15th -16th July 2017 saw the running of this years 24 hours of Kincaid. This is the fourth time I have taken part in the event and this year I was on a duo team for 24hours. My teammate for the event Nico is a friend and also teammate on Revolution Racing.
The event this year was a little quieter than it has been previously but still a lot of fun to take part in. We were based out of the Jodphur trail head which was new however the event definitely has room to expand at this location. The self timing worked great and the wildlife encounters seemed lower than previous 24HOK that I have taken part in.
The course
The course was a mixture of ski trails, singletrack trails and social trails. The lap was around 9 miles long and took in some singletrack favourites including L-Train, Good Greeff, Change of pace, and kitchen sink. This year there was the addition of Bolling alley, this complicates things a little as it is a directional trail based on odd and even days. The solution was to reroute the course on Sunday morning before a lot of other traffic hit the trails. The other thing to note is the jungle trail has had a bunch of the roots cut down, although this makes it much easier to climb as the laps increase it does take away from the character of the trail.
The course was far and away my favourite 24HOK course I have ridden, mostly due to the lower wildlife interactions that occurred when riding.
Odd day course
Even day course
How did it go?
Very well. Team Nick-Nico took both the win and last place :) Full results
I took the first lap, then Nico after this we switched to start doubling up on laps. I ran into a moose on my lap 5, we (Clint, Brad and I) backtracked almost 0.5 miles to hit a ski trail, only to ride down the trail and bump into the moose again. This cost me around 9 min of waiting and back tracking. The next lap I did, we (Danielle had caught up with me whilst I waited for a moose) bumped into a different moose and had to reroute onto a ski trail then we ran into a bear and cub further around the lap. Those were my only wildlife encounters during the race, if you ignore the billion mosquitos that thought I was clearly a good all you can eat buffet.
Nico and I took the executive decision to not really race through the dark part of the race 01:00 to 04:30, It was nice to hang out with people and get a little sleep watch a movie whilst some of the more hardcore teams pushed on through the wee hours.
I woke at 5am headed out for my lap and took this opportunity to reflag the course so that we were riding the correct direction on bolling alley for the remainder of the race. This seemed to work out pretty well and actually made the race a little more interesting as the course changed part way through the race.
Stats from the ride
I completed 12 laps with a total riding distance of 108 miles, though only 11 laps counted towards team Nick-Nico as my final lap was with my teammate Nico and other revolution racing team mates (Clint, Laura and Ryan) to collect flags.
Final musing re the race and everything else
This years course was fantastic and I would quite happily race that course every year for the 24HOK, perhaps the addition of a 3 hour race Sunday morning from 9-12 could keep more people around on the Sunday. Self timing was great, as was the not finishing before the time was up like previous years.
I can't stress this enough but I really couldn't have done the race without all the help from Amanda, Fiona and friends.
Fiona was a little superstar and kept herself occupied whilst I raced my laps. Later in the day friends turned up with their kids and Fiona had some company, aside from Harry Potter.
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| hammock time |
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| Playing in the sand, PC Stefanie |
Amanda was on nights and looking after a sick dog (his own doing) yet she still managed to keep everything under control at home. Thanks a million baby.
All my teammates and friends at the event who helped entertain Fiona, or at least keep track of her when I was racing thank you so much.
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| Post 24 hour photo |
