Mountain Mayhem 2007 was an absolutely brilliant race. The whole atmosphere of the event was fantastic from beginning to end, despite the rain.

Mixed team of 5, 21 laps altogether. Not bad at all considering 4 of the team (all apart from me) had never done anything like this before.

We arrived and set up a big camping area on Friday. Our families arrived soon afterwards and we had the barbecue and sheltered from the rain that had already started to affect the course. We “inspected” the course earlier that day and for some reason I was hoodwinked into doing 2 practice laps!

During the race proper, we were fairly consistent with our lap times and you could tell that the competitive urge was starting to take over…

Nobody complained about having to get out of bed in the wee small hours, in the rain, to ride a shitted-up bike around a muddy, rutted course. It was just a great weekend. Without wanting to sound cheesy this was a great team effort and I know that everyone thoroughly enjoyed it, despite the weather. They’re all hooked and will be re-entering Mountain Mayhem next year.

I’m the only one to get a puncture – right near the end of my only dry-ish lap…I was on for a 45 minute lap too. Bugger. There were a few changeover issues that cost some time as well, so next time we’ll have to iron that out.

I’m just glad I took a singlespeed this time to save the mud and ferns-induced horror bike dragging that I saw others doing near the end of the race. 6 laps on that bugger still took its toll though…

We finished 46^th in a category of 148 teams. Phil got the fastest lap, which despite all the “background detail” (including the huge difference in the number of gears…) is still the fastest lap. The swine. 16 seconds!

It took me nearly 2 hours last night to remove all the mud off 2 bikes. Unbelievable.

Looking ahead, I’ve got bored of just road riding on the ‘cross bike so back on go the cyclocross tyres. I’ve got to focus not only on the Cristalp in August, but the 3 Peaks shortly afterwards (if I get in). I’ll be entering that as a complete novice really, so maybe it’s a daft thing to enter in the first place. Anyway, I’ll need to make sure I’ve included carrying/running with the bike, off-road handling and descending in time for the race. 3 mornings a week I can be found riding up to Holcombe Brook, up the rocky steep side of Holcombe Hill whilst carrying the bike and back down the bridleway as quick as. I’ll be doing this instead of the road rides on race tyres I’ve been doing recently.