PenUltimate Destinations

The Mont – 2013

22-25 March, 2013

A regular event on my mountain biking calendar is ‘The Mont’. A team, 24 hour relay race. Some refer to it as the City to Surf of Mountain Biking, which is probably a pretty good description. Riders of all standards and abilities get together to ride for 24 hours. Some people take it seriously, but most are just there for a good time, and perhaps try and improve on the number of laps they did last year.

Like last year, this was just a boys weekend, so when I arrived alone at about 8am, I began to set up by myself. Unfortunately the wind decided to start howling at about the same time, which made it incredibly difficult.

This wasn’t going to end well.

Too difficult, as it turned out, as a large gust ripped a small hole in the canvas as I was half set up. To say I was unhappy would be an understatement!

An interim repair was made with some safety pins to prevent any further damage, and eventually I was able to get set up.

An interim fix… hopefully it doesn’t rain!

Our team ‘The Easy Riders’ were back as a team for the second time, and had been challenged by ‘The Knight Riders’ – a second team of regulars who ride together who thought they could knock us off!

A recce lap on Friday afternoon to check out the course had us quietly confident that we had the legs and skills to see off their challenge.

Race start was at Noon on Saturday. Unfortunately for us, right from the first lap, we were behind, and spent the next 24 hours trying to catch up. Despite our best efforts, we couldn’t ever bridge the gap they opened up on the first lap. Perhaps they were sandbagging on Friday afternoon!

Waking up slowly on Monday morning

Sunday evening we enjoyed hanging around again to make the most of the weekend, and then had a slow and easy pack up on Monday morning. I was fortunate to be able to do some more riding in Canberra on Monday as I needed to check out some routes for Cycle Camp with work the following week.

Three nights here take our ever growing total to 125 nights.

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