Twenty four hours of riding your bike might sound insane, but for the select few that last that long, it actually is. The North Face Wild Boar is an endurance event held in Grizedale Forest in The Lake District – starting at 2pm on Saturday afternoon and finishing at 2pm on the Sunday. The challenge is to see how many laps you can manage in the allotted time.
For this event, three Alpine Bikes teams left on Friday to go in convoy to the Forest. Myself and Andy Dodds were racing as a pair, as were Fraser Ramsay and his friend Greg. Bryan Shedden, our General Manager, also joined us, for some crazy reason thinking that solo was a good idea! Unfortunately, my pair was labeled “Team Fast”. Great – no pressure!
Conditions were perfect for such an event – dry, but not too hot. The course was ten miles of mainly fire roads with three sections of singletrack. As the race went on it definitely started to feel like it was one of those courses that never seems to go downhill! Ironically, endurance races tend to be on easier courses than you might expect, but as a test of mental and physical stamina, it would be hard to imagine a tougher challenge.
Our target was for roughly one lap per hour, but to allow the other team member to rest properly, it was necessary to do double and triple laps at a time. A three hour or thirty mile ride doesn’t sound like a lot, but when you’re trying to keep the pace and not have any stops, it’s soul destroying. Even more so at night, when you’re only company is an iPod and the occasional illuminated figure doing their best to make it to campsite quickly to get some shut-eye!
Due to the traditional Friday night pre-race campsite festivities, I wasn’t in race mode until the latter half of Saturday and our team tactics were to let Andy put in some decent runs first until the field spread out a little and I could put in an effort. After the mile long run from the campsite to the start line and two quick laps, Andy had pedaled us to third position in the pairs. My first lap was a single one without incident but that was enough time for me to realize that I really should have done more training!
Andy followed up with two more impressive runs back-to-back, allowing me to take turn riding two laps into the dusk and the night. As I returned to the campsite for some sleep, I was a broken man and Andy took to the hill once more for three laps. The plan was for me to match the three, but as I was unwilling to leave the confines of my sleeping bag, Andy ended up putting in six in a row. By the time I was awake enough to turn my legs again, I only had time to do another two laps before game over…
By now, my laps were up to the hour and a half mark and there was nothing left in the tank. I was chuffed with our performance until I looked at the timing screen to see the top soloist had managed a ridiculous 22 laps in 24 hours! I shouldn’t really complain about my meager five laps, I suppose. Still, by the time the last rider was in, we were stood in a respectable 8th position in the Pairs category. As Andy could take acknowledgement for completing double the amount of laps as me, I can’t really take any credit. There is always next time, I suppose!
In the end, we managed 15 laps, Fraser and Greg scored 8 laps, and Bryan got 7 under his belt. These events are strange beasts – at the time you’re sore, more than a little grumpy but once the aches fade you always look back fondly and think I really should have tried harder!