For the first time since the Mountain Mayhem veterans could remember, the MM weekend dawned fairly bright and sunny, clearly switching places with Bristol Bike fest. Two club teams took part this year, Graham Haller, Jason Smith, David Koryczan and Mike Skidmore in the Sports Men category and Ewan McGregor, Mike Saunders, Matt Watkins, Chris Springett and me in the Mixed category. Luckily for my team I was a BOGOF, i.e they got a 5th team member for free which meant longer rest times and less riding. Yay!!

For me, it was my first Mayhem ever and it was awesome. There were around 450 teams, with an incredible total of over 2500 competitors and it certainly felt like it when you were trying to find your tent pitch in the dark!

The event started at 2pm on the Saturday afternoon, with the first member of each team sprinting a mega 800 metres to the bike station where the riding began. A rather harsh beginning really, running that kind of distance in cycling shoes is not funny! It certainly made the rest of us think, note to oneself, do not volunteer for the first lape. The course itself was 9 miles of continuous cross country riding, with plenty of mud, hills, rocks and forest trails to keep the mind focused and to give the legs a real physical challenge. This included one hell like Kenda climb which seemed to go on for hours. And hours and hours. Almost as bad as listening to Celine Dions 'The heart will go on'. Ok, so not quite but you get the idea. As with Bristol bike fest, the the idea for each team was to get as many laps in as possible. And as with Bristol Bike fest there were plenty of crazy fools going solo. And then there was the team on unicycles. Madness!

Team tactics are always an interesting factor for these events. The Sports men team opted to ride double laps thought the night, switching back to single laps after sunrise. The Mixed team (wisely) continued with a single lap strategy goodness only knows how people managed 2 night laps. As it was it was pretty impossible to catch any shut eye but I guess eating breakfast (tried and trusted pasta) at 4am is all part of the fun! One member did get some sleep however. Having popped to the loo at 5am, young Skidmore was nowhere to be found by 5.30am. Or 6am when his team mates were anxiously trying to get him to take on the next lape. Then my phone goes off with a text message: 'Mate, I may have fallen asleep on a portaloo'. Priceless!

I have to say though that the event was incredible. Everyone gave their all and the team spirits were constantly high, despite cramps, night lights failing, people falling asleep on portaloos, others having massages rather than saying to team mates they were back – the list goes on! Seriously though, it was just amazing. And not one of us had a (serious) off or a technical, not one single flat tyre between us!

After 24 hours the Sports Men team had managed to complete 21 laps between them, putting them in 103rd position out of 229 teams. They also, due to their combined age being over 120, came 29th out of the 79 veteran teams, not bad at all! We however, with our single lap tactics, achieved 25 laps, putting us in 19th position out of 123 teams. Pretty jolly good! The fastest lap went to speed demon Chris Springett with a time of 51 minutes, with Matt Watkins fast on his trail.

All in all, a great time was had by all and it was fantastic to see friends and family join us for the event. We reckon Matt's 3 month year old (complete with his 'Go Daddy go!' t shirt) will be up there next year. Roll on Mountain Mayhem (and all that free shower gel) 2010!