Shamrock is a Snail
Good to meet you too, Benny! You must have racked up a fair few shifts with the 3 man team.
I disliked that ascent and the drag after it more than Druids.
Pleasure.
Yeah, after turn six I hung up my shoes. I'd hit my mileage target 120+m (the first 80 of those being between .85/.9 IF
/ whoops) and would have just been accumulating unnecessary fatigue. It didn't occur to us until 20 hours in that it would have probably been better to have every 4th hour without a rider on the track to allow for longer recovery and food to digest. But we had set the bar high!
I was suffering with acid reflux and general gut discomfort from the start of my second turn which made eating on the bike interesting... Riding, sitting and then laying down obviously doesn't do wonders for digestive transit!
I rode at 3:30PM, 6:45PM, 10PM, 1:45AM, 5:30AM (which saw the sunrise) and 9:15AM. The wind was picking up after that, I'd not slept a wink and all the loonies for the 6hr had been released. I didn't sleep until 6:30PM Sunday evening which was knocking on 48 hours? even then it was an hour's nap before getting up to eat. I did have today off though which involved a lay in and an afternoon nap
Really interested in how it went and how you all found it. The whole concept sounds great on paper but in practice (as we've seen other years) is utterly brutal!
It was a pretty well run event given it's infancy, my only gripes were (as Shamrock) pointed out there was zero lighting where there really should have been some for safety. For example on descents or corners taken at speed. Fortunately it was dry so standing water wasn't an issue but the corner in to Cooper Straight was off camber with not a massive margin of error. I wouldn't have been confident at all riding in the dark in lashing rain. Even cones with flashing beacons that they had at the end of the pit lane would have easily allowed you to have a better idea of where the apex was, which line to follow and cost them nothing.
Some riders front lights were unnecessarily bright. I had one of said riders glued to my rear wheel at 2:30AM, unwilling to either pass me or (a rarity) take a turn. Wouldn't stop following me (even when traversing to make it apparent I wanted him to **** off!) so I had no choice but to burn a match I'd have rather kept.
There were obviously some riders in a very dark place (pardon the pun) during the twilight hours
Due to a lot of kit changes there were hundreds of riders without numbers after the first 4/5 hours. The excitement settled down once everyone had their first turn out of their system but I was very nearly taken out by an un-numbered rider whilst doing 30mph at the end of the start straight. His bars probably weren't more than an inch off of mine, you get idiots everywhere but it was just stupid & unnecessary and you're irritable enough as it is.
Most of the turns were pretty much just solo TT's because it was very rare to find another rider with the same pacing strategy. There were a lot of similar fitness but many seemed to want to coast on descents and spend longer grinding on the ascents but I'm not that way inclined and it's also slower overall.
Other than that it was great. We had a nice courteous pit garage shared with 5 or 6 other teams & there was a good atmosphere.
Ask me in a few weeks if I'd do it again....
