News and Comment from East of England Bike Shop, Revel Outdoors

Revel Outdoors Mountain bike team took part in the Dusk ’til Dawn 12 hour team race at Brandon last week end.  It started at 20.00 Saturday and finished at 8.00 in the morning on Sunday.  This was run on a 10.5 mile course though the forest with each rider having to provide his own lights to navigate around the course.  Revel Outdoors entered three 3 man teams and two solo riders in the event.  

Start of the 2010 Dusk til Dawn

The teams were as follows:

 Team 1 – Garry Houghton, Richard Bettaney & Jamie Wightman.

Team 2 – James Dyke, Darren Styles & Robert Balaam.

Team 3 – William Mitcham, Kurt Broad & last minute stand in Kevin Rolt.

There were 90 teams in this category.

The 2 solo riders were Neil Payne & Iain Kemp.  They had 140 other riders to compete against in their category.

Garry and James

This was a 12 hour race so it was going be a long night for all.  Houghton, Dyke and Rolt were first out for their respective teams, with both Kemp and Payne on the start line to.  After a short loop through the forest following behind a quad bike to encourage the 500 people on the start line to spread out the race was on.  Houghton and Dyke both did well and came through to end their first lap in well up in their category, Rolt struggled and was further down the field.  The riders then hand over to the next member of their team.  It was during the first lap when the rain started and it just kept coming until 4.00 in the morning, the course conditions during the night became horrendous - the mud was so deep it was not possible to ride in places and the bomb holes were very dangerous.  Many riders were walking just to get around the lap when it was at its muddiest.  During these hours the teams kept pushing hard; after all the riders had done 1 lap Team1 were now in 4^th position with the other teams just outside the top 10.  Because of the rain the laps time had doubled, but despite this team 1 was doing well.  They battled on with Bettaney and Wightman putting in some fast laps in the awful conditions.  The team were going to retire after 3 laps each but realised if they did that the 3^rd place they had gained during the night would be taken from them at the very last moment, so with encouragement from all the Revel Outdoors teams Houghton decided to do his fourth lap of the night.  He knew he had to do this lap as fast as possible as the fourth place team were still chasing for the 3^rd place.  Houghton managed to stay ahead of the 4th place team to secure the 3^rd place for Team1.

3-man Team Podium

 During the night the other Revel Outdoors teams 2&3 battled on through the awful conditions until fatigue and mechanical problems got the better of them both in the early hours of Sunday morning when they both decided to retire from the race.  Team 2: each rider managed 2 laps but Team 3 did slightly better with Broad putting in a third lap.

At the same time the solo riders had to put up with the same conditions.  Both riders managed three laps then had a break for food, hot drink, bike wash and some dry warm cloths.  This proved the deciding point for Kemp who retired from the race, but the real hero of the team was Payne – the endurance specialist – who went back out and did two more laps before having only his second break of the night.  It was then he found out he was in 10^th place in the solo race so again he changed into dry kit, had his bike washed, and went back out for his sixth lap; an incredible effort to secure 14^th place.

All the team members would like to extend a huge thank you to John Styles who was there all night to help us, cleaning bikes and keeping us fed and watered. We could not have managed without you John.

Team Kit

3man Team Results

Team 1 – 10 laps =   3^rd 

Team 2 -   6 laps = 28^th

Team 3 -   7 laps = 16th

Solo Riders Results

Payne -     6 laps = 14^th

Kemp  -     3 laps = 79^th

(full race results)