The hills are alive with the quiet sound of nocturnal mountain bikers.
A decade or so ago, when I still raced mountain bikes, in about January I would start to feel excited at the prospect that in a few months time it’d be race season. This could have been because, being British there is that inherent hopefulness about this year’s weather. A preoccupation that means after a long wet winter the possibility of a dry, dusty all day and all night mountain bike race in the coming summer might be just that, actually dry and actually dusty. Hope springs eternal in the UK where the weather is concerned. It has to because in reality it’s pretty rare we get dry, dusty, Californian MTB – film – like race summers here.
So, the 24hr point of reference on the longest day each year – Mountain Mayhem was important to me for many reasons but the first was always hope.
24 Hours of Mountain Mayhem is without wanting to put too fine a point on it, the daddy of euro enduro. A huge festival akin to Glastonbury and although smaller in scale, perhaps more fair comparisons have also been drawn to the legendary 24 Heure Du Mans. Racing, camping, feasting, spectating, cheering, witnessing, gasping, crying, not showering all do their bit to make it feel like the same kind of atmosphere as the French all nighter at La Sarthe. Anyone that’s attended both will tell you, noise aside it’s basically the same thing. Le Mans isn’t like other car races and 24hr mtb racing is equally unique.
The hills are alive with the quiet sound of nocturnal mountain bikers.
Truly a surreal feeling, about ten hours in standing waiting for a baton from a team mate staring up at the large hill opposite and seeing lines and lines of bike lights zig zagging up the slope on one side at varying rates of slowness and descending the other side of the tape all seeming fast. A kind of stage of lights all dancing to their own tune, flashing and flickering their way up and beaming their way back down. Close enough to make out colours but far enough away to be silent movements. Like standing at Arnage at 3am at Le Mans but with the world’s biggest ear plugs installed. And it’s about the same time into proceedings at Le Mans that you usually realise the context and scale of what you are a part of. These machines are not stopping going they’re just keeping on keeping on gearbox after gearbox and it truly is an amazing feat to witness. Hundreds and hundreds of mountain bikers all fighting their own little battles silently into the dark, chain after chain – all night long.
If you’re not very good at something then you might as well look good doing it.
There’s a certain air of smugness that comes from riding a cyclocross bike on a mountain bike trail and overtaking someone on four inches of travel, while on what is essentially a 1970’s racer with slightly knobbly tyres. It’s kind of a similar feeling having a £5k carbon odyssey overtake you through the arena in a flash of high modulus progression only to have the cheers from the turned heads come back your way because you were a stupid enough aesthete to ride a 30yr old immaculate Fat Chance Yo Eddy through the wind, rain and mud because it just sometimes is about the bike.
When all the cheering’s faded, you’re left with the sound of silence.
Or rather the eery sound of lungs panting and cogs making revolutions beside you in the pitch darkness. Once climbing out of the main arena that forms the start, finish and interim mid course fly by, and seeing the glow of the results screens and the lasers from the sponsor’s parties fade as though driving north into the nature from a Spanish coastal party town, you realise you’re on your own now for the next hour. Just you, your jelly babies and a hundred other faceless voids breathing and swearing, muttering, chatting and telling you they’re overtaking on the right. It’s weird having conversations with shadows and silhouettes. I’ve invested oxygen talking shallow to make someone feel better and then banked it getting great insight into subjects from people I will never recognise in daylight. It’s quiet and vulnerable and trusting and always seems to work out well.
Find a good stick and keep it somewhere safe.
Of all the kit people seem to prepare and carry on a one hour lap of the English countryside, at 3am the only thing they’ll probably actually need is a six inch stick of a sturdy natural build and easy storage shape. Thinking about it, they probably ought to tell people that as they line up to start but I suppose that would weed out the numbers a little. After a couple of laps when you see the right stick you’ll know which
Gorillas in the smoke machine mist.
One year turning a corner into a woodland section unveiled a scene I re-lived sometimes on domestic night rides for years after. Smoke machines, lasers and a DJ set playing amazing tech house all made me want to stop and party. How did the sound not carry around a dense wood? It was like something out of The Lord of the Rings but at 120bpm and so was fairly mystical. Then came the gorilla. Having a gorilla jump out of a bush and chase you through single track to beats and lasers at bedtime became the stuff of local legend. A few others experienced it. Though not many, enough to validate but not corrupt such myth. Odd and a little scary it became the stuff of wonder, but for those that were there, they knew.
First or last, everything else is just treading water.
“Hurry up, you’re the last in the race.” “No I’m not, he is.”. Standing behind an oak tree, looking back at the broom wagon talking to my friend I realised a hundred yards in is probably no place to stop for a pee in a mountain bike race.
Finding a wife in a hedge, in the dark in the middle of a meltdown.
“Hello Gussie, need a jelly baby?” – How did she find me up here, how did she know it was me? How did she distinguish between silent weaving lights. How long has she waited for me? How many people has she handed jelly babies to? I don’t care, I love her and jelly babies. She is my family.
It’s not really cheating if you did it by accident, it’s an accident.
One year of particularly bad weather at around 2am at Mountain Mayhem, I packed it in and cut out half way round what had become a trudgery of misery on foot. Realising my tent was within spitting distance of the next corner, I turned in and clipped out. Over. Last one. Never again. Until 8am. Sun, blue sky, a clearing trail, my dry shoes and I thought we’d give it another go so I worked out where I bailed mid lap and re-joined the race, all be it 6hrs later and in a fresh clean outfit. Although it wasn’t where I came off about five miles in, it was about three hundred yards from the finish line. Which explained why the father and son spectator combo gave me such a disapproving shake of the head, folded armed mutter and glare when I caught their eye as I cut under the tape in fresh white get up clearly having just got up and had breakfast.
Bears do shit in the woods. They also ride 1987 Cannondales and swear.
“Did a man in a bear suit riding a 1988 Cannondale just tell you to **** *** you ****?” Yup. He’s old school. He was berating my modern bike. We think he was in special forces. He likes dressing up and swears a lot.
A whole box of energy gel later and still not dead.
One year a team mate did 24hrs on a mixture of 48 energy gels and a lot of drum and bass music. And he didn’t die so I made him tell the manufacturer as no doubt they don’t actually know what happens to you if you eat a whole box in one sitting and presumably it’s good to know you don’t actually die.
Junk food allowance.
I only eat chips when on holiday. Holiday chips. This rule extends to Ikea, so I allow the consideration of it being a holiday destination. But that stretches to mountain bike races too. They are a kind of forward operating base of campsite/ team mates and music and therefore have their own rules of engagement and a currency – that of racing chips.
Heckling is the new racing.
It really might be following the discovery of not only a megaphone but it’s ability to single out and reach a sole rider on the hill opposite and get him or her to wave back at you over a mile away. Cue twenty two hours of inspirational one liners that probably aren’t very funny in retrospect and almost an aspirational right of passage through what would otherwise be just another section of switchbacks through the trees opposite. The more finely tuned the comment, the better you’re doing – the general rule.
Bike races have written so many of the experiences and memories that make up my mountain biking patchwork quilt. Mountain biking and I go back a long way. Further indeed than racing, but somehow Racing has forged it’s way into my soul and that of those I love to the extent that it feels like it’s been part of the family forever somehow. And so it is that as the leaves fall and the evenings draw in each year we near the time that the conversations start up again. Team of ten? Mixed? Solo? Heckling only this time? Maybe a bit of everything? The entry deadlines usually dictated, but even then, come June plans and teams would no doubt change. Then all we would need would be no rain through May and we’d be sorted. Perhaps we should run one in northern Spain one year? Now theres an idea.