THE 2 & 4 HOUR EVENT - Stirring up the dust
Ron 'Father Time' Milbanke reporting
The organisers will be heartened by the responses received from the riders on the inaugural 1, 2 and 4 hour event. It was targeted as an experimental event among club and close friends with the view of opening it up to a wider audience in future. To those who rode the event the organisers would like to hear your comments so that they can improve the next one, so please don’t be backward in coming forward if you have any ideas to make it better. We have heard the odd murmuring but in the heat of battle some of the comments will be forgotten. SO please let us know how it went for you.
The one hour event for the younger set looked to be a great success and it intermingled with the 2 and 4 hour riders without incident or hold-up. With a bike up for grabs for one lucky youngster, Peter came up with an innovative idea for choosing the winner. He had a cardboard box file with a small picture of a bike on the inside of the lid. The kids were each given a four inch nail with their names attached, and they had to hammer the nail into the top of the closed lid. The nail closest to the bike was the winner. Seems like a great way to pick a winner, maybe the next President of the USA could be chosen this way, although I suspect that the nails could be better used on one of the candidates.
The four hour event got away shortly after ten, and it was only a few minutes old when one of the favoured riders returned to the pits with a dismantled pedal. He managed to find a replacement and was very quickly on his way, a big setback for team SMS losing around 6 minutes. No such problem for Josh who blistered round in just over 21 minutes with teammate Aaron watching on with a grin. The next through after lap 1 were Mitchell, Jeremy and Kiel, the first three solo riders and in very close contact. Josh continued on in similar vein on lap 2 but Jeremy broke a derailleur leaving Mitchell just in front of Kiel in the solo race. Tim was next solo feeling all the bumps on a hard tail, then a couple of raiders from over the hill were quietly going about their work behind Tim.
As the laps reeled off the lap times were stretching out and by lap 5 Tim looked the worse for wear. Sure enough he was gobbled up on lap 6 by the intruders from Nelson. Kiel’s lap times were also increasing at an alarming rate and on lap 8 was added to the list of victims of the Nelson duo. Mitchell was in no danger out front with a comfortable cushion.
Josh and Aaron were the only team to complete 10 laps with almost 4 minutes to spare before the clock struck 4. Completing 9 laps, Mitchell was first solo, then a great effort by Khan and Bailey saw the Young Guns team come home third. Also completing 9 laps were team SMS, Sarnim Matt and Sharn, a great recovery from the earlier mishap. Gary and Susie from Nelson were the next two soloists with Jeremy the last to finish 9 laps following them home, a great effort after losing heaps of time on lap 2 with the mechanical.
The Tenacious Turtles and team Google and Chrome were unlucky to have their last laps disallowed finishing just outside the 4 hours in 4:01:20 and 4:02:20 respectively. Soloist Bruce was also outside the time with a 4:04:35 finish.
There were huge cheers as wee Georgia brought home 3 Little Racers with just 45 seconds to spare to complete an impressive 6 laps. Georgia, Tom and Tyler cannot muster 30 years between them so they should be very proud. There was a little sour note here with Georgia being abused by an unknown rider who should have more tolerance. If you know who you are, please learn from this and come back next year a better person.
More cheers for the Avanti racers who had just four seconds to spare to complete their 8th lap.
In the 2 hour event Joel took an early lead and was 2 minutes clear with a lap to go. Ian snuck up on him on the last lap to take overall honours by 30 seconds. Joel took out under 18 honours with Finlay 2nd. Logan was best under 12 just pipping Luke and Pogo was the only solo lady, another Nelson raider.
