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