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awcycles.co.uk @ Mountain Mayhem 2011

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BY: simon ernest

Published: 23rd June, 2011


awcycles.co.uk @ Mountain Mayhem 2011

Last time I completed this race was back in 2007, if I remember correctly that year was a particularly damp vintage and left me with a new life rule: Rule #128 - Never do MM in the wet.  This is because it results in not only a very painful 24 hours but also a very wet and muddy one.  You end up pulling mud out of the ears and eyes for weeks afterwards.  For the week preceding the event, I, along with thousands of others were busy spending more time looking at the weather charts than doing our paid jobs.  

And so on Saturday morning the assembled AW Uber Team were rearing to go.  The team consisted of myself (Simon Ernest), Tim Dunford, Steve James (the elder) and Dr Fenton.  Pit b#tching (as important as any rider) provided by Dr Pedder.  Neither Dr were able to offer any helpful medical advice but were able to witter on about physics and ancient Turkish civilisations for hours through the night.    

In preparation for the start of the race it had been agreed that I should complete the run.  This seemed to be decided on two important facts:
a)    I was the tallest person in the team and this meant the longest legs and thus the best legs for running.  
b)    I had also completed the run at Enduro 6 - finishing closer to the front than the back.

This slight ability to place one leg in front of the other in quick succession was enough to nominate me to complete the run: I was told it was 800m when actually it was 2500m….in carbon race shoes!   I didn't think this part of the race would be much fun and I was proved completely right.  It was agony.
 
~12minutes of rolled ankles later I was hopping on the bike along with Craigy (Scot) and DC (Hope) and looking forward to spinning the legs.  In the process we past the legend Tim Davies (former pro riding who rode for Alpinestars and still riding his retro Alpinestars with the longest stem you've seen outside the TdF).  Having not completed a practice lap I was a little in the dark and relied on the force to guide me, this worked to a degree, the rest was pot luck.  After nearly an hour of riding a course which seemed to be 90% climbing and 10% descending  I past the baton to Tim having lost ~2min to the Scot Team.  This seemed to set the trend for the remaining 23 hours of racing; we gradually lost time to Scot and Hope and eventually the inevitable happened, we were lapped!  We should have been gutted, but it's hard to be upset when your lapped by two teams that are as strong as both Hope and Scot (with several riders who compete in world cups).

A little over 23 hours later I was completing the last lap of the 2011 Original Source Mountain Mayhem bringing the awcycles.co.uk team home in 3rd position. Plan for the remainder of this week: eat all the food in the house and try and get the legs to recover in time for BMBS#4 @ Margam!  I love racing…








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simon ernest

A 38 year old father of two, husband, full time environment specialist and wannabe elite mtber

http://simonernest.blogspot.com/

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