This was one of those stupid ideas you get on the long drives home from national downhill events. "Why don't we do a 24 hour, XC guys have got nothing, we could beat them any day". When you think about it we didn't have much hope. Six downhillers up against some mighty fit cross-country guys wasn't good odds, but we genuinely thought we could win.

As usual we organised everything two days before the event and we were still getting stuff ready the night before. The team consisted of Tim Mann, Matt Tape, Craig Van Haren (Weiner), Craig Woodhead (Woody), Shane Wode (Wodie) and myself.

We arrived at Fellcrag around ten o'clock on Saturday, got set up and went for a lap to check out the track. It was great to ride and was nearly all fun, flowy, singletrack with a really cool fast downhill to finish off with.

The course began with a fire road climb that took you up to the first bit of single track that wound its way back down to the camp area. After a few more small sections of fire road and singletrack you hit the first creek, where all you could do is plough through and hope you didn’t hit too many wet rocks.

The track then gradually climbed for a while before hitting you with some more downhill single track to keep things enjoyable. At the end of this you had another creek crossing that did its best to get you wet and muddy. More singletrack took you to the most tracks most painful segment, a ridiculously steep climb that made your legs scream out in pain every time.

The pain came with a reward though, because from the top of climb stemmed what was my favourite part of the track. A fast, swoopy downhill section that made you smile every time, no matter how much you were hurting and left you with only a short fire road section to negotiate before the sweet relief of the changeover area.

The only downsides to the whole track, in my opinion, were the creek crossings that had to be negotiated. A few had small bridges over them but there were two that you just had to plough through, which didn't prove too enjoyable at three in the morning. Quickest laps were around the 12-13 minute mark and our team averaged around the 15-16 minute mark.

Race time came round and I was designated as first rider out. The LeMans start wasn't too successful, with riders having to negotiate everybody else’s bike and then somehow find their teammate with their bike. It was a mess, but I was lucky enough to get to the front with the help from some elbows here and there.

Anyway, as expected the first lap hurt like hell! I came through to the changeover in a good position and Woody was out next. I was ready just about ready to collapse when for some reason I heard my name being called. I looked around to see Woody with a bike but no chain. He hadn't even got a pedal stroke in and it had snapped on him!

I went again but this time a lot slower. I was screwed. As I was slowly riding around trying to regain normal feeling in my legs again I was surprised to find that one of the first people to pass me was solo rider Saul Britton. This man is crazy, he was riding faster than most people there and he was going to do it for 24 hours.

Wodie was the next man out and from this point on we just went as fast as we could doing one lap at a time each trying to catch up to the leaders. At one stage early in the night we were only a few minutes behind the leaders so we kept pushing on with one lap at a time each.

By 12 o'clock that night we were starting to feel the effects of pushing so hard. My whole body was literally steaming at the end of laps. The climbs were starting to burn the legs and the bike was even starting to cry out in pain. The dirt there is very sandy and when you combine that with the creek crossings you end up with a nice sandy paste that eats away your drivetrain. The constant crunching noise definitely didn't help when you were questioning, "Why did I do this? It's supposed to be fun." We soldiered on throughout the night, hoping things would improve when the sun came up.

Dawn was before us but instead of making us feel better it seemed to make things worse. The lack of sleep combine with the constant aching of your legs just made you feel like crap. The idea of chucking it in was thrown around but never happened, by this stage we were in third and nobody wanted to lose the position.

Tim kept us going, hitting out two laps in a row early in the morning mainly because no one else would. A few hours of slow laps passed and we realised if we kept pushing it we could still be on the podium!

For some reason, from that point onwards everybody started punching out fast laps again and we were all having fun again, especially on that last downhill. There were three separate lines at the end of this section onto a bridge. On Woody's last lap he came down behind another rider and went for a passing move. They came together as they were about to hit the bridge but Woody in true style just stuck out his elbow and took the other rider out.

In the end we held on to third place. The old guys team, “Disorganised” won overall on 97 laps and Saul Britton won solo with 61 laps.

This event is something I recommend everyone should try. The atmosphere was great and there were all levels of riders competing. For the majority of the race I had a great time and it was definitely something I’ll never forget.

I like to thank Ricky and Jonno from Citrus Speed Imports for lending me the very light Orange Esix XC bike for the race and Tim for getting the team organised and giving me a place stay on Friday and Sunday nights.

Lindsay Klein