Let me tell you though that team events are not easy, but they are however a laugh, never boring and a great test of friendship and teamwork. Myself, Graham, Mick and Nigel set out on this mini adventure a few months ago when we hatched this plan to enter a team.
One of the first things was to sort out the line up from the members of pines race team which was easy because we were the only ones who were in the others words "mad enough" to enter a 24hour mountain bike race. So Nigel entered us and pretty much forgot about it until the week leading up to the event when you suddenly realise that you have not prepared at all. It became real when we had a meeting the Wednesday before to sort out who was taking what to the venue. This is where who was doing the run at the start was also decided, whereby Nigel begged us all if he could do it (ok he said he runs a bit therefore we decided he was doing it).
My own personal preparation was not great, I don't think I had fully recovered from 24hrs of exposure and I was on antibiotics for an infected tooth which needs work. However as the race day got closer I started to get excited. Myself and Mick travelled down on the morning of the race so it was a great that Graham and Nigel had set up base the day before. Nigel had everything you could need, lights, gazebo, tents and heating! Graham provided the stove and loads of food (he can tuck allot of food away!) and also the usual encouragement and enthusiasm for all things mtb.
Myself and Mick got there and provided the usual wit and banter that everyone loves us for, then we got our stuff out the car and took over their base camp.
We had fairly high hopes for this event, with the team line up and the ability of all of us I don't think we were being unrealistic in our expectations, but as you can see we were beaten into to fourth and the winners were Jedi knights who are pretty good at most things.
There was lots of incident and little things that went wrong but we kept pushing all the way and put in some pretty consistent laps. My own personal mistake was going out on the wrong tyres which I have done many times before, but had it not rained then it would not have been an issue.
This is what is exiting about endurance events though, you can always make time back and these things happen to the other teams as well.
I think that it was going to take an issue with the other teams in order to grab a podium spot so we never gave up and our lap times improved as daylight appeared, but in the end we landed in fourth which is no mean feat at one of the biggest races for mtb. So a liitle bit tired and weary we took down our camp, loaded the car and headed for the arena to hand our timing chips in and collect our medal.
Everyone gets a finishing medal but if there was just one awarded to each team then it would have to be Nigel who received it. Basically he did the run, did a quick lap even when his chain snapped and also posted the fastest lap out of all of us by quite a margin. The way the running order went also meant that he and Graham did the final 2 laps which put them at 8 laps to our 7. He basically was rider of the day and all round top bloke. If we decide to to this again as a team I am absolutely sure it would be a podium next time.................................................................................