...and that's it, season over! Dusk Til Dawn was the usual customary end-of-year ball - I'm sure something will happen one day to make it less than perfect (raining frogs? plague of locusts?) but it just goes from strength to strength and is probably my favourite event of the year. Over 500 lovely friendly riders, a fantastic course (and I mean *really* fantastic - the Thetford singletrack is just perfect, all polished berms and swooping, sinuous trails through the trees), spangly 'mood lighting', one of the best thought-out solo pits I've seen (no tedious schlepping of kit across a field - just park up and work from the car), gallant work from Timelaps in the face of twelve hours of trying to read number boards behind blinding HIDs, just enough trade support to keep those not riding amused, fed, and spannered throughout, and above all the loveliest small-town atmosphere that no other event seems to manage to replicate. The Thetford MTB Racing crew work so hard and achieve such great things; a huge, huge thank you to them for all their tired, tireless efforts and the plentiful original thinking that makes Dusk Til Dawn so special.

The ladies solo field was the biggest of any ultra-endurance event this year (did you know that any evemt over 4 hours long is classed as ultra-endurance? No, neither did I - I've done commutes that are longer than that!), and it was great to see all 14 grrrls complete at least the required 2 laps to finish. For various reasons I'd really wanted to win this one; I don't usually get all fired up and aggressive about a result, because I'm mostly racing against myself but I decided to change tack from my usual softly-softly approach and ride very hard indeed hard from the off. Suffice to say, it worked - after red-lining for 3 laps, I settled into a slightly more sustainable pace but still found myself attacking all the singletrack sections with gleeful fury and going far, far, far faster than I ever have done in an enduro before. The threatened rain never materialised and we rode the whole night long under starry skies (with the occasional stray one shooting overhead); it got very cold indeed (but then it wouldn't be Thetford if it didn't); first a battery and then a light failed (the latter through numpty user error); the iPod threw a gurgly fit at being asked to cope with twelve hours stuffed down my shorts and the whumps made eating near-impossible but heavens, was it fun. At one point I dropped into a particularly swoopy bit and suddenly lost all sense of direction; like being thrown into a tumbledrier, there was no up, no down, no left or right, just the faith that if I followed the swirling ribbon of dirt it would take me where I wanted to be going. And it did - twelve hours, 138 miles and nowhere-near-enough-food later I spun over the line to a beer, some terribly unflattering photos and a finish as not only first solo woman, but also third in the solo men. That'll keep me quiet for a while, then. Rock on...

Jenn

Out on the road bike this evening for a last prime-the-legs ride before Dusk Til Dawn. Feeling slightly sad now that this is the last chance to go properly fast for a few weeks - recovery from long, hard races takes weeks, rather than days, and I know now that I shouldn't expect to be contesting any roadsign sprints for at least a month. Which is a shame, 'cause I really do love riding the road bike...

Jenn

And so the night-time commutes begin. Lupine, 2 x rear lights (lesson learnt), reflective stuff all over everything, mudguards and twice as much food as I'd usually take (it's dark, therefore it's cold, therefore more cake, right?), and out over the Downs for a long-way-home to remember. Clouds of kamikaze moths, curious bats doing fly-bys, badgers, deer, glorious sunsets, spooky trees and flickering probably-nothing-but-could-be-anything shadows playing mind games.... First of many. Hurry up autumn, you're overdue.

Jenn

Jenn

A salutary lesson in preparation and a slight bite on the arse for being cocky. Went for 'short' night ride on North Downs with a friend last night; and realised that whilst I know my properly local trails well enough to be able to get around them with my eyes mostly shut, the same doesn't work when you try and transpose routes that you only ride on the wheels of locals on sunny Sunday afternoons onto wet, dark, windy Tuesday nights the day after a raging storm's passed through and switched all the trails around (and don't even mention the light failures, lack of food, and hour-long wait for the train). Black dog, anyone...?

Jenn