Murray Walters from Scooter Central Le Minz 2009 Murray Walters FAMOUS LAST WORDS FROM CORAZZO SPONSORED RIDER
Murray Walters
When Joe from Scooterscooters in Brisbane kindly offered me a ride at this years Le Minz 24 hour scooter race up in sunny Brisbane I was quick to say "yes". Maybe a little too quick...............When I researched the event a little, I found that it has been run annually over the last few years and competitors take it very, very seriously. So seriously in fact, that recently a young nut case called Omar Khalek broke his own world record during the event by riding 1605 laps of the Parklands track to complete a massive 1059.3 kms in 24 hours single handed.
Now, there was no way I was going to ride for 24 hours single handed, so Joe fortunately entered our SYM Red Devil in the teams event. The teams event is for people of questionable sanity, rather than those with confirmed disorders, that do the solo effort.
My team mates were to be www.scootersales.com.au CEO and chief bottle washer Allen Drysdale, and Brisbane local Lenny, both of whom are in the same peak of physical condition as myself.
The weekend started with a poor decision. Allen and I flew up from Sydney for the 8am sign in at the Parklands track. This called for an alarm clock to wake us up at 3:45 am on the Saturday morning and a rush to the airport for a 6am flight. You would think that two relatively intelligent blokes would consider the long term effects of a 3:45 am wake up call, prior to a 12 noon race start on the same day, with a 12 noon finish the following day. Our flight home was actually delayed which meant neither of us hit the sack until 11pm. Thats 31 hours and only 3 hours sleep in a van next to the track. Not good I assure you.
Once at the track we quickly realized that the steady rain we had been experiencing had actually flooded the track. The organizers amended the track distance and practice began at 10am. All three of us had near misses during practice as we learned how far we could push the tyres in the braking areas and mid corner. The good news was that none of us crashed the scoot during practice while 8 of the 25 scoots entered hit the deck at some stage.
The race was a different matter as it turned out. With steady rain falling, so did many of the riders. Allen got a good start, and soon had us running a solid 8th place after about an hour. It was all about to get a bit too exciting though, as many competitors were using elbows and knees to push their way through the field. Many of these riders were crashing themselves, but when one got it all wrong coming out of the hairpin and clipped Allens right side, it wasn't going to end well. Pushed out onto the grass, Al did a great job of keeping the bike upright at first, but then the front tyre let go and down he went hard on his right shoulder and hip, spewing himself onto the track in front of the pack he had recently slipped past. The trailing scooter had no where to go and ran straight over his helmet.
There was a deathly silence as we ran across the track to see Allen slowly get up a little. His first comment was to get someone on the scoot and keep racing, but there was no need. The race had been stopped for the crash and the Ambulance was called onto the track. Blood was coming from a black and blue right eye. Slowly Allen got his breathe back, and got to his feet. The Ambos taped his eye cut back together and sent Al off to the hospital for a couple of stitches.
Trust our luck, that of the 100 or so crashes that weekend, ours had to be the worst.
Anyway, we pressed on. Lenny took the next hour and a half, and a stand in rider took over Als spot for the remainder of the race.
At around 6pm our scooter stopped cold. The Scootersscooters mechanics went to work and in less than 15 minutes had not only found the problem, but fixed it and got us back on track. Sure we'd dropped from 8th to 23rd but we were still in the race and there was a solid 18 hours to go.
By 130am I was on my third or fourth stint ( I honestly cant remember). You would think that the pace would slow at night, even though the rain had stopped, but no. In fact it definitely got faster and faster as riders pushed the limits of their machines ona drying line.
I had a few front end loses that had me running onto the grass, my brain sending out brown trouser alerts, as I madly tried to keep it all upright. The near misses added up to faster lap times from all of us as we clawed our way back to from a lowly 23rd to 7th and 4th in our class by race end. Not a bad result for three Le Minz virgins.
We were all stuffed.
As we drove back to the airport at the end of the race, Allen nursing a stitched mellon, sore shoulder and hip, myself with cramped back and neck from staying in the tucked position for 8 of the last 24 hours, we reflected on whether we'd want to do another Le Minz if it was run in one weeks time. "No" was the definite answer. Would we do it all again in a years time, well YEs and a big YES was the simply reply. Sure we started the week as three particularly unfit and slighly overweight individuals, but by the end of the weekend we were a close knit unit, pushing the limits of ourselves and our machine. Unfortunately we were still quite unfit and our constant grones for the next 3-4 days were testiment to this.
If you ever get the chance to do the Le Minz 24 hour race DO IT. The racing was fantastic,,but it was the company that made the event. Hats of to Joe, Peter and the team from Scooterscooters, Scootopia and Scooterlife.
published 26/02/2009 |