We had plenty of time to set up camp and fit in a super-fun daylight ride around the almost twelve mile course before the atmospheric dusk descended and the temperatures started to fall. I was volunteered to do the slightly longer first lap melee – apparently as my bones don’t break very easily - so I togged myself up a few layers and lurked around the rear of the start pack in true soloist fashion (hard habit to break!).




Here’s a great shot by Mr M of the arena lights circling through the trees – it was a rather surreal experience, something akin to being in the front row at a Deep Purple concert (Oops! Showing my age!).

Rather conscious of the fact that I probably wasn’t in possession of the required zip in my pace for shorter distances I did my best to try and zoom round my first lap. It did feel to me a bit like zooming although in reality I guess this is clearly a relative perception! Anyhow it wasn’t too shameful and it was great fun to have the excitement of the changeover to James and handover from Mr M and also having the chance to be part of the never-sleeping camp scene in between laps that of course I don’t normally get the chance to enjoy when chugging round solo.

We were all enjoying pretty consistent laps with nice smooth handovers and after a steady start (courtesy of yours truly!) we were rather pleased to be gradually making not too shabby progress up the leader board. At around the halfway point the low cloud decided to clear and opened up a fantastic vista of starry skies although unfortunately the price you pay for this is what felt like nigh-on freezing temperatures and in between laps I was wearing almost every item of dry clothing I could find in the van!

There really isn’t anywhere else that I have ridden so far that is (and gives you backache) like Thetford and I particularly love riding here in the dark as with a bit of imagination (OK for me maybe ALOT of imagination) you can rail through the trail just like Rossi.



The tight twisty single-track here is also somewhere that you DEFINITELY need a light on your helmet and I was lucky enough to be able to run the hot-off-the-press USE Exposure Lights Joystick Maxx. I’ve had the original race bar light and joystick for a while now but boy does this baby take it to a new level.

I only ran it on the ride setting (in theory 10 hours run time) but it was certainly well bright enough for this course and a very noticeable improvement on the original.

Dawn finally came around and with it, thankfully, some slightly warmer temperatures as by this time I had actually run out of dry clothes. Blimey I can’t believe I’ve actually written that, surely no self-respecting girlie EVER runs out of clothes!!! In the end we had stealthily crept up a few places during the night and James did a storming final lap to bring us home in a creditable 5th spot in mixed overall and 3rd spot in the trios.

This originally quite cult fringe event has now gotten so big that it’s attended by most of the racing big-hitters and sold out early but it fortunately still manages to retain its fun, folksy atmosphere and most importantly it still hasn’t actually rained on race night!

It was such an enjoyable end to my longest season so far but now it’s all over I have very mixed emotions. Racing friends that I probably won’t see much of again until next year and the rather yucky prospect of starting winter training when we haven’t actually even had a summer. Anyhow, at least I have a bit of a break now before I have to start worrying about digging out my winter booties.

Time for reading, time for thinking and hopefully time for Fish ‘n’ Chips by the sea……..