The Ay Up race village... The track is right there at the bottom of the picture. It zig zagged its way through the whole campsite.
Kitted up and ready to go. The laps were short, real short, 20 minutes so Ryan and I decided to do double laps to give us some rest time. The singletrack part of the loop was through a pine forest and had been "Groomed" before the race. My first lap was my sighting lap and the track was indeed well groomed... My start was average, here's how it went... Roll up to start line, no idea which way we are going, ask the bloke next to me, up that way i think, ok follow the guy in front then, the starter counts down from 10, 9, 8, 6, 5, edge forward look over to my right, 4, everyone has started already, 3, i'm going, 2, 1 GO! Up a gully, avoid the screaming fans and into the campsite zig zaging.
Over my 2 laps i fought my way up the ranks and finally got a clear run for a bit. The timing was taken care of with a transponder on the ankle which meant we had to hand it over at each transition. Easier said than done. Coming in after 2 laps i was pumped with adrenaline and nearly fell over trying to get the velcro thingy off my ankle, damn thing stuck to my sock. Our next transitions got better.
The course was wide, flowing and pretty easy, perfect for beginners and a great course to get people into the sport. During presentations they got all the first timers to raise their hands and there were heaps. Good for them but for us it meant a lot of passing. "passing on ya right', "right", "coming through", "grunt" by the end of a 2 lap stint we needed some quiet time.
Racing was hard, with so many people on the trail and minimal climbing it was big ring all the way. Hammer Time! After 6 hours we were getting a little weary and as yet still didn't have any accurate results from the organisers. We could be in 5th and bellie was apparently in 38th place.... We heard later that the timing tent had some power surges and because of that the results were all over the place. We almost went into cruise mode, lucky we didn't...
After 8 hours of racing we finally has some accurate results and I'd had the first of 3 gels. 1st place and a healthy lead....
Ryan had made the call early on that it would be night time that would seal our race. At lights on we were in first and with our super bright Green and Gold AY UP light blazing we kept our lead with consistant laps. In the dark I found i didn't have to call "passing" as much, the lights were bright enough to make most people move over.
The end of the race was an interesting one too. In New Zealand you must finish before the 12 hours are up. SO, any laps completed after the 10:30pm finish time are not counted. Interesting concept, worked ok for us i think i came in with plenty of time to spare. But if you were trying to push a last quick lap out it could be a wasted effort, one team headed out with less than 20mins to go, no chance mate...
The presentation was the usual affair, but the dark and huge screen behind us didn't help the photos
Who cares about the rugby anyway.......
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