Mountain Mayhem 2003
The weekend of 21st and 22nd June saw the Saab and Salomon (formerly Red Bull) 24hr mountain bike race at Sandwell Park Farm in Birmingham come round again for another year.
Claimed as the world's largest mountain bike race, the event saw up to 2000 riders compete to do as many laps of the 10.5 mile course as possible between 2pm Saturday and 2pm Sunday.
For us, it all began on the Friday night, with most of the team members arriving to set up camp in the already busy camping field, investigate the trade stands and chill out before the chaos began. The team's were as follows:
NUbike Slackers:
- Phil Gradwell
- Graham Sinclair
- Amit Chauhan (a.k.a. DamitAmit)
- Pete Griffiths (a.k.a. Peat)
Nottingham Uni Graduate Speedsters:
- James Hampshire
- James Dymond
- Tom McKay
- Toby Iliffe (stand-in for Andy Robson)
Team support (a.k.a. donught-eating, beer-drinking, photo-taking, bike-fettling spectators)
- Chris Barratt
- Andy Robson
Saturday morning saw some keen competitors head off for a practice lap of the course, while the rest of us chilled out at the campsite and began the 24hrs of bike fettling that would see us through the race. Eventually, 2pm came and the race began, with Peat and James H undertaking the unpleasant task of the starting run and first hectic lap.
The next 24 hours saw a sterling effort by everyone involved, and without too many major problems. The course was the same as last year, with the first half of bumpy fields, the infamous woodchip climb, followed by various sections including some lovely fast rooty singletrack and then the killer (& now doubled in length & seeming even bumpier!!) field of treacle (a.k.a. anal pain alley!). Lap times varied from 43 minutes to just over an hour by late on Sunday. Everyone put in great times, despite Graham's headset disintegrating, Amit managing half a lap with no lights, Peat doing virutally the whole thing in middle ring & James having to abandon his cracked Orange O2 frame!
Eventually, 2pm on Sunday arrived with results as follows (from Sport Men category - out of 249 teams):
- Nottingham Uni Graduates - 41st - 30 laps - 24h:44m:44s (Here)
- NUbike slackers - 172nd - 25 laps - 24h:20m:42s. (Here)
Huge congratulations to all involved & here’s looking forward to Sleepless in the Saddle in 7 weeks time.
Full results here.
James D. 24.06.03