Moonride 2013

The Moonride is one of few races that my family plan months before it happens but this year it was a whole lot different.

The race had been planned to be at the previous years venue up in the Kaimai Ranges.  It had had great facilities but very few people liked the course- we had been thinking maybe it wasn't worth doing this year and from what we had heard, heaps of others were thinking the same thing.

About 8 weeks out from the start the race organisers announced that because of not enough entry's they would be moving the race back to the original venue in the Redwood's (Rotorua). Suddenly we got interested again.

A lot of rush organisation in the Jafakids forming teams saw a number of teams being formed and entered.  A good mate of mine formed a team more social than serious, but all good riders.

As the weekend approached alot of people decided to get to Rotorua on the Friday evening and watch the start of the 24hr race. To save money, my parents decided to just head down Saturday morning early.  A good decision in hindsight.

After a 4.30am wake up,  a drive down in pouring rain, we finally get Rotorua around 9am for breakfast.  The rain had eased by then and when we get to the race area we were all expecting to see muddy riders throughout the tent city.  Instead we see half the event area flooded and only about 300 people with no-one racing - it had rained so hard that night the 24 hours was canceled!

A lot of the 24hr team had elected to stay and complete in the 12hr event instead, so it was going to still be a reasonable crowd.   As the teams warmed, minutes before race start my guys decided that I would be starting, causing a wee bit of panic to get my gear on and warmed up.

My nerves were kicking as the start approached, but I did not want to let my team down because of a slow start.  It was a messy start with people going over the handle bars, people smacking into each other and going off-course, but somehow I was able to get around all of it and found myself in top 20.
 

It was a fast lap - 15 minutes later and I was back at the transition, not to tired and happy with the track.  About 2hours into the race it started to hose down again and when our rider came back he told us the course was deteriorating and getting really hard to ride.  I didn't believe him until I went out for my next lap and man! was it bad!!!

The worst thing was that we had about9 hours left, and with the number of riders going over each section and the weather not improving, it was looking sad.

At the halfway mark and the 6 hrs teams finished,  things became a little easier with not as many people on the trail. Having said that, the race organiser were constantly on the track reparing sections, shiftng others and slowing riders as necessary.   Very interesting - they did an awesome job.

As we come to the last 2 hours, no one wanted to ride anymore - the track was really, really hard work.  People who had started with 15-16 minute laps were now doing 25-30 minutes for the same distance, and hurting.    The only thing keeping us going was that we were in 3rd place.

At that point the race organisers announced they decided that the tracks were almost unrideable that they are goings to finish the race 1 hour earlier - you could hear is the sigh of relief from every tent!

With only about 20 minutes left and we had sent our last rider out with plenty of time, so we all sat back and started to relax, hopeful that we could keep 3rd. 

At prize giving, we had no idea of the final result.   Everyone was shattered, no one could walk very well and had nothing left in the tank - thank got we hadn't had to ride for another hour.  It was worth staying for prize-giving because not only did we see our friends go up to get medals but our team had secured the bronze medal - yeah baby!. 

I have to say two huge thanks to my sponsor R&R sport and also mum and dad thank you so much.  Cost a fortune in fixing the bike but the guys at R&R really helped - brilliant.