The Saab Salomon Mountain Mayhem is a 24 hour mountain bike race. The idea is simple. You and your team have to cover as much distance as possible within 24 hours. Starting at 2.00pm on the Saturday and finishing 2.00pm o the Sunday.
Rules are very simple, at least one rider from each team must be on the course at all times. No outside assistance can be taken from any rider once on the course. Once the lap has been started, it must be completed before the following ride can take over. Its all just one very big relay race.
The start....
This year was our 6th year.
The race was held at Eastnor Castle Deer Park, Ledbury ,Herefordshire on a slightly shorter course than previous years.
Gone were the laps of 12/13 miles and instead we had nice, short, fast laps of around 40 to 50 minutes. This brought into it the element of strategy. Does each rider do single laps or double laps. Single laps mean the turns come around quicker, but the rest stops are shorter. Double laps mean longer riding times, but longer rest periods.
We decided to adopt a strategy picked up from our first Mayhem, single laps during the daylight hours, changing to double laps during the night. This means longer rests at night thus getting more time to sleep, and more fun for the laps in the dark.
With the race being held as close the the equinox as possible, this meant it went dark around 10.30 and came light around 3.30am.
But hopefully we should all get some good dark laps in. Riders setting out on a lap any time after 9.00pm have their lights attached.
Our team comprised of Chris, Duncan, Paul and myself. All friends from old cycling days from what seems like a lifetime ago when we were all racing in our early twenties.
Chris took the first lap and its obligatory half mile Le-Mans style running start. This is to thin the 500 riders out before they all hit the single track. With Duncan going second, Paul third and myself (Ian) last out of the 4, we soon settled into an good routine of eating, snoozing, chatting, telling jokes and mainly lazying around waiting for our next lap.
With it being the most popular, several of the big Pro teams enter riders. So its not long before your being passed by riders who are putting laps in in twice as fast as we were.
This year was very hot, which made up for 2 previous years of horrendous rain. But it brought about very dusty trails and lots of coughing fits from all or us. It does however make cleaning the bike far easier and quicker.
Fireworks at midnight and the mess tent
We finished around 294th out of some 350+ teams in our category. We weren't out to win the event or our class, just there to enjoy the friendships and have a weekend away.
