B(a)um Bandits

I apologise for the lack of pictures, my point and shoot camera is hiding... somewhere.

Jimmy, Ryan and I headed to Rosewhite for the Gravity 12hr. We'd decided this would be a great training race for all of us, especially on single speeds (hard man decision #1).

The rain was coming in sideways and heavy on Friday night, which caused concern that we'd be sitting around in soggy kit for hours on end. The decision that we'd ride in two hour blocks was made (hard man decision #2), that way each rider could change between their laps and stay comfortable. On the fast course this equated to 3-4 laps in a row then 4 hours of sitting around enjoying the increasing pain expression on the face of the team mate who was out lapping.

Well the morning dawned and it turned out to be awesome weather, a couple of small drops visited us for 3-4 minutes then continued on their merry way. The course was a flowing affair with nothing too technical to hamper speeds. We all ran 2:1 and this seemed to work ok given the up or down (few flat areas) of the course. A slightly smaller gear would have been nice for some of the pinches.

Jim went out first and had to contend with the LeMans start and the first few laps of traffic. He did a great job of putting Ryan in to clear space so that he could pound out some consistent roadie laps. I'm serious about consistent too, his first three laps were separated by 7 seconds total! I got on course around 12:30, and my first impressions of the course were mixed. I walked/ran up heartbreak hill and the red carpet hill, but felt comfortable with my pace. The next couple of laps I cleaned the whole course, but it took some deadlift style pedaling to get up heartbreak and carpet hills.

By the second round of laps we had put ourselves in a group of around six teams all vying for a top 3-5 place. Our hard training session was in danger of turning into a race. After Jim had punched out his last few laps, Ryan had once again proven that as a roadie he makes a mighty tough mountain biker, he tapped out ultra consistent laps all day on the rigid Ristretto. My last set of laps crossed the day/night barrier, and I rode the last two under lights.

When I finally crossed the like 12 hours and 15 minutes after the race had started they guys had packed up. I quickly threw my gear in the car and began the journey home without any idea of our final placing. Dreams of a warm comfortable bed and a hot shower carried me down the Hume towards Melbourne at 1:30am.

The results have been posted and showed that we managed to chase down 7th and 6th placed three man teams in the last few hours and we finished only 12 minutes down on 3rd in the category. Overall we placed a respectable 11th and I think everyone was pretty happy with these results considering the decisions we made.