Taupo Day Night Thriller 12 hour

I would like to say this was a great days racing, but it wasn’t. The event itself was very well organised, the atmosphere amongst the 600 odd teams was really good. In the 5 years I have been doing these type of events I have never witnessed such good behaviour on the single track. The shop riders were polite, I saw no pushing and no-one abused me for being slow in the narrow bits.

Unfortunately I did not have a good race, here is why;

I had a bad and very stressful week at work, I did not get word of resolution of the worst problem till I was in Taupo the night before the event . I needed a relaxed build up and a chance to focus on diet and hydration prior to the race. Pre-race carbo loading just did not happen.

My bike was not quiet ready. I bought a new chain earlier in the week but broke my old chain tool so I didn’t get the chain on until half an hour before we left to drive to Taupo. I then found out on the first lap that the cluster needed replacing as well. I sent one of the team riders off to buy a new cluster and I had it replaced between laps.

The morning started off raining so I was wet before I started, though I had plenty of changes of clothes I still suffered a bit from chafing, though it was not so bad I could not ride. The weather cleared up for the rest of the event with just a fine drizzle in the evening.





I started the event on my spare seat rather than the good seat, I didn’t notice till after 6 laps. Th spare seat is not too bad but definately not as comfotable as my good seat.





My knees started to get quite sore after about 2 hours, I strapped my right knee, which improved things slightly, though my left knee is quite sore now.



I was so nauseous after about 6 hours my eating and drinking plan went out the window, I only drank about 5-6 litres of water over the 12 hours which was just insane I am still suffering some dehydration pangs 2 days later.









In the evening I stopped to change my light battery, ate some food and then forgot to change the battery so my light died about 100 metres into the single track, the only people who were not going too fast were a mother and son and the son’s battery had died as well, so that was a very slow lap.

My target was to do 20 laps, but I only managed to do 18, the winner did 30. Those guys are machines; I am seriously impressed by them. My other goal was not to come last which I did achieve.

Having said all that – I did enjoy the day, I wanted to do 30 minute laps which I managed to do fairly consistently. The event was fun, the support from my guys was awesome as was the general support from the other riders and teams, with their “go solo” calls as I rode past.

Not sure if I will do this event again as a solo, there is a lot of riding on grass between all the team tents and the "single" track is more double track and not technical enough to interesting for 12 hours.