This will be long as it’s my record as much as anything of what happened on the Scott 24HR at Stromlo in Canberra 2016.

After a good nights sleep (for me anyway) and a good breakfast we loaded up the car and headed out to Stromlo to sit around at the track and setup. We got there several hours before the 12PM start with plenty of time to put the walls on our marque and setup tables and bikes. I had my new Scott Spark 900RC race bike and my Rocky Mountain Element 950 as a spare / backup bike. Coach Adz told me an hour before the race to just do my own thing and have some ‘me’ time so I popped the headphones in and chilled till race briefing. Once the briefing was over I did a last quick ride on the bike to make sure everything was working and tried to psych myself up for the start. I was very relaxed and focused before the start and in the zone completely. I had put in months of training and hard work and I was determined to do well.

There were 8 females and 64 males lined up for the 24HR solo start across the age groups. Solos get to start before all the teams and 6HR racers, I was a couple of rows back with the gun elites at the front. Unlike the start of a cross country race it’s a very sensible pace at the start except for the elites who just seem to disappear into the distance. I ended up in a large group of single speed nutters on the first fire road climb out of transition.The first lap we bypassed some single track with an extra section of fire road to thin everybody out before the first climbing section. I wasn’t pushing hard but my heart rate was up a bit on the first lap but at much more sensible levels that at Kellevie 24HR last year.

We quickly found our own pace and group speed and after the first couple of climbs we had all settled down. I was feeling so strong and tapped out the climbs with ease. Even though I had done a couple of practice laps during the week my descending was awful on the way back down particularly on the Western Wedge-tail section that only opened for the first time on race day due to the rain so it was new and bumpy. Sharon was waiting for me as I rolled through transition for the first time and we did a rolling exchange of bottles without stopping. We had never practiced this before and luckily it seemed to work OK!

On lap 2 on one of the early climbs a rider close behind yelled out “what age group are you in”, after a bit of exchange back and forth it was the rider I thought was my main competition Ash Turner, that put an interesting dynamic on the next few laps as he shadowed me, looks like he had done some research as well. I felt I was stronger on the climbs and he was faster on the descents as he shadowed me around the course, looks like it was game on! We continued with rolling bottle changes so we lost zero time each transition through the pits but Ash was taking a little longer but kept catching me back up.

On the fourth lap I held back a little as we approached the steepest climb to get him on the front for a look but he seemed to be struggling a bit with the 11% gradient so I powered past him into the single track climb and upped my pace slightly for the next couple of climbs. He dropped off a little but was hanging in there and by transition had caught me up again on the descent. He rode along side me in transition as we crossed the finish line but I can’t recall what he said to me and didn’t really care I was riding my own race.

Another rolling bottle swap and as I left transition for the fire road climb I didn’t see Ash come out but I didn’t on the last lap either. I just kept doing my own thing pumping out consistent laps hour after hour I was feeling great. Sharon was under strict instructions NOT to tell me any results or positions till after 6 hours of the race were up. I was trying to slow my pace down to try and get my average lap time out to the 45 minute area that was sustainable for longer. I was in the zone now though with laps of 37:08 (shorter start lap), 40:25, 40:22, 41:36, 41:59, 42:50, 42:11, 42:37 and 42:53 before a 46:28 where we stopped to install lights on the helmet and bars and transitioned into the night section of the race. There were quite a few puddles and a couple of muddy sections on the track still so the bikes drive train was taking a hammering. We cleaned the chain and cassette every 3-4 hours as best we could, it was making some awful noises at times as it got gummed up with grit.

I did have one nasty moment around the 3HR mark where I tried a different line to miss a stump in the track and clipped a tree almost having a big crash into the next tree and the poor young fellow taking photo’s jumped for his life instead of pressing the camera shutter button. I managed to stop without crashing. I was disappointed he didn’t get a shot of it but it was a huge wake up for me! I split my foam grip on the left side and it was a bit uncomfortable for the rest of the race, a lucky escape so early on and it brought back memories of the Kellevie crash.

I was pretty stoked at the 6 hour mark to find I was 25 minutes in front of Ash and leading the 50-54 age group. I spent the next lap pondering race strategy and how many more laps it might take to lap Ash but also that it is a very very long way to go. Should I be able to lap Ash I would only have to follow his pace for the rest of the race if it was possible. I pushed all these things out of my mind and just concentrated on smooth laps and especially once it was dark and adjusting to riding under lights. I lapped in the 47 to 49 minute range during early part of the night and lapped Ash at some stage. Sharon was bursting with excitement at one stage and blurted out I had risen to 7th overall in the standings. Wow I was quite taken back with that but I also knew there was a long way to go still. They were a bit worried if to tell me that info or not but it made no difference to my riding I was super focused.

After midnight in the very early morning my lap times had dropped to around the hour mark but a lot of those extra minutes were spending more time in transition talking and eating. It is so easy to loose time in the pits and the top guys rarely stop making their pit crews run along side them while they transfer food, water and information. There was a ‘disco’ setup on the hill with 80’s music pumping and fairy lights on one of the slowest rocky sections of the track a welcome marker each lap at night. Around 3AM through the ‘disco’ section I missed my line and stalled on a rock on the side of the track. A little low speed lay down on my knee but a huge wake up call to get focused again. Another coffee had me alert again for the next few laps till the sun started to show signs of rising again. The temperature got down to 2 degrees on my Garmin bike computer but I never felt cold and just added a long sleeve jacket during the night.

I rode with Brett Bellchambers for a while a during the night one of many single speed nutters out there and we have a mutual friend here in Launceston. I became know to Brett as “Colin – friend of Vanders” and he was yelling it out when ever he saw me on course. He is a funny guy who sings and is generally happy all event. He rode a fully rigid (ie no suspension at all) single speed into 10th place overall. Brett is a past world single speed champion and this was his first big race after a very nasty high speed road bike crash with a kangaroo just 2 weeks before the NZ worlds which he had to pull out of.

Once it started to light up my lap times dropped back into the sub hour range but I was still spending to much time in the pits. Around 9AM I had already done 26 laps and I was 5 laps in front of 2nd place in 50-54. I had a little rest in the pits and then had a chat with coach Adz about the situation. Adz gave me 2 options, if I couldn’t live with myself on Monday for not doing as many laps as I could possibly do then get back on your bike and get moving, or option 2 was to do just one more lap and save a lot of wear and tear on my body and make my recovery a lot quicker. I had already done more laps than lasts years winner of 50-54 and doing hour laps at this stage would have got me at best around 14th-11th place overall we thought so I decided a fast recovery and less wear and tear on my body was a sensible option and it was Adz’s recommendation as well.

I mucked around for a while before starting my last lap as I had to finish after 11AM to be classified as a finisher. I was letting everybody past and stopped to admire the view a few times and really strung out the last lap (or so I thought). I even stopped at the ‘disco’ and listen to a song but got sick of people asking me if I was OK and moved on again. I hit transition 69 minutes after leaving and I was a bit surprised it was not longer with all the time wasting I did on that lap. I waited for Sharon to get in position to film me crossing the finish line but waited for a rider to get out of shot who indecently ended up 1 place in front of me before I crossed the line in a wobbly no hands on the bars effort with a huge smile on my face.

I did actually contemplate doing another lap briefly but stuck with the sensible plan and that was the right thing to do and I have no regrets. Looking post race I may have made it to 11th overall had I kept going but there are no extra rewards other than a result higher up in the overall standings and a longer recovery time. Had I been racing hard for a position there would have been a lot more focus and there is no doubt I would have been pushing hard to the very end but fortunately I had put myself in a position where I didn’t need to. The guy I let through on the line for the finish photo was the winner of the 45-49 category so I finished on the same amount of laps as he did.

Sharon did an amazing job all race. Sharon kept a log of what I ate and drank this time. Our position in transition allowed her to cross the track where I would came in and give instructions while I rolled around to the other side and she would have everything ready to go as I got to our marque. One special surprise was the toasted cheese sandwich in the early hours of the morning it was so dam good, hot cheese with a carbohydrate loaded crunchy handle! I think Kellevie 24 last year taught us a lot about transition and food. Plenty of warm coffee and risotto during the night was awesome. I only needed a few gels towards the end and stuck with ‘real food’ for as long as I possible.

Lots of quiet celebrations and congratulations from Sharon and Adz on the line after 27 laps, approximately 340km and a solid 7,000M of climbing. Rolling back to our pits some grey headed guy yelled out to me “well done Colin congratulations”, no idea who he was but later he came down to our pits for a chat. It was Ash Turner (out of Lycra) and he told me he had pulled out after 11 laps with a sore knee. Now I don’t know for sure but looking at his Strava data he was doing it a lot lot harder than I was early on and I suspect he tried to keep up with me instead of doing his own race and suffered for it. He came 2nd last year in the 45-49 age group. He had nearly 3 hours in threshold heart rate compared to my 19 minutes for the whole race?

We packed up a bit and mucked around, started my recovery and I had a shower as we had to wait for presentations to start. I felt quite good post race and didn’t feel the need to eat bucket loads of food so my nutrition went well for the ride. Months of hard work and determination had paid there dues. Presentations seemed to take forever with all the team categories but my time finally came and I got to put on the Nation Champions Jersey, gold medal and stand on the top step of the podium. Wow Team Locke had done it!

Packing up everything late in the afternoon after presentations it dawned on us we were starting to feel sleepy after 36+ hours awake. The bike was so dirty but Sharon gave it a quick wash. A post race meal was organised at a noodle house for Adz’s coached group. Adz coached more than one age group national champion at Stromlo as well as some top 5 results, he has a proven track record for 24HR coaching and one reason I picked him for my first ever coach (thanks Adz). We headed off for a couple hours sleep before tea. Tea was on the other side of Canberra but we got there and had a pleasant meal and chat with everybody but we all quickly dispersed again and headed off for a good nights sleep.

I was awake by 7AM on Monday but the nice lady at the AirBnB we stayed at said we could take as long as we wanted to vacate which was nice and it was around lunch time when we got packed and headed out to ride Stromlo for one more lap before we left but I’ll cover that in another blog. The only downside of the race was Sharon’s Garmin locked up during the race and I lost 67 minutes of data (about 20km worth). There are some great photo’s of me taken through the event by SportoGraf, David Blucher and others. I get my own National Champions Jersey with my name on the back in about 6 weeks time and it might have to find a frame to live in. Only thing left is to decide is if the Worlds in Italy next June are a chance after a few people have suggested I should have a crack at them?