Published 28 June 2004

Mountain bike 24 hour relay "Mountain Mayhem"
UK

We just got the news from UK that the Kickbike team which took part in the 24 hour relay "Mountain Mayhem" for Mountainbike finished at rank 60 in a field of 400 teams!
An outstanding result for Alpo Kuusisto (FIN), Rick van Camp (USA) and Greame (UK). Alpo said that the slow and hilly course "helped" them as it is easier to run up a muddy mountain with a Kickbike than with an mtb.
This Mountain Mayhem event was organised 25 and 26 of June 2004, location: the border of UK and Wales. The Kickbike team took part in the race whith only 3 people, while most Mountainbike teams had 4 members. If you want to compete next year then mail then IKSA contact in the UK Pete Sheterline.


Mountain Mayhem 2004
Kicking mountain bike ass!
a full report of Pete about the event:

Kicking mountain bike ass! Saab-Salomon Mountain Mayhem is one of the best and biggest 24hour mountain bike challenges in the UK attracting over 2000 pro, semi pro and serious riders to this testing event plus spectators and back-up teams in an enormous tented city of several thousand tents. The objective is to finish as many laps as possible over the 24hour period from 2pm Saturday until 2pm Sunday. The course this year was a seriously tough 10mile route over many different terrains in the fine setting of Eastnor Castle Deer Park near Ledbury, climbing a total of 1600ft with technically demanding stretches both up and downhill. The main category of entrants are 4 person relay teams plus about 50 or so solo entrants who ride the entire 24h - woowee! For the very first time ever it also included 'Kickbike Magic', a 3 man relay team riding a standard production XC Kickbike. The riders included Alpo 'the beast' Kuusisto record holder in many categories, one of Europe's fastest riders Rick van Camp and Graeme Lloyd, a triathlete who has been smitten by the Kickbike bug, from Rugby UK. Hannu Vierikko was due to join the team, but had to pull out at short notice with a fractured foot from running and broken ribs (from beating his chest). A 3 person team in this event is very tough. So, we had 2 standard XCs, three men, general skivvy (me) and the mountain!

The weather on the set-up Friday was fantastic, the ground firm from many weeks of no significant rain and the going expected to be fast. Saturday morning brought a different story, lowering fast-moving cloud from the west with, as everyone could clearly see, buckets of rain in them, but - no rain in the race morning, just menace. The starter's gun released several hundred lycra-clad bodies out onto the course to run the traditional best part of 1km 'Le Mans' start to their bikes. Alpo, who was our first rider, got into the massed bodies at the start, but amazingly was 2nd to his bike - no mean achievement; which however was somewhat diminished by somebody having moved Alpo's Kickbike a few metres away from where Alpo left it - presumably to get their mountain bike in, which conceded a few frustrating minutes of hunting before the get-off. Simultaneously the heavens opened.

The first lap was not too bad, initially dry ground and any mud washed off by the heavy rain, but the the second and onwards got progressively muddier until it was sometimes difficult to see either bike or rider behind the thick layer of mud and matted grass. Whilst the Kickbike has no gears to foul up, great clods of mud had to be wrenched out of the brake fixtures, armpits and anywhere else sticky high-speed mud and grass gets to! Alpo's first lap was just over 1h 5mins - absolutely fantastic and after Rick's 2nd 1h 12min in rather claggier conditions, we were an utterly amazing 40th out of 252 all male teams of MOUNTAIN BIKES! In the top 20% which includes all the pro and semi-pro teams.

The heavy rain stopped to be replaced by intermittent showers, and as you can imagine, conditions steadily deteriorated throughout the night with about 400 bikes per hour riding the course, reaching their worst (in terms of depth, texture and stickiness of mud) at about 2am. The team battled on switching to 2 laps a rider (that really needs guts) throughout the night to allow a longer rest and recovery periods and to get a few minutes sleep. You can tell from the lap times* www.ssmm.co.uk that things were seriously tough. Fuel consisted of chilli, rice, beans, bacon sandwiches, bananas, caramel bars (one of which is still duct taped to the entirely mud-caked race bike in my back yard at this very moment!) pineapple juice, tea and a well known caffeinated fizzy drink provided free. All this along with encouragement, beatings (where necessary) and bike cleaning by the cheery team manager, Pete Sheterline.

Riders came in with serious mud and wet problems, very few replacement clothes (unlike the pro and semi-pro teams with showers, fresh gear each lap) so after washing off most of the mud at cold taps and rinsing out gear at same, jump into sleeping bags for a while to stay warm and then literally blood-curdling screams when wet and muddy gear had to be put on again at some unearthly 3am or whatever. Nessun dorma. The night brings its own special problems at every level, particularly of course, negotiating this very slippery, sticky and steep course with only a couple of handlebar lights. Everything is doubly difficult and there were many many spills bumps and worse out there in the dark. For an observer, the sight of these puny battling lights dancing through the nighttime woodland rain is quite a sight. All in all, a very tough night magnificently handled by the riders.

Dawn came like a gift from the gods (it's not difficult to see how our wet, cold and hungry ancestors worshipped the sunrise and attributed mystical significance to whatever ensured its continuation) it brought hope, it proved we could survive a difficult night. Even more amazing, we kept in the top 25 or percent of the field throughout. The dawn also brought some much needed sunshine. The riders were really tired by now, cramps etc. but the going went dryer through a very claggy thick mud stage, but eventually, as the sunshine started to seriously dry the course, to a very fast track - lots of smoothed out mud drying to a quick surface. So despite the tiredness, some very fast lap times recorded in the last 6 hours. We completed 16 laps (see official results at www.ssmm.co.uk) and finished (fittingly, Alpo riding the last lap) in 63rd position, utterly unexpected and equally to the amazement of bike riders who are definitely not used to being overtaken by a scooter! (and many were on many occasions). We were seriously competitive and beat MOST of the non-pro/semi-pro teams - how about that!

Last but not least, we used a single production XC Kickbike for at least 2/3rds of the race - no special tweaking, no replacement bits, no selection of bits even. Quite remarkably no maintenance was needed at all apart from clearing handfulls of mud and no significant technical problems were encountered during the race. So 160 miles of sticky, muddy, bone-jarring course effectively on one machine - thumbs up to Hannu Vierikko, Kickbike designer and QA guru.

Patrick Adams, the founder and organiser of this event, personally greets each finisher - a nice gesture to round off a splendidly organised and challenging event - well done Patrick. So kickers of the world, we want to put in more than one footbike team next year, probably same approximate date (last weekend in June) and same venue - this should be a major event in everyone's diary for next year. Start now and get 4 riders together for your team entry to Mountain Mayhem 2005!
WE'LL BE BACK! Pete Sheterline team manager and nice bloke

*NB - Rick lost his timing chip early on and some of his laps were given to Alpo by mistake on the official results list. The actual riders and times for each lap are given below

Kickbike Magic Official Results
Lap Rider Time
1 Alpo Kuusisto 01:05:36
2 Rick Van Camp 01:14:01
3 Graeme Lloyd 01:35:18
4 Alpo Kuusisto 01:15:21
5 Alpo Kuusisto 01:12:45
6 Rick Van Camp 01:15:51
7 Rick van Camp 01:43:27
8 Graeme Lloyd 02:22:54
9 Alpo Kuusisto 01:37:52
10 Alpo Kuusisto 01:46:06
11 Rick van Camp 01:39:21
12 Rick van Camp 01:45:56
13 Alpo Kuusisto 01:19:00
14 Graeme Lloyd 01:30:16
15 Rick Van Camp 01:13:44
16 Alpo Kuusisto 01:28:13



Alpo Kuusisto 'clean on route'....