like you’re chasing ghosts in the actual race.

Somewhere in the next section before leaving Kowen I caught up to Sue Thompson on the trails, but I knew she still had a good few minutes on me due to being a later wave start. I kept just pegging people back, overtaking were I could and kept thinking that I had to keep fighting because with only 4 elite girls it would only take one mechanical for me to make the podium.

Popping out of Kowen and across the road into defence land means a good section of well-formed fire road. I locked out my suspensions and let those 29er wheels do their rolling thing, really wishing that I’d had people my speed to work with. I pushed hard, no point leaving anything in the tank – either I could catch those girls or I would know that I had pushed my hardest trying.

Finally through defence land we entered Mt Majura, a sad sight this year as roadwork and recent logging meant that the single track was gone and we were tracking straight through on firetrail. One final firetrail pinch and we crossed another set of timing mats, these ones designating the start of the untimed section through Canberra’s suburban streets. Looking at the timing, this were I passed Sue Thompson in terms of race time, I’d moved up to 6^th female and 230^th overall.

I could finally back off, eat and drink and head behind the nearest tree for a pee. It’s an odd feeling having an untimed section in a race, each year I struggle to get going again after it and this year I had been planning on riding straight through at a moderate pace. However with my rear tyre at about 15psi with a tube in I knew I was heading for a good pinch flat at Stromlo, so I was on the search for a track pump. Unfortunately I couldn’t see one in the feed station so I kept going despite the party atmosphere with all the supporters and riders hanging out in the sun.

We had chosen to stay with friends who were riding the 50km, they also live pretty much on the untimed section, so I headed there and swapped out my camelbak for a bottle and refuelled for the last 30km. Luckily Beth had left the garage remote in the letter box so I could raid the garage for a pump and spare CO2.

With more air in the rear and spare CO2 in case of further disaster, I set off again up the final stretch of untimed section to the Black Mountain climb. This climb is a little nasty to legs that have cooled down in the 55 minutes allowed for the untimed section, but mine felt ok as I pushed on up the climb and around the firetrails with their loose gravel and sand. The course in previous years has been fairly flat and fast between Black Mountain and Stromlo so it starts to feel like you’re on the home straight.

It was a bit of surprise then to come into the Arboretum (which Tim tells me is pronounced Ah-bor-eee-tum, but I kept trying to add an extra syllable in there somewhere) and turn a sharp right up a nasty little climb. The three guys in front of me were walking and from the feeling in my own legs I can only guess that they might have found that climb fairly cramp inducing. Not content with one climb, the course continued around the back of the Arboretum with several rolling climbs – definitely nastier than previous years.

Finally however that was over and I crossed the river and onto the final stretch of bike path to Stromlo. I passed a few girls for the second time who must have spent less time in the untimed section than me and pushed on to the gate into Stromlo which lead us into what was the red loop at the Scott24.

Not long into the singletrack and I came up behind a man and his young son, not connected with the race in anyway who had decided to ride a 100km race track… not impressed. They let me pass on the firetrail, how nice of them!

Feed station three was at the base of the standard Stromlo singletrack climb, another set of timing mats by now I was in 5^th overall female place, 10 minutes off Nienke although of course I had no idea of that at the time. All I knew was I just had to get up Stromlo and then down and I was done, I pushed hard and according to Strava got one of my fastest times up Stromlo despite having 90km in the legs. In fact I pulled back about a minute and a half on Nienke just on the climb and another 30 seconds on the descent but the race just wasn’t long enough to pull back the other 8 minutes which separated us in the end.

The descent down Stromlo is a blast, a great way to finish a race. I had a fairly clear run and let the bike go, using every opportunity to make up time. Then finally it was all over and I was on the crit track powering for home finally crossing the line in 5^th overall female and 179^th overall. A great result but a bittersweet finish, knowing that my ride time without the flat would have placed my 3^rd overall and on the elite podium.