Back to defend their 2008 Twentyfour12 title the XCracer.com 29ers demonstrated their win last year was not a fluke and after 24hours of hard racing against the top teams of the Trek 69ers and Morvelo-Exposure came through to score a victory with a 12 minute gap.

The 29ers have been lying low on the UK Enduro scene this year, instead of racing the other big UK events, our riders decided to warm up to Twentyfour12 with some racing in the Spanish Equivalent - 24Doce. This was the ideal event to warm up with as the temperatures were well into the 30’s. 

Whilst not the best course we have ridden at Newnham Park, Plymouth what we had was a great route that would stay ridable through the weekend and beyond. Even though the rain started in typical 24hr fashion about 10am on the Sunday the riders were not coming back with stories of unridable trails. Yes some of the roots got a little slippy, but that's where the 29er wheels come into their own.

With a squad of five, National Champ Silver Medal winning Phil Morris, James "Midlands XC" Hampshire, Matt Lewis, Alex "Ag" McNicol and myself Charlie Wigfall we thought we had a good enough team to take the win again. This year the main competition would come from the Trek 69ers (2nd last year) and Morevelo-Exposure (promotors of the Brighton Big Dog). As always we used Phil as our lead out man and after his first two laps he came back through in 1st places. Over the Saturday afternoon we stuck to the typical 1 lap rotation jostling with Morvelo-Exposure for 1st. It soon became clear that, as the lazy XCracer.com 29ers Team Manager, I was a good 7 minutes slower that Phil, this was not good news as I was wiping out any advantage that the team built up. Things changed in the night as I took an unplanned 6 hour break, when I had to take the Wife and my 8 month old son to a local B&B because he was not sleeping due to generator next door. My absence allowed the team to build a good lead over 2nd and 3rd, which through the late morning drizzle we held to win by 12 minutes.

Newnham is a great course that really suits the larger 29er Wheels. This was clearly demonstrated, by all three steps of the Podium having riders with "Big Wheels".

As Keith Bontrager said during the rider briefing, you dont win the race on the first lap. This I always find is true as over the course of the 24hrs the team battled through a long list of mechcanicals and issues. It's these things that can lose you the race, but we have a strong team that can work round these problems and everyone comes together as a unit to ensure we reach the podium.