Joe came in, looking rather uncomfortable, his leg was cramping up and
it was not happy making for him. We decided to do double laps in the
night, to get some sleep in, and he headed off to get a massage. These
night laps were fantastic, the entire climb was rideable by the light
of the moon, a few of the muddy sections froze and got more rideable,
and there's nothing better than descending singletrack in the dark. It
felt super-stupid getting to the timing point at the finish, 'dibbing'
in the timing chip and heading straight out again for a second lap,
which was even better than the first night lap. I managed to run the
light just enough and the light started to fade just as I got in off
the second lap, to see a rejuvenated Joe, who'd been made better by the
massage.
By this point I was well up for some sleep, so I set the alarm for four
hours, and got into the sleeping bag, with an extra fleece liner and
all my clothes on, as it had gone down to -5 by now and was really
cold.
Four hours later, I headed out to the start, and asked a few incoming
riders about Joe. It turned out he was hitting the wall a bit and
taking it slow. Fortunately there was a lovely bonfire in an oil drum
to keep me warm while I waited. Joe came in, looking knackered, but
pleased to have completed the lap and headed for sleep, l fitted the
second battery and headed out to do another lap. It wasn't so clear, so
I needed to run the lights more on this lap, but I was feeling really
good. By the time I hit the downhill third of the lap, I was really
bombing it. I was ffeling fantastic and considering another double lap.
I was just coming up to the best bits of singletrack, when my light
faded out. I grabbed my backup maglight out of the pack, only to find
that the batteries in it hadn't got much left in them, leaving me only
a tiny patch of light, that was fine for wide or slow sections, but
just wasn't up to riding fast downhill singletracks. I picked my way
down the steep bits, to get down to the final few single tracks, which
were relatively flat. At this point it was galling not to ride, so I
got on and went for it. Just in the nick of time a woman who was riding
solo turned out of the descent, riding at almost about the limit of my
flat speed, with massive HID lights. I mounted quickly and rode flat
out through the final singletrack to the finish, using the bike's light
to ride by and just managed to keep up until the final fire-road
descent, when I got into the floodlit area.
At this point I had no lights, Joe had no energy left and was asleep,
so I figured our race was over at 9 laps between us. I headed back to
the tents and put the timing chip on Joe's shoes so he'd find it in
case he had the urge to do more riding. I changed into some clean
clothes, wolfed down some cake (Soreen plum loaf - yummy* ), and went
to sleep. I woke up at 8.30, still in darkness, and I hadn't heard a
thing, so I figured Joe hadn't headed out again. I grabbed more yummy
food and went out to go to the loo. As I left the tent, I noticed that
Joe's unicycle was missing, and I said something that to keep the bad
language nazis happy I shall paraphrase as 'golly gosh, what's a
friendly nutter that young chap is'. It turned out Joe had been feeling
better for some sleep and food, and had headed out for a final lap at 8
o'clock, meaning he got to ride the dawn lap, and see the sun rise over
the mountains from the top of the hills. At 10 o'clock the horn blew at
the finish, shortly after that Joe turned up, to massive applause from
everyone there, making 10 laps for us.
The first thing Penny said when I got home was 'so, you riding it solo
next year?', you can never please some people!
Some statistics,
Min temperature 5C at the campsite, probably -7 on the tops
Maximum temperature, about 0C
Hours of darkness 17
distance ridden 110k
climbing done 3260m (10695 feet)
15th out of 18 in male Pairs category
bicyclists beaten - 1 team of four, 11 soloists, 3 pairs
Pictures at
http://tinyurl.com/d6pm9
http://www.cairngormimages.com/html/strathpuffer_06.html
http://www.cairngormimages.com/html/strathpuffer_06_34.html
Results at
http://strathpuffer.co.uk/strathpuffer/index.htm
Joe
* Soreen gave us a case of yummy stuff in exchange for pictures of us
wearing their t-shirts at the event.
--
joemarshall
my pics http://gallery.unicyclist.com/albuq44
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