As if there hasn’t already been enough endurance-style torture dished out to mountain bikers by the time Mountain Mayhem, Sleepless, and numerous smaller events have been and gone, up pops Dusk till Dawn in the middle of September. The race starts at 8pm, just after it gets really dark, and carries on until 8am the next morning. At this time of year that’s a good 10 hours of darkness making one of the biggest challenges borrowing enough lights to last the race. Fortunately this year Exposure lights came to our rescue in the shape of The Ginger Prince„¢ who magically appeared clutching a handful of their new lightweight Super-LED lights and spare batteries.
As usual for a relay race there was a Le-Mans style run at the start so we all lined up in a big bunch, myself at the front thanks to a space saved by Beyond Mountain Bikes’ Dave Nelson, well actually I pushed in next to him. Marcus squeezed himself in at the other end of the front row. The hooter sounded and there was a mad sprint, I ran as fast as I could and managed to get into the arena somewhere near the front and hopped on my bike kindly being held by The Ginger Prince„¢, briefly entering the lead for all of 1 minute. The super-fast Graham Warby soon got impatient of being held up by me so I sat in behind him for pretty much the whole lap, a good tactic since it helped me to one of the fastest laps of the race and gave us a hefty 10 minute lead in the mixed pairs category [so thanks Graham].
A swift handover of the baton, and Bec sped off cutting through the darkness, heading out onto the twisting singletrack. As it happens she came a bit of a cropper towards the end of the lap, the peripheral vision on her light not being quite enough for Thetford’s high speed and rather sudden corners, leading to an undesired and painful dismount into the undergrowth. Despite some quite nasty bruising and rapidly stiffening knee she lost only a few seconds and handed the baton (a yellow glowstick) back to me.
I saw a weasel – bigger than a mouse or like a mouse that’s been through the mangle – on my 2nd lap. Plus those skeletons and F16s were pretty cool. MRB – Paragon A team
A swift handover of the baton, and Bec sped off cutting through the darkness, heading out onto the twisting singletrack. As it happens she came a bit of a cropper towards the end of the lap, the peripheral vision on her light not being quite enough for Thetford’s high speed and rather sudden corners, leading to an undesired and painful dismount into the undergrowth. Despite some quite nasty bruising and rapidly stiffening knee she lost only a few seconds and handed the baton (a yellow glowstick) back to me.
Poor old Brent was a wee bit sick on his sixth lap and had to make a pit stop to ‘empty out’ en route. PEarl – Paragon B team
My next lap was rather more conservative than the first, it’s bad enough trying to keep up with Graham Warby at the best of times and now I had the slightly disconcerting thought that I may have to ride a few laps to let Bec recover from the crash. As it happens she was feeling better when I got round and we carried on for a few more laps, swapping over each time and slowly building our lead over second placed team, Jo Burt and Jenn Hopkins. A bit too slowly for our liking, as despite both being on singlespeeds, and rigid ones at that (well Jenn’s was, I didn’t spot Jo’s) they were actually gaining back a few seconds on some laps. Singlespeeds can be a little frustrating at Thetford on the long fast straight bits, all you want to do is drop it onto the 11T and wind it up, and don’t forget the bumpy bits where I was grateful for the plush suspension of my Scott Strike and SUB fork to keep gliding sort of smoothly along.
In between laps we would grab a bowlful of pasta prepared earlier, and jump into the tent and sleeping bag to gnaw away at it (the pasta, not the tent) and keep warm. After some torrential downpours that had haunted us on the way to Thetford the skies were clearing and the temperature was plummeting, making it a bit chilly standing around waiting to go out on a lap, although it was fine once I got riding and I always returned with sweat-soaked helmet pads dripping into my eyes.
At about 2am Bec came back not looking very well and we decided that I should do two laps to help her recover. The first went fine, and on the way round I started chatting with a solo rider who turned out to be Steve Heading. When I last rode this event two years ago, in a pair with Jamie Racer Newall, we had a 4-hour battle at the end with Steve and his team-mate Nic Burridge when neither team could shake off the other. A fumbled baton handover and crash on the last lap from our team meant that Steve rode off to win by a minute or so. He remembered it well as one of the hardest races he’s ever done, probably partly because I spent a lot of the time tucked in behind him.
I saw 2 frogs on the trail. 1st one looked as if it were spectating, the second (different part of the course!) was squished. Dave Mascal – Paragon B team
Dylan was racing round the camp site looking for Dave Nelson for his handover, I think he managed two laps of the site before finding him ! PEarl – Paragon B team
Back to this year’s race and about half way through the second of my two laps I suddenly started to blow up badly. My legs had been getting more and more reluctant to spin for a while and now I began to feel light-headed and very, very slow. Going across the Cold Patch (an open bit of twisty singletrack which was always way colder than the rest of the course) I wanted to lie down and stop. I was in the 3am zone which is always the hardest part of an endurance race, normally I give up and go to sleep at this point but when you’re part of a team rather than solo you can’t do that. Luckily Bec had recovered a bit when I got back in and was ready to go out so I collapsed into the tent with a large bowl of pasta and forced myself to eat every last piece. It took a while but seemed to work as I was back to normal for the next lap.
Soon it was light and before I knew it I was getting ready to go out on my last lap. Bec had just ridden two laps together as we somehow missed the changeover, despite the tent being all of 10 metres from the finish line. It didn’t matter though, we had maintained our lead and now it was light. The last lap was as always one of the best, the sun beginning to filter through the trees and at last I could really see where I was going. Even better, just as I came to the arena at the end of the lap I could hear the countdown to the finish, no need to lurk this year!
I can testify to the 2nd frog – which was definitely squished. I noticed it in the morning, I think it would have survived if it had used a set of Lumis or at least had a rear LED MRB – Paragon A team
So we won the mixed team category with 15 laps in 12 hours 1 minute. Steve Heading in the Solo category was eventually edged out of the winning spot by just over a minute to Anthony White and in the mens’ pairs categories Dave and Dylan just got pushed into 2nd by Graham Warby’s team Fig Rolls Racing. In other notable results, Marcus and Steve were 7th just behind Panasonic Paul’s team, Steve and Mat Watkins were 9th, and Dave and PEarl were 11th. Next year the race is promised to be bigger and better so we will certainly be back for more.
Jon Webb / 20.09.2004
