At the weekend Paul and I flew up to Whitehorse in the Yukon Territory to race bikes in 24 daylight... sounds pretty good eh? First, I need to thank some people. Dave - who took all the photos, Andrea - who not only raced but let us mess up her house and eat all her food for four days, Mike - who joined a team for a 24 hour race with two wierdo English guys from Vancouver who he'd never met and wanted to call the team "Fig Rolls Racing", Robin and everyone else who played a part in looking after us on race day.
So, mountain bike racing in the Canadian Arctic... that's got to be a bad idea, right? You'd be surprised how much of a good idea it really is. First, forget the polar bears and the icebergs. It's summer time so were're talking dry, dusty trails and sunshine to midnight. It got a bit gloomy for a couple of hours from about 3am, but lights are banned anyway... so who cares? When I came out to start my 2am lap there was a pretty enthusiastic party in full swing in the timing area with lycra-clad XC racers dancing around. You really can't argue with that.
Racing machinery ranged from boutique singlespeed 29ers (brought in by Alaskans mainly) to a guy on a Specialized Demo 9... which I imagine would have been lucky to weigh in at much under 50 pounds. The best bike was the organiser-provided "Vomit Comet", a pink spray painted Miyata shopping bike, converted to singlespeed with an inflatable man attached to the back. The privilege for piloting this vehicle around the 17km course was each lap counting double. I got chased by it on the singletrack for a while, there's not much better motivation than that to pedal harder.
Lap times ranged from 36 minutes for the XC superheroes to 1 hour plus, the course gave plenty of opportunities for big-ring enthusiasts to blast along fire road and equally a long stretch of twisty-turny singletrack that was honestly more fun than should be allowed. Mechanicals were few, Mike got a puncture and I had a comedy crash overcooking a dusty berm... but otherwise the gear and the bodies all held together.
The rules for finishing were a little different to the UK events like Sleepless... if you didn't make it back through the line by 24:00, you lap didn't count. The guy who came through at 24:00:46 could have been said to be a little disappointed... but he got a big cheer at least.
We got a total of 26 laps, putting us 4 laps behind the winners of the (surprisingly competitive) mixed 4 person team category. We would have got a better overall position if we had entered the 8 person team category (with just the 4 of us). Them's the breaks I guess. The winning team of 8 guys got something ridiculous like 34 laps but 26 was just fine for us.
Results will allegedly be published on the
icycle sport website at some point. You can read about the event on the
24 hours of light website. If you happen to be swinging by Canada's great white north around solstice time next year, I recommend you check it out.
Killer arrived with promised marquee which when combined with mats gazebo made for a great base. It was soon filled with junk (sorry Killer - spare parts/incomplete bikes) 
and the team settled in to the regular routine of taking turns at the laps. Some fast laps were got in and Killer was doing well (up to the top 20/ 130) but then the rain set in... The course soon deteriorated into a mud bath in places but despite the rain was fun to ride apart from the monster Kenda climb.
