How many motor sport events do you know of where the organizer prays for rain? Well, it started at 2am on the Saturday and didn't stop until after lunch. But that was enough to make the inaugural Rut 100 an outstanding success.
It was a fine balancing act to have something that was a real challenge and yet still ridable but Sean Clarke pulled it off .
Testament to its difficulty were the top riders who fell by the wayside. OTOH, intermediate super-vets (50+) Lester Yates and James Fowlie both completed their three laps.
But the real standout was Chris Birch who very nearly lapped second place to finish with a 40 minute margin despite being held up at the first 180 turn into the bush just after the start. He must have had a good 10 or 20 riders ahead of him on the narrow greasy tracks by the time he got through the bottleneck. But by the end of the first lap he had a three and a half minute margin on 2nd placed Karl Roberts with this margin being extended on every subsequent lap.
Chris completed his 5 laps in three hours and 46 minutes and, while he made it look easy, he did comment afterwards that, "it felt a lot longer than that."
BTW I did 2 laps in just over 4 hours, properly stopped for 5 minutes 6 or 7 times on each lap to catch my breath and had a ball (even that I had a bad dose of the flu).
The Rekluse and a Scotts Steering dampener make it quite easy work, I just need to learn to go faster in the ruts (the race was basically 5 x 20km of deep ruts and mud).
Will return next year fitter and keener.
Kim
