Racing through the Night....

Nick T literally spent this weekend in the dark, as he faced up to the night-time challenge that is the Dusk til Dawn race at Thetford

 

Team Lumicycle-Naked Bikes on the steps....

 

Nick:

 

"I teamed up with John and Stu Prentice from Lumicycle to form a hopefully decent men’s 3 team for this race. We felt we’d got a shout of a podium position looking at the entries, but strong teams from CCN, EHF Racing, Revel Outdoors, SRAM and Arrow Cycles meant some would go home empty handed. Our strategy was clear, one lap on, 2 off, repeat for 12hrs, in the dark. XC type effort each lap, accepting performance would fade slightly as the night drew on, but defending a strong position. This isn’t my favoured type of race admittedly, having trained specifically for endurance/marathon racing since August, focussing on sustainable effort, less so deep digs into the anaerobic zone. So I knew this wasn’t going to plain sailing by any stretch of the imagination. We started well, moving quickly into 2^nd place and began to open a good gap to 3^rd place. John and Stu were a couple of minutes a lap quicker than me as expected, but I was holding my own happily, even though my lungs and quads were burning.

It might have been a flat course, predominantly on tree lined, twisting dry trails, but it was brutal with respect to effort required. No descents to recover on, just hard pedalling effort, a couple of seconds off the power to line up the corners, then back on it to accelerate out and settle back in. Working this hard certainly took it out of us out a little, as all our lap times and heart rates showed the tell-tale signs lap by lap. Despite this we kept racking up decent times and maintained our 2^nd place. By first light CCN had developed a +30min lead on us and Revel Outdoors trailed us by 25mins. We pretty much had to dig in and hold steady and the middle podium step would be ours. In short, we did and it was!

Very professional organisation and delivery from Thetford MTB and Time Laps. Classical music piped into the woods, funky disco lights down the finish straight and great support from the hordes of nocturnal spectators – given the chance I’ll withstand the sleep deprivation and race this again. I’m bushed, but I’m smiling!"