Rome 24 hour mtb race
Discussion
So I guess nobody else from here did this then?
Well, we did it and I'm gonna tell you all about it whether you want to hear about it or not.
Firstly I'll say that none of us are really mountain bikers, it's over twenty years since I've lived anywhere with mountains, let alone ride a mtb, but a four man team for a 24 hour race didn't seem too onerous.
My little brother Matty built a bike specially for the race - he likes building bikes. He sent me a tiny picture of it where it looked really cool, in a whacky retro sort of way, but on arriving in Rome it turned out to be this:
Which was a kid's 24" wheeled frame fitted with cool straight spoked 26" wheels with super heavy Schwalbes, cheapo Decathlon suspension forks, Nexus 3-speed hub and rear coaster brake.
Now I'm a powerfully built company director at the best of times, but this felt like riding a clown's bike. I pleaded with my Brother to go to the local supermarket and just buy a E100 bike shaped object, but he was adamant that the event was all about having a laugh on a homebuilt bike and just riding round with your mates, it didn't matter where we finished.
At the start it turned out that all the other 401 teams had arrived with serious bikes dripping with crabon, disc brakes and a gazillion gears. Fortunately our other two team members had brought their own bikes.
Luca had his basic Decathlon mtb that he rides to work everyday, but had had the good sense to remove the panniers and rack.
Our secret weapon, Stefano (who is even older than me, but a cycling machine - he just rides and rides), brought his ancient mtb, steel, no suspension, at least 25 years old. He kept his little bag strapped to the frame, but we were amazed to see him remove the huge chain and padlock which is always wrapped around his seatpost when he just rides away from us in the mountains every Summer.
I have to say that the Parco delle Aquadotti course was flat and not very technical, but it did have some horribly rutted surfaces as well as strength sucking powdery earth and to me at least I thought it was hell. Our initial plan to ride for 2 hours each soon went out the window, I could only manage 2 laps at a time on the clown's bike and struggled to get below 27 mins for the 5 mile circuit, going up into the 30's in the night when I was really tired and it was dark. Obviously we had rubbish lights and I was just waiting to get passed by people with better lights on some of the more technical bits. By the end I was the slowest in our team and had done the fewest laps, although my last lap was the final lap and was easily my fastest as I used Stefano's old bike instead of the ridiculous one and was immediately faster.
So, by the morning my Brother, who had gone into this in a laid back "let's just enjoy it" fashion, was figuring out how fast we needed to go in the proceeding laps to move up a position in the standings, whereas I was just hoping to survive.
We finished on 53 laps (I did 11), with the winners doing 85. We were 23rd out of 36 in our class and 180th out of 402 overall, so we definately didn't finish last.
Would we do it again next year - Hell Yeah!
Well, we did it and I'm gonna tell you all about it whether you want to hear about it or not.
Firstly I'll say that none of us are really mountain bikers, it's over twenty years since I've lived anywhere with mountains, let alone ride a mtb, but a four man team for a 24 hour race didn't seem too onerous.
My little brother Matty built a bike specially for the race - he likes building bikes. He sent me a tiny picture of it where it looked really cool, in a whacky retro sort of way, but on arriving in Rome it turned out to be this:
Which was a kid's 24" wheeled frame fitted with cool straight spoked 26" wheels with super heavy Schwalbes, cheapo Decathlon suspension forks, Nexus 3-speed hub and rear coaster brake.
Now I'm a powerfully built company director at the best of times, but this felt like riding a clown's bike. I pleaded with my Brother to go to the local supermarket and just buy a E100 bike shaped object, but he was adamant that the event was all about having a laugh on a homebuilt bike and just riding round with your mates, it didn't matter where we finished.
At the start it turned out that all the other 401 teams had arrived with serious bikes dripping with crabon, disc brakes and a gazillion gears. Fortunately our other two team members had brought their own bikes.
Luca had his basic Decathlon mtb that he rides to work everyday, but had had the good sense to remove the panniers and rack.
Our secret weapon, Stefano (who is even older than me, but a cycling machine - he just rides and rides), brought his ancient mtb, steel, no suspension, at least 25 years old. He kept his little bag strapped to the frame, but we were amazed to see him remove the huge chain and padlock which is always wrapped around his seatpost when he just rides away from us in the mountains every Summer.
I have to say that the Parco delle Aquadotti course was flat and not very technical, but it did have some horribly rutted surfaces as well as strength sucking powdery earth and to me at least I thought it was hell. Our initial plan to ride for 2 hours each soon went out the window, I could only manage 2 laps at a time on the clown's bike and struggled to get below 27 mins for the 5 mile circuit, going up into the 30's in the night when I was really tired and it was dark. Obviously we had rubbish lights and I was just waiting to get passed by people with better lights on some of the more technical bits. By the end I was the slowest in our team and had done the fewest laps, although my last lap was the final lap and was easily my fastest as I used Stefano's old bike instead of the ridiculous one and was immediately faster.
So, by the morning my Brother, who had gone into this in a laid back "let's just enjoy it" fashion, was figuring out how fast we needed to go in the proceeding laps to move up a position in the standings, whereas I was just hoping to survive.
We finished on 53 laps (I did 11), with the winners doing 85. We were 23rd out of 36 in our class and 180th out of 402 overall, so we definately didn't finish last.
Would we do it again next year - Hell Yeah!
Edited by thanetspeedshop on Saturday 22 September 18:45
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