Mountain Mayhem
23-24 June 2007
Eastnor Castle Deer Park, Ledbury
Report & Pics: Joolze Dymond
Results (Singletrackworld)
Mayhem 2007 - Makes you feel chilled out just looking at that vista of countryside and biking
What would you think if you saw a banana riding a bike? And just as you crested a climb you were greeted by a bagpiper in full highland regalia, only to be outdone by the full disco experience on the other climb complete with rocking DJs and dancing girls and the occasional gorilla? Would you think it was a weird dream? Or would you realise that that this was all part of the fun and frolics, which make up the biggest enduro event in the world - T-Mobile Giant Mountain Mayhem?
The popular Le Mans start - not a bike in sight
In its 10th year now, this extraordinary event, that draws pro and amateur cyclists alike to tackle the challenges that 24 hr riding throws at you, continues to deliver everything you would expect and of course a bit more. Based for the 4th year in the fabulous surroundings of Eastnor Deer Park, Mayhem opened its gates on Friday to well over 10,000 people who were hoping that the impending dire weather forecasts for the weekend would be wrong. As the popularity of this event continues to grow, so does the arena, jammed packed full of bike bling and plenty of ways to lighten the load in your wallet. A fantastic showcase for some of the country's best bike and accessory suppliers. Also on offer over the weekend was the popular Demo day, where you could book to ride any number of fancy machines over a designated course, a brilliant chance to try before you by.
Plenty of trade activity for those with wallet itch
As the campsite filled up with expectant competitors eager to meet up with old friends and make new ones the main topic of conversation had to be the weather. With heavy downpours preceding the event and the forecast not looking to hopefully riders were making careful decisions about tyre choices and riding strategies. A popular place to pitch camp was on the Powerbar climb a real drag up through the middle of the campsite, here you could cheer on or heckle riders as the crept past you in the comfort of your own tent.
The course it self was approx 8 miles of continuous up and down. A quick flat blast from the start round the lake led you to the first of may climbs, nothing too severe just enough to make it challenging, then it was a dart into Spooky Woods, tackling slippery roots and some fast flowing singletrack before being shot off down the hill back to the campsite via a very inocuous looking water splash that later on would claim many victims. The course continued up through the campsite and out onto the hills on the opposite side of the valley, before tumbling back down through ferns and more singletrack to rejoin the start and do it all over again.
Would you dare stand at the front with that lot behind you?
At 2.00 pm Saturday having being spared any wet weather, hopes were high and then the hooter went and the 10th Mountain Mayhem was off in full flow, as riders minus their bikes did the first section Le Mans style. One of the first back was elite rider Geoff Beetham riding a decidedly older bike than usual. His steed of choice this weekend, a 1988 Overbury, a real retro bike, which is just as well as that's who he was riding for. Behind him hundreds of riders surged through the start line and the race proper was off with brightly colourful lycra jostling for position and I'm sure I saw a banana out there.
Many surprises lay in wait for the riders, DJs in Spooky Woods added the first surreal episode, 80's music bursting out of the undergrowth, dancing girls and the occasional Gorilla was also in the mix. On the other side of the hill a piper popped up in full highland dress, he just happened to be passing and thought it would be good to drop in and play some tunes. Just an hour into the race and we had our first shower, a taste of what was to come, this didn't last long and gave a brief respite to the warm sticky conditions.
The going was good, the lines were steady and all was looking well. The top teams were battling it out and the solo riders were buckling down to a long ride ahead. As the day slipped into night, conditions were still warm and pleasant, but around 2.00 am that pleasant out look suddenly changed, with a steady outpouring of rain. And so it came down, well into the morning, the once narrow tracks now looking more like motorways as riders desperately tried to find a steady line through all the mud.
The once tame water splash took on a new demeanour, as the approach became a mudslide, launching people full pelt into the water below. Needless to say this is where most of the spectators gathered. Further up a sketchy grassy descent turned into a slip-slidy affair with many riders coming down sideways. On the other side of the valley riders were being plunged into the battle of the Somme as they battled their way trough muddy fern infested tracks. And still they kept smiling. For some it was too much, but for most it was all part of the experience. By 11.00 am the rain ceased and the remaining hours of the race just literally slid by.
Day or night, there's always something happening at Mayhem...
Pat Adams stood as usually on the finish line personally shaking muddy hands with each and every rider a traditional end to a fantastic event. Anthony White riding his 6th Mountain mayhem was tearful as he finished, claiming at last that elusive first spot in the men's solo race. He'd taken a commanding lead right from the start hoping that at last this year would be his, he was duly rewarded, with his 24 laps putting him 2 laps ahead of his rivals.
Behind him the battle for 2nd and 3rd was constantly changing as conditions took their toll on the riders. James Leavesley eventually made it through to 2nd with Sam Humphreys coming in for 3rd. Luke Moseley had a real battle holding 3rd for most of the race but a bad patch in the night saw him drop down to 7th, before he fought back up to finish 4th.
Despite fielding a strong solo women's field it was clear this was going to be a two 'man' race as elite riders Jenn O'Connor and Kate Potter were in contention. O'Connor started in her usual strong and fast style putting as much distance as she could between her and her rival and not looking back. Potter found she couldn't get into her stride and it wasn't until the evening where she found herself feeling comfortable at last.
Meanwhile the damage had been done O'Connor wasn?t looking to be slowing down and managed to lap the entire field bar Potter. She finished the race with a 22 laps giving her, her 4th win and placing her 4th overall in the men's. Potter came home happy to finish but disappointed that her Husband had pulled her out a lap short - watch out she be back with all guns blazing. Stalwart singlespeeder Jenn Hopkins took a well-earned 3rd, ahead of teammate Fi Spotwood.
The Elite men's category featured Scott UK as well as a hotly tipped Giant World team. Oli Beckingsale was missing from the line up due to illness but was on hand to guide the 2 Norwegians and 2 Dutch riders who had been selected to race. The Scott boys, of Nick Craig, Stuart Bowers, Jonny Pugh and guest rider Paul Oldham approached the event with a "well we'll do our best" attitude and just enjoy the ride. All eyes were on the Giant squad, but the experience of the Scott riders soon came to the fore as they stamped their authority over the race, eventually taking the race 1 lap clear of runners up, Norwegian team Rivette. Giant had to settle for 3rd.
Great night atmosphere - it's tempting to skip sleep
It was the Mixed Expert race that was perhaps most hotly contested this year, with many teams taking on Kona who have dominated this event in the past. Clear favourites had to be Singletrack/Pipedream team of Robin Seymour, James Ouchterlony, Gareth Montgomerie and Jenny Copnall. Kona put up a strong fight, with, Will Bjergfelt, John Veness, George Richardson and Michelle Bergstrand all battling hard, as did the PedalOn.co.uk team of Scott Forbes, Adrian Lansley, Chris Minter and Mandy Hibberd. But it was the unknown quantity of the BMC/Extra UK team that actually pulled the win out of the bag, fighting with Singletrack/Pipedream every inch of the way to finally snatch victory from them with all top 4 teams scoring a massive 33 laps. The BMC/Extra UK team of Jamie Newall, Jody Crawforth, Sam Gardner and pro triathlete Julie Dibens, were delighted with their win.
Freeride Spain, featuring Ryan Henry minus his shocking red arm and leg warmers, took a 2-lap advantage in the Mixed Open category over Pedalon.co.uk who in turn were 1 lap ahead of 3rd placed Bristol Boys.
Woo-Ha Rammitt took the honours in the Sport Men race a full lap ahead of MTB Britain, who just pipped Mtbwales into 2nd. Singlespeed team of the day had to be the Trek 69'ers who trashed the competition on their monster singlespeeds designed for world domination and took 9th spot in the men's sport category overall too boot. Obviously Matt Carr's piggyback at the start of the race helped the team immensely!
The women's sport race was claimed by a strong ride by the girls of the MTB-Wales Fancier Ride, with Ride Beyond Girls taking 2nd and Buff/Saracen sliding into 3rd. While Evans Cycles picked up the Vets cat. Despite an almost perfect flying formation by the RAF it was the Army boys that stole the day and took the services category and finally the Leeds Uni boys left the bar long enough to pick up the Uni category.
Those anti-crash striped tights didn't seem to work at all - still, the views made up for the mud
As it was the 10th anniversary of the event, a new category of teams of ten was formed, and the honours for this new category went to the hard drinking and hard riding Numplumz boys under the leadership of Team Captain Jack Peterson, who although didn't ride was instrumental in setting up a comfortable base camp for the team complete with a 3 piece suite, carpet and optics.
Sun, rain, mud, gorillas, a banana, ferns, singletrack, climbing, sliding, diving disco, just a few random things that went into making the 10th Anniversary of Mountain Mayhem an event to remember. Mayhem is now being likened to the equivalent of Glastonbury for mountain bikers; it had a lot of similar qualities, including the mud and the music. Mayhem just encapsulates all that is good about mountain biking in the UK, it's not about the racing it about riding your bike, enjoying yourself no matter what the elements throw at you: it's about meeting old friends and making new ones all with a common bond, a love of mountain biking. Mayhem just gives them the excuse of getting thousands of likeminded people together on one weekend to have some fun in the mud. Good to see so many people finishing the race with huge grins peaking out from behind all that mud. A big round of applause to Pat and his team for once more providing a smooth and incident free weekend of fun and frolics in the Malverns.
See you next year!
Rider Comments:
Graham La Saux
It's really interesting I haven't done anything like this before, I regularly ride my mountain bike, but this is very hard, because of the mud. It's really slippery there are a lot of people coming off; you've just got to take it easy I guess. We're here for the social, we're gonna do as many laps as we can enjoy it, get back safely. All our beer is under lock and key, were not gonna touch it until the end. It's a good course, it's interesting, it's quite tough in places, hopefully we'll be back next year, but I'm not sure at the mo - ask me at the end, if I get there! I stopped playing football 2 years ago and I've always done a lot of cycling as a child and as a football player part of your rehabilitation when you're injured is a lot of bike work. I've always enjoyed working on the bike, so when I stopped playing, obviously you want to keep fit what better way than to get on a bike.
Anthony White - Solo men's winner
Last year I felt very strong and I was slightly annoyed that I didn't get the win so I wanted to have a crack at it this year. This has been my big challenge for the year. To be honest I've not been able to do much racing in preparation for this but I have been travelling, getting lots of miles in on my bike, I've been to places in high altitude, I was able to cycle to Everest base camp, I'm not benefiting from that right now. I only got back 2 weeks ago. I thought well let's go for it and went out really hard. In terms of the competition I didn't know who was going to be there, I thought Tinker (Juarez) might be here as he said he was considering it, so I thought well that's the top of the podium gone, but he didn't turn up.
So I thought I'd try and hammer it to try and see how psychologically people would cope with it. I went very very strong and people were saying the time gaps were quite big so I thought it would be quite nice to lap everybody, so I had a good cushion. Which is just as well as when the rain came I had a nightmare the bikes I was running had v-brakes and all the mud and the ferns were getting caught so my lap times towards the end were horrendously slow, but my lap times at the beginning were quite quick. I probably fell off about 20 times a lap at the end the going was so bad, you just pointed the bike where you wanted to go and hoped it would take you there. It was a good race and I'm delighted to have finally won it after 6 attempts, at last, God loves a trier. I might be back next year to defend it, you can never say never.
Jenn O'Connor - Solo Women's winner
I originally wanted to ride as a team this year but it didn't work out, so I was sort of tossing up between doing a team and doing it solo, so doing solo ended up a natural thing to do. To be honest it's the tenth anniversary of Mountain mayhem it made sense to be here and come back and stamp my mark on it again. We didn't want to say we were definitely doing this, as we didn't want to commit, we weren't a hundred percent sure and sort of made the decision on the day.
I felt really good out there, I got absolutely everything right with the taper and the bike was fantastic. I just stormed off from the start and never looked back. I led from the start right off from the run, which is unusual for me, I'm not known for my run.
I'd underestimated just how grim the course could get, it was really really filthy and that made it a lot tougher. But to be honest it was like that in '04 and '05 so we should have learned our lesson and not put our names down, but there you go.
It was a much simpler course then I've ridden before no real aggressive climbs, the only disappointment was the descent after the Kenda climb it just turned into a quagmire and became harder to ride down than it did to climb. Other than that it was good. I was racing with the men at one point, I think I was talking to James Leavesley out there he must have been ling about 3rd or 4th at the time and I said come on then you and me game on. I was feeling quite good at the point. 8 hours later when he passed me I let him go, he got 2nd and I would have got 4th in the men's not a bad day really.
Kate Potter - Cotic Bontrager
To tell you the truth I don't go into to 24 hour races to try to win, for me I kinda find racing aggressively for that period of time is really difficult, so I kinda just race myself. Every half hour I set myself goals and its such a long event that you have your really good periods and your really low points. For me I really struggled at the start of this one, I couldn't really get into it and then all of a sudden from about 8 o'clock onwards I started to feel a lot lot better.
The night riding was excellent I thoroughly enjoyed that and then the sun came up and that's when I usually feel really good and I felt crap again. I had a few problems out there towards the end, including stomach cramps, which seem to becoming a regular occurrence for me at the moment, which is quite worrying. Later on in the race I started to struggle getting the carbs into me after all I was only riding for myself really. I'm a little bit disappointed that Ian pulled me out a lap early, the sod! I wasn't out to beat Jenn O or Jenn H or anyone, I just wanted to prove to myself I can actually race the 24hrs, so far I've just raced 23hrs, so I will be doing another one in the near future!
Ryan Henry - Freeride Spain winners of Mixed Open
It was fantastic our team had real depth and talent, especially with Hazel, she was really really fast, she gave us all a bit of a rest in the night. She's not scared of the dark like us. When the course was dry it was fantastic when it rained it just became really really hard work. The singletrack is now about 20ft wide, criss crossing lines all over the place just trying to get through the mire. A very good event though all told. Thanks to everyone in the team and everyone who helped out and everyone who was here really!
Nick Craig - Scott UK Elite Men's winners
We didn't know what we were up against to begin with, but it goes back to our idea that we come here to ride, we come here to enjoy it and we enjoy riding hard, we come here and do the best we can and if that takes us first or that takes us 5th that's all we can do. There's no pressure we just ride and we were consistent. If you look at the lap times we were steady all the way through. We were even paced between us and what was really good was we just did one lap each that was it 24hr right through same order, no sleep we just did it. We loved it; it's the least tiring way of doing it I think. I've done 6 now and for me this has to rate as one of the best I've done, we had everything, sun, rain, heat, cold, hills, mud and now for the sun to come out just before the presentations well you can't top it can you?
Sam Gardner - BMC/Extra Mixed Elite winners.
That was really hard. The hardest one we've done. It was so tight, between Singletrack/Pipedream and us all the way through. I didn't think we were gonna win. We were all completely dead towards the end and none of us wanted to go out again. We're happy now having Julie riding for us was great; you need a girl who could match Jenny (Copnall) we think some laps she was actually faster than Jenny. She's now going to do the National Mountain Bike Champs, if you could print that please!
Shaggy - Trek 69ers - Singlespeed team winners
It was a great event and this year it was funny as everyone was expecting it to be muddy, so everyone was prepared it was brilliant. We enjoyed every lap, even through all the rain. We?re chuffed that we got top 10 in the sport cat overall, not bad. Singlespeeds were good, we had no mechanical issues at all, I won?t comment on any team issues? It was brilliant. Trek sorted us out with a decent stand to get warm and stuff, which made a big difference. Great atmosphere and great to have such good support.
Philip & Andrew - DJs in Spooky Woods
Yeah we were in the woods for over 24hrs, from seeing the first riders come through to the last one 24hrs later. It was very good from the first record we stuck on to the middle of the night we had formation dancing going on and a gorilla and a giraffe they were nothing to do with us they just appeared. But yeah it was fantastic out there. It was getting close to one of the most surreal things we?ve ever done! About 5am we just wanted to sit down and have a cup of tea which is not your usual thoughts when Djing. We usually race here, we've done 5 in total, but this year we just thought as it was the 10th anniversary we wanted to give something back, which I guess means to us making people suffer even more with some really bad music!
