Dargle 12hr

This was my first 12hr and rode it in a pair.
We came in knowing we would struggle but wanted to finish on the bikes and not sitting on the sideline.
We managed 22 laps and fairly consistent pace up until lap 10 and 11 for me. We ended 12th place in male pairs (9th in category).
I managed to take fastest 3 laps over my team mate and fastest overall by over 15 minutes which was surprising.
I had a nice stack on lap 10 when I was off with the fairies and hit a tree so I stopped for a minute to get my composure before continuing.
Lap 11 I was still getting ready at the tent when my mate came in yelling at me - somehow he knocked 4ish minutes of his 10th lap to put in a cracker of a last lap and I wasn't ready - don't think it made any difference to our placing though as we were 7-8 minutes behind the next place. Last lap was nice and cruisy with no traffic. Was funny though - had a dude catch me on the fireroad heading toward the event centre, he asked if I was pairs or solo. When I said pairs he said thank God I'm not racing you and disappeared behind me again.
The hardest part was backing off in the early stages and letting the 4 man teams, that you know you're much faster than, get away - my competitive edge was hard to resist! I would have liked to punch out 3 or 4 really quick laps to see how fast I could go, but resisted and managed to complete 11 laps.
A 4 man team would have been great for really smashing out some fast laps and competing against each other.
Organisation was excellent and the vibe was awesome. Pity the bonfire was canned due to the wind.
Awesome event.
Ian