SRAM Singletrack Mind Endurance Series – Round One

On Sunday 18 April 2010, round one of the SRAM Singletrack Mind Series was held at Lidsdale State Forest, located just outside Lithgow.

The 8 hour endurance race format attracted in excess of 60 solo riders and 40 teams who made the most of perfect sunny day of fierce racing.

The race commenced at 8:00am sharp with a mad dash on a short stretch of fire road into the first endless section of single trail. I was fortunately close to front of the massive bunch of riders and successfully avoided the bottle neck of riders trying to enter the single track.

The first lap was a steep learning curve, as I had not managed to ride the 10km course prior to the race commencing. I was pleasantly surprised when I found myself railing sections of single trail, which was quickly followed by leg burning pitch climbs that dropped into steep sections of single track littered with jumps and burns.

The biggest difficulty that I faced during this race is that I had no external support; I was completely independent and reliant on my Merida Ninety Six, which had been finely turned for this event by the talented mechanics at Bike Bug, North Sydney. The next biggest challenge was my nutrition preparation, I had all of my water bottles laid out on two make shift tables with gels and energy bars strapped on the side with duct tape, to cut down transition time during the race.

My aim was to ride as hard and as fast as I could for the entire eight hours and shake off the disappointment of a DNF at the 24 Hour Solo National Championships a couple of weeks ago, due to a faulty eye. On the completion of the first lap, I had managed to get myself into a commendable 2nd position and mid way through second lap had secured 1st place within the elite male solos.

At this stage I was completely unaware of position and continued riding to my limits for the next seven laps (3.5 hours) to open my lead up to 7 minutes on second place. At this point my legs had started to cramp and I had to drop the intensity of to prevent myself from blowing up.

By lap 10 I had discovered that I was in first position and continued to lap consistently, until lap twelve (120km) when my earlier efforts started taking a toll physically. Mentally I was being worn down by the unknown; I was unaware how far back 2 place was and the effort I needed to exert to maintain my lead.

On lap 14, I thought I was on the home straight until I caught a glimpse of second place Garry Millburn, descending quickly down a section of single track, some quick calculations in my head placed him 3 minutes behind me with over 15 minutes left to race.

The writing was on the wall, I would have to do a quick lap 15 to hold my first place position. So I dug deep, grabbed another bottle of water and went hell for leather. On the final lap I managed to pull some time back off second place to win by over 8 minutes, in 8 hours and 30 minutes, with 150km of single track covered and 2800m of vertical climbing.

A special thanks for the awesome event put on by race organisers, Merida & Bike Bug for an awesome bike and to all of the riders that made it such a wonderful event.