Saturday, March 27, 2010

Port Macquire12hr

Well last Friday saw the Yellow Vito van loaded up with a couple of Carbide SL, a hand full of AY Up lights, myself and Chris and a trip to Port ahead of us. We made it down to Port by about 9pm and set up camp right next to the 4 man AA team on the oval at Telegraph point. Chris had been telling me all about this race for a year so I was pretty stoked to be there, Chris yells out me come and check out the this corner then another then another by the time we thought we should head back we were about half way around the track and by 1am sat morning we had mad it around the course [Walking]. We were in for a treat this track was great.

The Port 12hr starts at 12 midnight Saturday night, so on Saturday morning we headed out for a practice lap, what can I say all of us were just loving it, every corner was well groomed, nice burms , a couple of log drops and a spine ride thrown in for fun. This was a course you could enjoy riding for a full 12hrs. The course was about 9.6km long


After a full day of being awake, you would think I would be ready for a sleep. No I couldn't sleep and by the time midnight came around, I was on the start line and yawning my head off. The gun went and I found myself alongside Fitzy into the first corner then I settled into third position for the first half of the lap. Then as you would expect English came screaming through with a team rider in tow. So the start of the race went like this for the first couple of laps and I was pushing pretty hard. After about 4hrs I was hurting my head wasn't in a good place and when I asked mickers how I was travelling, he told me I was in 5th but Jason was in 3rd. So what did I want out of this race? to see how I was travelling and have a bit of competition to push me. Well I got it I thought to myself, harden the F up got back on my bike and said to myself no more middle ring. Big ring it all the way and try and real myself back into podium contention.



So as you could imagine I kept chipping away trying to put consistent lap times in until I found 3rd. I caught him within the first km of the lap and decided to sit behind him and try and figure out where I was quicker then him and where I needed find some pace. The plan worked apart from a stack along the way I rolled into transition just behind him. I quickly grabbed some food jumped back on the bike and headed out slightly in front. I put the hammer down and kept looking over my shoulder to see if I could see his lights. I didn't see him so I kept hammer down.


As morning was upon us English was ready to lap me for the first of many[ Machine]. The rest of the race went on the same and I kept trying to increase my lead. I was in no position to catch 2nd and English was way out in front. So by the time 11:40 rocked around I was about 45min in front and with a long drive ahead of me I decided I was happy with what I had done.


Achievements : just over 200km completed, 20 laps out of 21 done in the Big ring.

All up the track is sick, definitely worth the drive to race on English home track.

Big thanks to Tomac for my Carbide SL it's wicked, Ay Up for the best lights ever and to Onza for keeping me glued to the track[Canis]

4 comments:

rach edwards said...

Big ring beast!! nice work bekkers.

Sean Bekkers said...

Thanks Mate. How you been?

Unknown said...

Congrats Sam Bekkers. Me and Clare were gonna head out but couldn't be bothered cause of the rain.

CrummyMTB said...

200km! Oowww, well done!


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