Insomnia 18th-19th September 2011

No, this is not a post about my inability to sleep at night...

For the third year running, and indeed since the this race was born, I have raced this 12 hour night-time race and Bedgebury Forest Park in Kent.

Three years ago, I was green, it was my first enduro race and with limited entry, there were only 3 women racing solo. With my track record of keep on keeping on, I won! I had completed 5 laps and at the time had no inkling that this would be enough to win!

It was a learning experience, I hadn't eaten enough I was sick and couldn't eat properly for the following week.

Last year, the set up was a bit more professional. There were many more entries (5 women soloists). We had timing chips on our helmets. I had a proper plan this time, I ate properly, Alaric fed and watered me. The weather was warm, perfect conditions. I managed 11 laps! Unfortunately, I really have no idea who won as the timing got messed up and no-one was presented with any trophies. It was a bit of a shambles.

This year (last weekend) Alaric was racing in a team of 4. I did solo along with Simon and Glen. I had no pit crew and thought I'd just fend for myself. I also had an idea that Glen would have a pit and perhaps a crew and perhaps he could accommodate my food.

Our site was up in the walled garden about a mile from the start/finish, Glen had a pit in the solo pit area (clever huh?) so Simon and I stashed a few bits in Glen's tent.

The route was the same as the last two years, which is good because its a great route and it means you can measure your efforts year on year.

Simon set off great guns and managed to complete 3 laps in about the time it took me to do two (not wanting to be beaten by a girl, but I think wanting someone to ride with). He caught me up and we rode together for two more laps.

It was at this point, I thought I should check out the competition on the leader board. There were 7 women soloists and one of them was only 1 lap behind me - "I should really go out for another lap sooner rather than later"

So, Simon and I completed another lap - the slowest of the night. We took as many opportunities to stop as possible, chatting to the marshals etc. Then we decided to have a rest. Maybe head out for another lap at 6.30am

We rested for far too long. Glen's crew (Ben) was very hospitable. In the end we just go too cold and headed for bed.

I woke up at around 7.30, in time to see Glen come in at second place. What a great effort and achievement. I was still a little worried that my nearest competitor was still out on the trail, as if this was the case, she would have done more laps than me. As it turned out, she was asleep in the back of a van and even missed the award ceremony, phew! I had won!

Next year, I am having my pit in the solo pit area and preparing properly, clothes food etc. I was dreaming of my fleece-lined bib longs that cold night in Bedgebury.

New Year!

I know its not new year any more, but now it feels like the kind of weather where you might want to actually go out on your bike or go for a run, so for me, it feels like new year.

Potential pipeline:

• Get together with Sittingbourne Striders Tuesday night run again (since I jacked in my expensive gym membership, I need to do something to counteract all the eating I do)
• Work weekly runs at Darland Banks (ditto the above)
• Road bike build
• Fortnightly cycle to work - we'll see how this goes
• Easter weekend in Wales - Booked!
• Mountain Mayhem 24 hours - awaiting confirmation
• August in Scotland - Booked!
• Bedgebury - Insomnia, awaiting details
• Some kayaking this year would be nice - we managed a couple of outings last year

Here's to the potential...

Inspired

This weekend, I am attempting a practise 12 hour ride in advance of Insomnia 2010 which takes place in about a month's time.

I plan to start at Bedgebury at 7am.

After Alaric seriously declined to ride the whole 12 hours with me (well who could blame him, really) I came up with the idea that anyone could come along and ride along with me.

I don't plan to ride at any particular great pace and I don't mind if I ride the family or the single track trail so anyone can come along so long as I keep riding (I might stop briefly for lunch).

So my worries are:

• Being too lazy to ride the whole time
• Getting serious back ache (or any other kind of ache) and having to stop

To counteract this, I hope that as many folk as possible will come and ride with me (so I don't get bored). So far it looks like Alaric, MikeB, Matt & Abby. I need to disperse them evenly throughout the day and perhaps charge my MP3 up and have some sounds too.

I will probably take painkillers regularly too. Perhaps have some tigerbalm handy.

Another issue is what to eat. In proper endurance style, I should eat a big-ish meal 3 hours before the start - this would mean getting up at 4am! Hmmm. Thinking about it though, to get to Bedgebury to start at 7am, I will need to be up fairly early. I will try to eat a bowl of muesli at home and on the way I could devour a cheese and ham sarnie.

Throughout the ride I will snack on gels if I have to, and eat something more substantial like a sandwich at regular intervals 10am, 1pm, 4pm. If I break it up like this and stop at the lake for my periodic snacks it should work quite well.

At this rate, if I am lucky I should manage approximately 8 laps of 13km -104kms!

(Obviously, I need to take into account laps of the family trail).

We will see. The aim really is to ride for 12hours and not worry about mileage, although I am going to attempt to measure it using a cycle computer - hope it works! I am all about the stats!

The Weather

I am very interested in the weather all of a sudden!

Insomnia 2009

After a good few rounds of Bedgebury singletrack this Summer, I was looking at the Boars on Bikes website and came across this Mountain Bike Enduro Race to be held at Bedgebury, 12 hour Night Challenge.

Well, I have ridden at Bedgebury quite a lot, it is in Kent, it's for charity (British Heart Foundation) and its a new event, so I might do alright. I have done quite a few night rides on singletrack.

August 2009 - I signed up for the event and set up a BHF fundraising page with target £50 (BHF would like it if you could manage to raise this much for them). First person to sponsor me was my Mum - thanks mum.

So now I have entered, I start thinking about how its going to work. It's going to be 8 mile (13km) laps. The most I have ever ridden off road before in one day is 60km and there wasn't a whole heap of singeltrack involved, it was a good few years ago, in Greece, on a mountain.

After entering the race Alaric and I decide its a good idea to attempt 3 laps of the Bedgebury singletrack (13km each) in a row (stops for bites of cheese and marmite sandwich as required). I was pretty impressed with this acheivement in itself. 40km total if you include the ride too and from the car. Lap splits were 1hr40, 1hr15 and 1hr15.

Based upon these calculations and completely forgetting that my back was a little sore after the 3 laps, I thought, well at 1hr30 per lap, in 12 hours, I could (if I was insane) do 8 laps. I am not insane, so I could do 6 or 7 perhaps (allowing for breaks).

A few days passed and I thought, I wonder how far 6 or 7 laps is. 6 is 78km and 7 is 91km. Sounds like a lot. Anyhoo, I stick with this plan because well, I am going to be riding solo and I can decide to do whatever on the day, so at least having a plan is a start.

Race day arrives and we turn up at Bedgebury at around 4pm with the trailer and I have 2 bikes (professional). We park up in the corner and more folk start to arrive and set up camp. We aquaint oursleves with important things like where the loos are and the start, that kind of thing. I had pre-prepared a bolognaise which alaric cooked up so I would be finished eating by 6.30pm when registration opened.

At this time, I hopped on my bike and rode down the hill to the start/finish and registered. The woman at the desk commented on my apt name of 'Epic Em' since I would be riding solo. Unlike me, I was not in the mood for fun and replied 'humph'. Hopped back on my bike with race number, timing chip and wrist band, rode back up the hill to the campsite.

I was feeling nervous and my dinner wasn't sitting too well. It got dark-ish and we went back down the hill to the start. We had the pre-race briefing and then lined up at the start. I couldn't see any other women and did wonder if I was the only woman in it. Ray assured me otherwise.

The claxon sounded the start and we set off. After about half a k, everyone was off their bikes and I was wondering what was up. Too bloody steep was the cry - surely not I thought. Most folk went past me at this point and walked up the first short steep bit. I rode it with a couple of other guys. I think I was at this point, at the back of the pack.

So I cracked off two laps with an arrangement for Alaric to meet me with refreshments at 11pm (though, we had to change this to 10.30!) The laps were 15km each, but about half and half singletrack and fireroad, so I was riding faster than I was expecting. It this time I was feeling nausious, drank a sip of coffee and shoved in a hob-nob bar and went on my way for the next lap.

I was most surprised at how many folk I was passing (mainly on the fire road descents, occaisionally on the singletrack descents). I felt good in my legs, but bad in my stomach. Before the end of lap 3 the first lot of batteries ran out and all I had to do was switch to the second lot. I rang Alaric at this point to tell him I would be in soon for a battery swap over. He told me to carry on until the end of lap 4. At the beginning of lap 4, I fell off and I knew I was tired.

After lap 4 (at about 1.30am) my back was killing. I had taken pain killers which had eased the lower back pain, but not the pain in the middle of my back. Alaric encouraged me to get a massage from the on-site sports masseurs. It was great. All credit to those guys!!

After my massage, I went to bed. I had done 4 laps and I wasn't sure at this point if I would do any more. However, Alaric asked if I thought I would do 2 or 3 more laps after a sleep (I said 2) and he set my alarm accordingly.

5am - I awoke busting for the loo. Damn, I was now up and I might aswell get back on the bike. It was the dawn lap. Half way around, I no longer needed the lights and I started to recognise some of the bits of trail I thought I'd not used before.

After lap 5, I was finished!

It was about 7.30am and I went and got Alaric up and got dressed into some less sweaty clothes. I had pre-booked 2 cooked breakfasts at the Pineatery, so we went and got those. I wasn't sure I could eat anything, my stomach had been so weird all night and at 5am I had to really force down half a banana (didn't want to do the 5th lap on an empty stomach).

So I wolfed down bacon, egg, sausage etc. And hung around waiting for the final riders to finish and the award ceremony. While I was waiting, I felt a bit green and had to throw up. A few minutes later I was standing on the podium!!

Some photos: http://picasaweb.google.com/alaricdarmon/090920Insomnia#

Moving

So after reading Sammy G's fantastic post I am feeling very jealous that I haven't written anything for ages and she is so good at it.

We have decided to move out of our place at the end of June.  Nothing sinister, just that our Landlord doesn't seem to want to have tenants much and we don't much like that.

So, we did a bit of house hunting in the sun this morning which was nice.  We saw 4 places.  The first was great, only problem was the drive was a little steep and Alaric was a bit concerned that it would be tricky to reverse the trailer up it.  The estate agent was nice though, which goes a long way.  Second and third places were with an agent we had already met, who had no sense of humour.  Not his fault.  Second not so hand, third was probably the most sensible of the day.  

With a bit of time spare before the next viewing, we went to find a place we'd only happened upon whilst out on bikes before.  We found it!  A farmer has a bunch of barns where people store their caravans and campers when not in use.  We thought it might be sensible to see if we could store the trailer there.  The price is a bargain.  Next, we went on to Doddington to look at a listed building.  Lovely, Inglenook fireplace,  brand new kitchen, could have set up a bar in the lounge - fairytale stuff, but like the one we saw in Riddles Road last time we were looking, completely impractical.

So got home and decided we should have a bit of a BBQ this evening.  

What we are watching lately:

Films - Spirit (from the makers of Sin City), Underworld (Rise of the Lycans) both much of a muchness.

TV - Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip (I am enjoying this quite a bit, I suspect more than Alaric).

South Wales Easter 2009 Mountain Biking Trip

So a few weeks back, we went to North Wales, Coed Y Brenin to be exact. This time it was the turn of some of the South Wales trails, with the opportunity of a 'Woo hoo - 4 day weekend' at our disposal.

5 of us travelled together in the Land Cruiser. Alaric and I, Alex, Jon and Graham. We left on Friday morning and arrived at Cwm Carn for our first trail at lunchtime (the beauty of South Wales is that it's so much closer). After an interesting time parking the car and trailer, going to the loo (miles away) and finding water (not as far away as we thought) we got kitted up and hit the Twrch trail. 15km of mostly singletrack. This trail has always been a favourite of mine. There's a new section in the middle which is a freeride area, table tops and stuff - or so I hear - I didn't ride it, just did the usual stuff. Its called the black run, but Alaric didn't think it deserved that name, but it was fun.

After the fun of the down part, we hopped back in the car and headed for Glyncorrwg Ponds where we were to set up camp for the next few days. After about an hour's drive we arrived at Glyncorrwg. After our initial excited amazement that the place was so organised that we had our own labelled areas, we were disappointed to find our allotted camping area was under 4 inches of water! The folks in the cafe said we could set up where we liked, so we did so as close to the cafe as possible. Just as we had finished setting up, camp security arrived demanding to know who had allowed us to take over someone else's pitch. We were slightly worried for a short time, but the guy who had reserved the pitch in the first place, never actually turned up!!

As planned, Jon had cooked up some chilli and I had made some spag bol. So, as we were all starving by now, we started warming up the bol and cooking the spag. Very nice it was too.

As the sun went down, it got very cold. The problem with bright sunny days at this time of year, cold cloudless nights. I was also suffering with a stinking cold. This is fine while your riding, just blow all the snot out onto the person behind you as you ride along, but when you're trying to sleep, its a whole other story...

Saturday morning arrived and we got up early and had brekkie, loaded up with fuel and water and rode on down to Afan Forest Park to ride Y Wal and Penhydd. Both nice trails, but I struggled with the narrow parts close to sheer drops (only when the drop was on the left though, I have no problem when the drop is on the right). In between trails we stopped at the trail centre for sustenance. Graham made a start on Penhydd, but was well done in by then and instead chose to take the road back to Glyncorrwg.

After riding the Penhydd trail, the few miles back to Glyncorrwg seemed to take and age. Straight long tarmac path...

We got back to the campsite and the boys left we to keep an eye on things whilst they went to Tesco to buy rice and breakfasts. 2 hours later, just after I finally decided to put everything away just so i could go to the loo, they returned, some excuse about getting lost on the way back :)

Another yummy dinner of Chilli and another chilly, early, night followed by another glorious frosty morning.

Sunday we rode White's Level. Excellent trail because (a) it starts from Glyncorrwg and (b) its the best trail in the world, ever! 95% singletrack and what seemed to me to be more down than up - well that never happens! Jon dipped out on this ride, he tried to blame the bike, but I think he just wanted the day off :D.

Monday, White's level again! This time, Me and Graham dipped out, which gave Jon the opportunity to ride my bike.

Monday afternoon, it remained sunny while we packed everything away. We had lunch at the centre at Glyncorrwg. The food there is excellent and proper mountain biker portions. It's open until 10pm and they serve beer.

It was such a great weekend, relaxed, great weather, great trails 100% swoopy. Highly recommended.

When someone uploads some photos, I'll post a link to them here (and maybe steal some to make this entry look a bit more interesting).