6/11/05

Go team "What Rhymes With Orange"!!!

I've just got home from the Gravity 12hr, up at The Pinnicals near Mount Beauty. What an unreal weekend.  There were 8 of my mates that made the trip up there, split into 2 teams.  Gilles, Carly, Rusty and BJ were in team "Low Ring Riders" and me, Angoose, Pete and Heidi were in team "What Rhymes with Orange". Angoose, Pete and i were all riding single speeds, which turned out to be the ticket, cause all the mud made it hell on gear systems.

We all arrived there on Friday afternoon, set up camp, then did final preparations on our costumes.  The Low Ring Riders had bright red lycra capes with LRR in white paint of the back.  Angoose and i combined our talents and sported bright orange overalls, customised for each of us (different stuff written in black texta). Angoose was "Mr Tickle" and i was the "Ginger Ninja", complete with dodgy orange dyed hair. Both Pete and Heidi sported bright orange tees and Pete put some spiffy orange ribbon in his dreds.

The start of the race was a LeMons start (put your bikes about 500 meters away then you have to run to your bike and get on and start the race).  Carls and i were dobbed into doing the first lap.  So being the quick runners that we are.............not, we lined up, front row, in the middle, the bestest spot to get in the way of all the dudes taking the race seriously, and we fully succeeded in doing just that.

The track was feckin sweet.  They had a fair bit of rain in the past few days and parts of the track were boggy and as the race went on and all 650 riders were riding the same line, the boggs became long, wide, deep and filled with wet cement like mud.  The best way to ride the bogs was to go as fast as you can and just hope for the best.

As the day went on, the heat turned up.  I think at one stage it was like 36degs, and it felt like 46degs riding in heavy orange overalls!!  Luckily none of us had any major stacks, however BJ went home after one lap (1:18mins), cause his knee was playin up, pussy. So team LRR was down one rider, but a gal who was camping next to us was down 3 riders (cause they had all gone to hospital with one of their riders who had crashed his brains out), so she rode a lap for LRR, and all was ok.

What Rhymes with Orange was swapping 3rd and 4th place all day with team Giant (professionally sponsored by Giant Bikes), so come my final lap at 7:45 i rode pretty hard and got back at like 8:30pm, so i went out and did another lap. Stupid move. It felt like the slowest i had ever done, by far. I was soooooo buggered by the start of that last lap, and it showed during the lap. After walking up every hill, nearly running off the track a number of times, shouldering a tree, nearly loosing my shoe in a mud bog, humming the M*A*S*H theme song all lap and headbutting a tree, i was done!!

I WOULD LIKE TO INTRODUCE YOU TO THE 3RD PLACE GETTERS IN THE GRAVITY 12 HOUR ENDURANCE RACE MIXED TEAMS OF 4.  ANGOOSE, PETE, HEIDI AND ME (DOUG)!!!!!!!!!!!!!

GO TEAM "WHAT RHYMES WITH ORANGE"!!!!!!!!!!

We rock!! I think that a bunch of hacks, that don't train, dressed up in bright orange overalls and spiffy orange tees, coming 3rd, out of like 10ish teams, is just ace!!!

Kona 24hr here we come!!!!

Cheers

D