BAIOCCHI Griffin JT Fossey Cycling’s Ray Griffin and Peter Selkrig will race the UNE 12 Hours in ‘the Piney’ mountain bike race in the solo category this Saturday.
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In February BG JTF brought specialist mountain bike racers Selkrig and Phil Welch in to partner Griffin in the inaugural Dusk to Dawn 12 hour race in Tamworth where they took second place overall.
But in Armidale Selkrig and Griffin will be racing the entire 12 hours solo on a 13 kilometre circuit starting at 10am on Saturday.
“I’m under no illusion about how difficult this is going to be.” Griffin said.
“At the Dusk to Dawn in Tamworth, as a member of a three man team, I was only riding every third lap and got plenty of recovery even if there was no sleep. But this time around it’ll be entirely up to me.”
“The Piney”, as the race is known, is held in the Armidale State Forest on the Rockvale Road, north east of Armidale.
“The most time I have ever spent on a bicycle in a single ride is around 8 hours in training for the Grafton to Inverell so this really will be a test on many levels,” Griffin said.
“Peter Selkrig is the current World 24 Hour Mountain Bike Cross Country silver medalist, so for him this is business as usual but I’ve still got my “trainer wheels” on with mountain biking.”
With a race of this duration nutrition and hydration will be critical to getting through the entire 12 hours.
Up to 10,000 calories could be consumed along with many litres of fluids and for riders this means eating and drinking when they would often prefer not to.
“It’s going to be a case of keeping the energy and hydration sources topped up pretty much from the start and doing your best not to forget to eat and drink,”
Griffin said.