Team MK gets 4th out of 85 in the mixed team category at this years Sleepless in the Saddle 24 hour Enduro

Lee Goodman, Steve Torley, Simon Cannings, Alan Coldray and I entered this years mixed category at SITs, what a great idea that was on a sunny day back in March.

After setting up the Team MK gazebo on Friday evening, something we couldn't have done without since we could always find our base as it stood out bright orange amongst a filled campsite and was a lifesaver in the appalling conditions, keeping our bikes and us dry, we rode the 7.5 mile course in preparation for Saturday's / Sunday's event. Our thoughts were a good course not very technical with some very fast lap time’s achievable c.40 mins for the fastest of us. How things can change, with heavy rain leading up to the start and a second dose at dusk the course was muddy and sticky throughout the night leading to initial lap times of 45 mins going up to over an hour and a half during the night. Our bikes suffered horrendously with wheels jamming and walking was the order of the day a lot of the time, we all battled through the night with many of the other teams giving up and we were lucky enough not to have any mechanicals, Shimano must have made a fortune with rear mechs and hangers breaking in the hundreds.

As Sunday dawned we were greeted with some sun and wind and the course dried out enough so that it was ridable however it was still muddy and very slippy, it was never going to be perfect. Through the night we had taken ourselves from 6th to 4th position, tactics came to the forefront now as we had some dry weather it was not just about endurance, we made the decision to send the fastest riders out and see what we could achieve. We knew it would be impossible to get third unless they had a mechanical or very poor lap as we had over 30 minutes to gain in 4 hours! Lee and Simon did a superb job, the final couple of laps were exciting it had finally turned into a race rather than a battle, with Catherine and I spotting on the course to feed back where the riders were Simon and Lee had 102 mins to get 2 laps in and get Alan out onto a final lap they achieved 104 mins! We missed an additional lap by 2 mins, we kept heart though as this wouldn't have changed our final standing. We completed 21 laps in total, detailed results can be found on www.provelosupport.com/sleepless.html#results

A fantastic result for Team MK 4th out of 85 teams!