Jaynerutter.com

Ride Bikes

Merida Hidden Vale 24 Hour race

11 Apr 2016 Filed in: Cross Country

We geared up for a weekend of riding at the 24 hour race at Hidden Vale. We have been the past few years, and it’s a great way to get some quality riding in, and spend time camping with the kids.

As always there was a big bouncy castle for the kids to play on, plus an easter egg hunt for them on the Sunday morning. Our two older kids (5 and 3) also raced in the kids bike race. This year they got to ride some new single track, which was a lot of fun.

We entered the 24 hour race in a mixed duo. So we tag-teamed racing and child wrangling.

Hidden Vale has a stack of new trails, so each lap was mostly single track and it took about 1 hour to get around it.

Our youngest Master Z is almost 18 months old, so he is still quite little. Being out in the hot sun and also fuelled by chocolate meant that our kids were slightly feral by the days end.

On my dusk lap (about 6pm) I was chatting to a guy as we rode around. He asked how many laps I was doing, and I said I was heading back to camp after this one. He kind of called me ‘soft’ and suggested that I should do more laps.

I didn’t go into the details with him, but the tasks at hand back at camp were far from soft!

We needed two parents on hand to get everyone fed and into bed. We had to make sure all the soft animals were lined up perfectly, teeth were brushed and a few Peppa pig books were read. A fresh nappy for baby, and after a long time for them to wind down, Tony could go back on the track.

This was great. Kids were asleep and Tony was out racing. The only problem was I was covered in dirt. But the showers were a long way from our camp. I couldn’t leave the camp as the kids were asleep!! I couldn’t go to the toilet or shower. Argh..

dirt-legs