Road pics

Went to Canberra the other day and Breachy took some pretty cool pics of me on my new roadie. Here’s a selection.

Chase the Sun Round 1

I raced the Chase the Sun on the weekend. It was freeeezing cold, crazy, windy and then it started raining…I think out of the 20-odd tents that were out there, maybe 5 survived!

I teamed up with Murray Spink to form Team Giant and we put in a good effort I reckon considering I’m only half fit after my broken collarbone and Muzza’s at the end of a long season.

We duked it out with the Torq team of Luke Fetch and Robbie Hucker and the Felt Team of Paul and Neil Van der Ploeg. We punched out 2 laps each with the three of us teams together then on the 6th lap Tim Hucker managed to ride away from Muzza and Neil. So then it was my turn to go to race Paul Vandy and try to catch Luke Fetch up ahead. This is also when it started raining (when it was cold enough to be snowing), so we rode together for that lap but I was struggling. I came through at about the five hour mark and and then it turned out this was going to be the last lap because the organisers were cutting the race short due to the conditions…so I went out again racing Neil who had fresh legs and a non-mud-clogged bike (excuses, excuses…) so I killed myself to stay with him but in the last 500m of the lap I went around a log and he went over it and that was that. I was pissed off at myself for letting that one go but I was really hurting so to pull out the cliche’s, I’d say the stronger team beat me on the day…

We still got 3rd though and put on a fine display of staying positive in the crazy weather. Thanks to Tim Rowe for the pic.

Mont 24hr

The Mont 24hr was MASSIVE, with around 2500 competitors and tents spreading for kilometres across the Sparrow Hill paddocks. The trails were open and flat meaning you had to keep pedalling if you wanted to maintain momentum, but they were well suited to the recreational market that the Mont 24hr attracts and still challenging for the fast guys to continually ride fast.

I planned to ease back in to racing gradually but as always the excitement of the race took over and suddenly I was lining up on the start line to do the first lap, run and all! While I was pretty confident my newly-mended collarbone would hold up to the bumpy stuff again, I was a little cautious through the first sections of trails. I got into the first section of trail in about 5^th place and maintained that over the 18km lap to come through transition with burning lungs but a smile with all those familiar racing memories coming back to me.

After the hectic first lap the rest of the race was a pretty relaxed affair for me, although I did try to get out there as much as I could for fitness. I started by doing laps for a number of teams just to get in a few more laps for training but once the freshness was beaten out of my legs I settled down to punch out as many laps as I could for our 6 man Swell Design Team. A bit of a highlight for me was doing a double lap on Sunday morning, getting in with 40 seconds remaining and sending team mate Adam out on the last lap.

Accompanied by a 7 hour drive each way it was an exhausting weekend for us, but well worth it to catch up with mountain bike mates and get in some fun racing along the way.

Thanks to Swell Design for typically relaxed and fun team vibes. I must say too, my Giant Advanced SL hardtail performed a treat. Getting back on the mountain bike again reminded me just how good that bike is – stiff when you need it but super-smooth over the rough stuff.

Another 24hr race down with plenty of smiles and laughs along the way! Thanks to Dave Bateman and AMB for the pics.