24 Hour fun in Canberra

This go's down as one of the best yet and one i personally will never forget. We only decided to go to this race 4 weeks ago. Jeff was a bit shocked but up for a challenge. so i entered us into the 2 man category as we had not tackled this category before. All did not go to plan and we nearly had to pull the pin when my dad had a minor heart attack just before dinner Thursday night. After a long night and been reassured by the doctors that everything was well under control and they just had to monitor his condition for the next couple of days we hit the road Friday lunchtime.



Thanks to fellow Nighlighting rider Troy Bailey we were saved a great spot 50m from transition backing onto the food vendors. Always good to be close to the coffee and food. As you can see Giant supplied us with a great new tent with full back and sides, it was just perfect.

Just for some fun i was up for the prologue dash for cash. Unfortunately about 20mins in one of the sharp rocks stabbed my rear tyre and put an end to my chances.

As you can see it was a rather large hole about 10mm long. I was looking for a little more speed and ran a Geax Baro race on the rear, this however was not wise as the course was far to rocky. Jeff and i switched straight back to the ever reliable Geax Sagauro and didn't have any more of these frustrating problems.

I started the run and first lap getting us off to a good start. Jeff followed it up with more consistent laps. Night time came so out came the Nightlighning lights, one on the bars and one on the head. Having this much light we were able to keep lapping out good times and stay on schedule. With the temperature dropping i put on the long Skins bib knicks and my night laps picked up.

By morning we were noticing the affects of using the Ascend protein bars as our legs felt great and neather of us had had a cramp. Also Andrew Bell using the Ascend products had fort his way back up into 2nd place in the solo men's category.

The rest of the race went great. Our Giant Anthems just ate the bumps and rocks making it easy. Jeff and i just went about riding as fast as we could and managed to finish 2nd pushing the Specialized team hard for their well deserved win. Also finishing 3rd was BMC who were also using the Nightlighning lights.

Congrats also to Jess Douglas who took the female Solo win on her 2009 Giant Anthem

A big thank you to all our sponsors and our wonderfull wives for granting us a leave pass for a long weekend.