Kona Sleepless in the Saddle
Hot Summer Nights
Neil Atkinson (Boys in the Buff) / 30.08.2007
Andy Wriggly arrived first at the camp site early on Friday evening, as soon as he got there he got a bit upset as marshals were telling him what to do and where to camp! But as usual he flexed his tree trunk thighs and the marshals gave in! So he and his family settled in to their first night of a 2 week holiday in the south of England….. yep he told his wife they had to pop in somewhere on the way down to have a small race!
Me, Trottie and Bucky arrived about 1 hour later, as you will know well over a 1000 people enter this race and it is like finding a needle in a hay stack. But we called Andy and he said do not worry I will stand up and flash a light! NOT A CHANCE! 30 minutes later we saw him with a flashing tikka on his head, and he greeted us by saying “I told you it would work�!
I have never been so chilled out before a race! Trottie and I had mugs of tea and chatted for hours in his camper van before we emerged to see a cloudless day! 2pm (race start) was closing fast and we thought we had better think of a team strategy – 10 seconds later we had a plan - go as fast as possible!
The course was (to start with) not that inspiring, and they took the word “mountain biking� to it’s limit as the first quarter was racing round the edge of some fields (not a mountain in sight), but we still went hell for leather at it!
After a couple of laps we realised that the course was actually OK. It was full on and fast riding, our laps varied from 35 mins to 49 mins (both of which were Trotties). He had some excuse that he had semi-slicks on at 2am in the morning when it started raining and could not stay on his bike as the hard packed surface turned into an ice skating rink. I took the batten of him after that lap, and he did come in with some big muddy slide patches down each side. Still no sympathy!
SleepMonsters
