CORC Scott25 (because 24 hours isn't enough!)

The Scott24 at Mt Stromlo is an annual fixture in the mountain biking calendar and I’ve done every Scott since starting racing in 2009. Entries had closed for this years Scott25 (with its extra bonus hour of racing) before I had raced Kowalski, and even after that success I felt there was a different between a 50km race in daylight through pine forest and a 24hour at Stromlo with its rocks.

So I was resigned to not racing, and planned to take my roadie and mountain bike down to do some riding and join the crew. Secretly I was hoping a team would need a replacement, I even checked the rotorburn forums for teams seeking members but I was bit nervous to commit especially to night riding, I had no idea how my arm would hold up.

Tim wasn’t overly keen on me riding; he wasn’t impressed on my superwoman stack in Kowalski when I was supposed to be taking it easy. But at my request he emailed the organisers about changing his 2-man pair in the 7+6hour to a mixed 3, however the reply pointed out that there was no teams of 3category in the 7+6 hour, but we were welcome to go as a team of 4 and race as a 3 or alternatively race as a team of 3 in the 25 hour.

 

Perfect weather for the Scott25

ready to race

Our team mate Keith seemed up to the challenge, but maybe he thought we were joking, he was definitely in no doubt once we’d been to registration and paid our cash to race as a 3-person team for 25 hours. It was only his second 24hour race, the first being the Mont in a team of 5… big step up. He went and bought more lights, I think he was shitting himself.

What had we done, I had been questioning riding – I still wasn’t cleared to ride by the orthopaedic surgeon and here I was doing the Scott in a team of 3!! There’s no where to hide in a 3, you can’t leave your team mates doing pairs but it was too late to back out now.

Dry and dusty on Luge

The 11am start time rolled around pretty quickly and we sent Tim off in the la mans start. Starting out with singles on the figure-of-8 course design meant just over half an hour of riding and an hour off. We soon changed to double laps and all was going smoothly as we transitioned into night. Then the first mechanicals struck, Keith had a flat which wouldn’t seal after only one lap of his double but luckily I was almost ready to head out I slotted into my double while he fixed his tyre.

He transition with me after my double to do a single so we were back in order but was again plagued by flats and came back swearing about a certain brand of tyres. In the end he purchased new tyres and got his bike back together but in the heat of things he hadn’t eaten and it was getting late. We swapped the lap order around to give him more time off the bike, the last thing we needed was a rider going hunger flat.

Despite my initial worry, my arm was ok although I could definitely feel it on the descent down the red lap (Western Wedgetail, Luge, Skyline etc). The laps were easier than previous races and omitted a lot of the super rocky sections out the back of Stromlo.

Halfway down red lap descent

Tim and I had discussed trying to limit my night laps, we both felt that stacks were likely at night-time and it was better if I rode less during the night. To this end we sent Tim out on a quadruple lap, sandwiched by doubles from Keith giving me a good break off the bike in the witching hours. I finished a double around 1:30am then was back out before dawn for a triple.

Then the mechanical demon struck again as Tim had three flats in one lap, waiting back at camp I was glad to see it was just mechanicals as I had started getting worried when he was more than 20 minutes overdue from his lap. Keith slotted in while Tim repaired his flats and after a few more double we reverted to singles as the clock ticked down.

Results-wise we were laps up on our competition, but to get a valid result we needed to roll across the line after 24 hours. In fact Keith rolled in from our last lap with 8 second to spare before the 25 hour cut-off but we’d all had enough. 40 laps in totally evenly split between team members and a convincing category win. Then to top it all off, Keith won the bike at presentations – what a weekend!