Brett Bellchambers: Jeebus battles WEMBO

RECOVERING FROM WEMBO

I returned to home in Oz early morning (1:00am) on Thursday the 6th of November, then started back at work that same day doing my bosses job for 4 weeks, which also means doing my job as well, it’s been and will be a busy month.

I had a new bike to put together 2 weeks out from the race. I’d ridden it twice before the race, that last time included a washed out front end up-hill crash and some scratches and bruising to my left leg. Despite this I was loving the new Niner frame and loving the rigid fork. The massive bars felt great and the new Ti railed seat was comfy out of the box.

WEMBO 2014 – Fort William, Nevis Range, Scotland 11-12 October 2014.

I managed to get in two practice laps before the race on Friday morning (before the rain) and Friday afternoon (after the rain). My initial thoughts were that this course was going to hurt, but it was going to be a sleeper in the hurt department because it was so much fun to ride, people were going to end up deep in the pain pool from going too hard and having too much fun too early, it’s a 24hr race after all, not a 18hr race. The difference in the track from dry to wet was interesting to say the least, what was difficult in the dry became ‘exciting’ in the wet.

Anyway, I was happy with the amount of climbing, 460 metres per each 13.4 km laps, complete 19 laps and you’d done Everest. The descents were quite slow and technical, which also suits me better, full on descents at high speeds have never been my thing.

The race started with a Bagpipe band lead out and guys on Trials Motos leading us out, they also doubled as roving marshals during the race. What I considered was a warm start, others thought was quite cold given the various warm dressing techniques on the start line.

I got a good start, passed plenty of people of the first fire road climb and sat in behind Jason English, figured that was a good place to be at the beginning. Already people had it pinned at the front, at a pace most of us considered was un-sustainable on a track like this.

I had a plan for this race as I do for most races, but I was scared for this race, I knew I would have to ride to conserve energy for most of the race, to hold back as much as I could, so that I could have the energy I needed to finish off the race in the last 4 hours. I started and pushed for the first three hours, just to see who was around and how their legs felt and what their skills were like. Then I sat up and rolled around for the next 9 hours, keeping it all smooth and avoiding too much hurt and damage.

Sometime near midnight the guy in second caught up to me, I sat on him for the rest of the lap and then lost a bit of time whist I changed light batteries and ate some food. At the end of the next lap I’d caught back up and saw him lubing his chain in the pits and decided to put in a couple of faster laps to get a gap. Then I rolled around until the sun came up and put in a few faster laps just to get the gap a bit larger. The sun didn’t come up until around 7:30am in the morning, it was dark in them thar hills. Then it was the last lap roll to the finish, I got to thank all the volunteers that had cheered all night, whilst sitting next to wood fires and drinking whiskey nips to keep warm, needless to say we all became good friends by the end of the 24hrs.

I know that’s not much of a write up, but that’s sort of how my races go, I seem to forget the night laps and the day laps are just fun.

Final Stats:

24hrs – 320km ridden, 11,000 vert metres climbed, no mechanical, no flats, no crashes.

Single Speed World Champion – 7th outright, first non-elite home.

This was the toughest 24hr I’ve ever ridden, something expressed by most competitors, even Jason English.

As a comparison I rode 410kms last year to win and rode 320kms this year to win.

Jason English rode 347km to win outright this year, he rode 460km last year, I’ve never seen him ride under 400kms before let alone less than 350kms.

There were about 18 SSers this year and there were a lot of fast boys that had me worried, the course destroyed a few and some others destroyed themselves. Even in the elites is was a very deep field and very competitive, a lot of the UK guys have been training and planning for this race for a long time. Whilst I’m very happy with my SS win, I’m very proud of my high overall result, on a super tough course that was very non SS friendly.

A big thanks to my wife and kids who came with me on this crazy journey, we had a good time and have very fond memories of Scotland.