Mont 2009: Sparrow Hill

It had been a while since we signed up for a mountain bike race after the 2008 Bright Orange Event season finished. Last year we competed in two eight hour events at Lidsdale and Appin but this year’s BMC series started advertising much too late. So it was with some trepidation that we picked up the gauntlet cast by Mat in an attempt to get a crew together for this years MONT 2009. We had done a couple of endurances races before but nothing like a 24 hours team event. However, to my surprise Will and Bryan signed up right away so there was no other option and we had a team of four: Bryan, Mat, Roman, Will. Team leader Mat had his way much too easy. The last vital decision was the team name and so the legend of the “Jelly Arses” was born.

What followed was a series of cut throat training sessions, bordering on the sadomasochistic with Bryan attempting to ride without seat! There were extreme night riding training sessions, where Will destroyed his brand new dual suspension monster, and the ever increasing search for new technical challenges left Will with almost broken wrists and almost cracked ribs after adding a new double step to the plethora of obstacles at Manly Dam. Mat encountered the fear-inspiring “slot” of death on the extension of the extension at Wakehurst Parkway and on and on it went all building up to fever-pitch before the weekend of gore began from Saturday 4 to Sunday 5 at Sparrow Hill near Canberra.  We were trained and geared up and one more boot camp would have probably driven us over the edge if it was not for the real event. So on Friday 14:00PM (with the Bryan daylight saving factor of 13:00PM) we left from Mat’s place in Will's new super car plus trailer to join the world’s elite in a fight to survive 24 hours of racing with each other.
Patrick’s multitude of Roche teams were kind enough to reserve a camp site for us and Mat’s dad was crazy enough to agree to put us up in Canberra so it all started according to plan. When we arrived at Sparrow Hill just outside of Bungendore the trail through the camp ground was pure dust but we managed to set up camp and bail just before the thunderstorm hit. Like all real men we spent the evening before the race, eating Chinese, drinking read wine and sleeping like Babies at mum and dad’s place.   Our plan had paid off when we saw the tired looking faces at the camp site once we returned to the battlefield. We had gained our first advantage and like all the other tricks we had up our sleeves it made no bloody difference at all! First, we missed the race briefing like all real professionals and before we had time to try out our new lycra tights it was time to get Mat the race leader and drag him in handcuffs to the starting line. The race began with a 500 meter sprint to the bikes and although we might not be the fastest team we are certainly the most courteous and let everybody else start first. Better give our team leader something to catch up to so that it’s not too easy!
Since we had no idea what the course was like it came as a bit of a surprise when Mat came back after one hour and a bit and 18km later. We had decided to rotate one lap each during the day and try to put in two at night to give everybody a working chance for some sleep. The plan worked well but Roman put in a blistering first lap (by his standard anyway) and discovered to his surprise that his back was trying to jump ship early. Better slow down a bit after we realised that we still had 20 hours to go after the first lap finished and all the enthusiasm had changed to fatigue.     We also discovered that in a four men team your turn came around as lightning fast as most of the competition that overtook us on the single trail. We barely had enough time to eat, gossip and stretch before we were up again. The trail was fast with very few ups and downs but exasperatingly full of switch backs so much so that our legs were fine - except for Bryan magnesium deficiency, which he battled with multi-vitamin diarrhea medicine? - but our heads were spinning from concentrating on the endless turns. 18 km never seemed longer except for the night time when we doubled the distance for our beauty sleep.

After two day time laps each Mat was first and put on a brave face for the 9PM to midnight shift. However, what set us apart from the rest of the punters and were we truly excelled as a team was the speed and elegance of our transitions! Whereas other less sophisticated teams used SMS and walky-talky, we simply kept sleeping until we heard “Waky waky - its your turn!” and then asked what time it was and started to put on our gear. We will definitely have to improve on that with a ready cup of coffee next time.

In any case the double laps worked well and as a result we all got a nice rest before Will brought us back into day light with two powerful laps in the morning. By general consensus everybody enjoyed the night rides and besides Will trying to uproot a tree with his shoulders and Bryan kissing the ground we had no major accident. It was time to go back to single rotation and finish the race. We all had time for one more lap, which would bring our tally to about 5 laps each with Bryan coming in just before 12:00 to send Will on our final lap. With 19 laps total the Jelly Arses came in 17 position out of 21 in the over forty male foursome category at a total time of 24:53:18. Not bad considering that it was our first race and we had lots of fun in the process.
Read the Official Review HERE

Roman 08 April 2009