AIPP Round Three 2008 - The Bridge

[Jenna]

Yeah Tim, great race report, I especially liked the part where you mentioned me lol. Took me like an hour to read it, I'm a little slow.

lol LAME! i totally didn't get a mention this time... poor effort Tim! (jokes)

Woo!! 555th post!!

[Tim]

Welll, I didn't manage to catch up with you over the weekend, so... Oh, hang on, I know, gotta make a little update to the report... Check the bottom of the report again

[Jenna]

Welll, I didn't manage to catch up with you over the weekend, so... Oh, hang on, I know, gotta make a little update to the report... Check the bottom of the report again

What am i supposed to be looking at??

[Tim]

Search for "The only downer"

[Khye]

Oh, and if this was someone's idea of just trying to annoy us, I have a solid kick in the nuts waiting for you to collect

AHAHAHA

great report mate. thanks for making time for this stuff hey, the time you spend on photos and getting information really is appreciated. i look forward to seeing what you have to say, its a great thing. thanks.

[Jenna]

Search for "The only downer"

lol woo!!! Cheers Tim!!! =D We'll catch up next race.... and you haven't met geoff?? Everyone knows him! lol

[The Duckmeister]

Awesome read, as always! But if you're going to adopt titles I've bestowed upon people, please spell them correctly! It's Chundagutz!

[alii-88]

nice report Tim.
i finally finished reading it
fair few issues before you even left!

[Tim]

Jenna, we passed in the pits at one point but we both seemed in too big a hurry to stop and chat. Hey, any of you SA guys coming over to EB in Maryborough this year? I'm not managing a team this year so should have plenty of time to catch up!

I enjoy it Khye, just wish I had more time to comment on the sport as a whole and help built it's profile outside our own circles.

[The Duckmeister]

Slightly delayed, but here's the one I lobbed on the Bike Vic forum, minus a few superfluous details.

OK folks, get yourselves a drink and get comfortable, 'cos this is going to be a long one!

Australian International Pedal Prix 24 Hour, Murray Bridge, S.A, September 20-21 2008.

No point going on about the trip over, 'cos not much happened. Got into town around lunchtime on Friday and without ado set up camp in our allotted spot. That done, took the vehicle over to scrutineering, to make sure it meets all the rules. Which it did, so that was a nice smooth procedure. The following few hours saw us giving the car a final check-over and setting up the pit tent.

At 5:00pm the first bit of serious stuff started, in the form of the two-hour practice session. Our first rider threw down the challenge, laying out a 2 minute 28 second lap of the 2.15km circuit - with most of the other 224 vehicles out there! To put it into perspective, that is the same as last year's pole position time, set in the single-lap shootout with a clear track!! After all eight riders had done a few feeler laps, just to get the run of it, we pulled the trike in for the night and retired to the pub for a team dinner, happy that we had staked our place on the time sheets. Towards the end of the session, after we had gone, our main rival, TafeSA's "Blueshift", made a last gasp effort, coming within 0.9sec of us.

So, this leads to Saturday morning, and a slight diversion from the final pit preparations - the Top 12 Shootout. For this, the top three vehicles from each of the four categories (Primary, Junior Secondary, Senior Secondary and Community) do a single flying lap, after a warm up, to decide the order at the front of the grid. Needless to say, we put our fastest rider out, and he promptly set a scorching 2:16.8 - a full 10 seconds faster than Blueshift! A small surprise was another of our rivals, Bendigo Youth Racing (BYR) only claiming fourth fastest, behind their "junior" offshoot from Flora Hill SC, racing in Cat. 3. Our other widely-accepted main rival, SA Sports Institute/ Cycling SA's "Ballistic" didn't even make the shootout.

So, now for the race. Leaving our most potent weapon for later in the team rotation, we chose to start with another of our faster (but not quite fastest) riders. Rhys did an awesome job; after a pace lap behind the lead car, he let Blueshift and BYR slip ahead at the drop of the flag, slotting in on their tails and letting them do all the work, pushing the ample breeze and making gaps in the traffic. Sensing them start to tire towards the end of the first hour, he made a cheeky move with fresher legs and put us into the lead!

A shade over the hour mark, we brought him in for our first scheduled pit stop. A nice quick changeover put Paul out on the track fairly smartly, but slight differences between team strategies, combined with the painfully slow 10km/h pitlane speed limit saw positions get juggled for a while. Paul ran well for about 40 minutes, but overheating and cramping brought him in early, in 2nd place at this time. At this point, approaching the 2-hour mark, it started to become apparent that the anticipated four-horse race was split in two. Ballistic were never quite up to par, and it was becoming obvious that BYR were no longer the force they once were, slowly but inexhorably slipping off the back of the lead pair.

So, time for rider number three. Nathan put in an uneventful, solid hour-long stint, maintaining our 2nd spot, but losing a lap to the flying Blueshift. Not much more to report there.

And so, it was my turn. Every team has to have a slowest rider, and here I must admit that for this edition of our team, that one is me. Where the other guys had been lapping in the 2:40 - 2:50 range, I was out around the 2:55 - 3:10 range. No real scares to report, just general mayhem. The enclosed fairing is something of a sauna, but I didn't find it too unbearable; two electrolyte drink bottles ("powered by TORQ" ) keeping cramps at bay. I lost another lap to Blueshift, and even "allowed" BYR to sneak back up to 2nd. So at the end of my hour, which hadn't really put us too far out of touch, I pitted and we unleashed our pet Steele.

He immediately threw himself into the task, smashing out sub- 2:40 laps, clawing back huge slabs of time. Not without incident however. About 30 minutes into his run, entering the chicane at the top of the course another vehicle overcooked it and rolled in front of him. He jumped on the anchors to try to avoid it, but another one hit the side of his tail and flicked him around into a roll. Fortunately, only superficial damage was sustained, and he continued his furious-paced chase for another hour and a half! By the end of his phenomenal two-hour run, we were over a lap ahead of Blueshift, and comfortably ahead of BYR and Ballistic.

Other pre-race tips for ones-to-watch, ExPats, TriSled, and Deakin Uni were staging their own little battles further back. All three, like most others, were running brand-new cars, but with virtually no preparation. In fact, Deakin's "S-Chair" was still having finishing touches done less than an hour before the start of the race! ExPats built a variation of their usual model specifically set up for this track. These poor guys can't take a trick though. Having finally shaken the unreliability gremlins that have plagued them for the past year, illness knocked the stuffing out of the team, and they came in severely underdone, happy just to even be there. TriSled ran solidly, if somewhat unspectacularly. More about all these guys later.

Back to the main arena. After Steele's monster effort, it was a venture into the unknown. Our New Boy, Luke, was in for his first ever HPV race stint. And night would fall during his run.... Hopefully Luke's amazing MTB-honed reflexes would pull him through. And did they ever! Unfortunately the stint was not without its problems. Our headlights had the annoying habit of turning themselves off, resulting in several unscheduled pitstops. We eventually sorted it out, but precious time was lost in the process.

Further drama ensued during the night, while I was off duty and catching some sleep. Kane had another roll, trying to get through a gap which probably wasn't really there. He got squeezed onto the kerbing, which tipped him over, and just to cap it off the lap didn't get counted straight away 'cos the timing transponder was too far above the ground when he crossed the line on his roof! And then when Daniel got in for the final ride of the first rotation, one of the main fairing mounting brackets broke, the fatigue from the vibration along the dreadfully rough back straight taking its toll. Fortunately we had spares, but it still cost us two laps to fix it.

Into the second rotation, Rhys had a good clean run, but Paul crashed twice in his shift, both times trying to avoid someone else's crash, but having nowhere to go. Nathan had a few cross-country moments when fogging began to happen, but oddly enough, I had no problem when I got in after him, just approaching the halfway point of the race. However, my stint happened to coincide with a very fast rider in Blueshift, and I was just losing too much time, so the the team called me in about 20 minutes early and unleashed Steele again. As things would pan out, that was my last ride for the race.

Steele wove his magic again, and in that 90 minute stint pulled back a three lap deficit to put us back on top! Things settled down a bit after that, and Luke, Kane and Daniel had no more problems, the lead swapping several times between us and Blueshift. And at two-thirds race time, the numbers were looking good for a particular record.

Into the third rider rotation, and the approach of morning, the other fairing mount bracket broke, so a few more minutes were lost replacing that one too, and then the horn died, so more time was lost replacing that. A bit of despondency was setting in amongst the team, as it looked like the wheels were falling off, so to speak, but there was still time to make moves.

Steele's mammoth stints had put us a bit past our original rider schedule, so some juggling was done. After Nathan did his final run (which included another roll), ending around 8:45am, we decided to not run me, as the risk of losing time was too great, instead going straight to Steele. As usual, he did what was needed, and by the end of his stint with two hours remaining, we were two laps up. Luke's order for his final run was just to play safe, stay out of trouble and protect our lead. A bit of info from an ally in another team about Blueshift's final plan helped form our response. After Luke's final run, which would take us to the start of the last hour, we put Kane and Daniel in for a 30 minute sprint each, as we knew we had enough time up our sleeve to make the pit stop. And the boys did a stellar job keeping Blueshift at bay.

Shortly after 12:00 on Sunday, Tru Blu Racing was shown the chequered flag, taking a very hard-earned race victory from Blueshift, by a margin of about a lap and a bit, with BYR in 3rd place, 15 laps behind, and Ballistic close on their tail for 4th. ExPats, despite their less-than-perfect preparation, finished a very credible 5th, assisted by TriSled's solid run ending solidly in a post, breaking the chassis and costing some 20 minutes in the welder's tent. Deakin ran consistently, and added to their party-fund by claiming the $100 prize for fastest lap of the final hour, in the end finishing 7th.

In the other categories, the Victorian victories continued, with Flora Hill SC taking the Secondary double, leaving Aberfoyle Hub School to take the points for SA in the Primary category.

Oh yeah, and about that record.
475 laps @ 2.15 km.

24 Hours....

One

Thousand

and

Twenty One

Kilometres....

The first time in Australian HPV racing history the 1,000km mark was passed.

WE DID IT!!!!
_________________

[geoff]

Jenna, we passed in the pits at one point but we both seemed in too big a hurry to stop and chat. Hey, any of you SA guys coming over to EB in Maryborough this year? I'm not managing a team this year so should have plenty of time to catch up!

I enjoy it Khye, just wish I had more time to comment on the sport as a whole and help built it's profile outside our own circles.

I may be over, schools doing the tryathlon so lame , anyway will prolly be over for that before have a qucik ride and heading home for graduation/formal, will have to catch up

[alii-88]

In the other categories, the Victorian victories continued, with Flora Hill SC taking the Secondary double, leaving Aberfoyle Hub School to take the points for SA in the Primary category.

why does it always end up that way?

[Tim]

Nice round up there Ducky, I knew you had a few varying problems, but didn't know there was quite that many!

[Jenna]

Jenna, we passed in the pits at one point but we both seemed in too big a hurry to stop and chat. Hey, any of you SA guys coming over to EB in Maryborough this year? I'm not managing a team this year so should have plenty of time to catch up!

Did we really??? lol i feel bad now!!! You should have stopped me and demanded a chat
Doesn't maryborough co-incide with graduations? and/or schoolies??

[Tim]

I thought it might have been you had a similar passing in the pits with Geoff too. Yes, EB is usually around schoolies but you just need to get your priorities straight November 20 - 23 this year.