Six-hour race challenges body and mind
Henry Jaine says riding around Rabbit Island for six hours can be as much of a mental challenge as it is physical.
Particularly when you are completing 22 laps of the same course and you are doing it alone.
‘‘You just have to keep fuelled up, keep eating and drinking, and once you can see the end of it it’s all right,’’ he said.
‘‘There’s a point you reach when you know you’ve only been riding for two and a half hours but you feel like you’ve been there forever.
‘‘But once you get to the end it’s pretty rewarding, especially to do it solo.’’
Jaine, who works at Village Cycles, won the solo men’s category at the 6hr Mid Winter Breakout mountainbike race at Rabbit Island on Sunday.
He was only caught by Team Skoda Racing’s Kieran Hambrook, Finn Black, Daniel Reid and Brad Tilby on the final lap, the four-person team posting a time of 5hour 50min 11sec for the 22 laps, 71 seconds ahead of Jaine.
‘‘I think I stopped once to get some food but other than that had all my food on me and had a bottle on the go, so I never knew how far back they were,’’ he said.
‘‘At one stage I had a really big lead but by the end of it they were putting out fresh guys and they pretty much did as fast laps as they did at the start of the day.’’
Although Jaine acknowledged that the event is aimed at getting families active on their bikes, his motivation for entering was the challenge of riding alone, and getting six hours of ‘‘solid racing’’ under the belt is the best training he could ask for.
Other winners on Sunday included solo women; Jacqui Keay, mixed team; Phone Home (Pogo McAuley, Todd McAuley, Mandy Medcalf-Stephens, Wayne Leighton), parent and child; Foord (Benjamin Foord, Luke Foord), women’s team; Wildings (Jacqui Nathan, Zoe Nathan), corporate team; Wayne Pool Builder (Wayne Pool, Gisela Purcell, Steve Wilson, Neil Green), couples; Just Friends (Connor MacLeod, Yazmin Shipley), and junior team; Bad Idea (Geoff Lart, Kaio Lart, Lennard Mund, Fin Slack, Joshua Smith-Clare).