RSS EntriesBeechworth ‘6hrs in the Saddle’
“How many fingers am I holding up?” I had to take my blood stained glasses off to count properly. It looked like three, “three..?” I said, hoping like hell I was right.
I was. Suddenly I didn’t feel so bad. Sure I’d hit my head hard but I wasn’t concussed. Quite the opposite, I was keen to get this last lap over so I could pass the reins over to Niki and we could finish this action-packed day.
The day started like any other endurance race. We rolled in to the event HQ at Beechworth MTB Park at about 8:30am to register and kit up for the 10am start time. While it had been bucketing rain the day before, the morning was looking to be fining up for perfect, albeit wintry, race day conditions.
Our team plan was to do 3 laps of the roughly 30 minutes-a-lap course each. I was first up. It was a pretty relaxed start up the brutal initial fireroad climb and I was sitting in 3rd spot coming in to one of the first berms. Then I crashed. Not too badly but I managed to lose my glasses and my bidon and badly bent my stem. So I battled around the course with a stem pointing in a different direction to the front wheel, cursing my clumsiness, for that first lap. I had a quick stop to straighten my bars at the end of the lap and churned out the next two laps at a pace that I wasn’t particularly proud of.
Three laps down and it was Niki’s turn. Despite my slow laps we were still leading our category and Niki looked to be eager to keep us at the top of the podium. On the second lap she came through with a rear tyre that was rapidly losing air so I swapped her wheel with mine and she headed out again while I went about mending the tyre.
It was my turn to get out there again and, with Niki’s mended wheel on my bike, I really tried to put it in for the next two lap stint. It was a good session for me and I came back in after that hour feeling more confident and happy to be out on the bike. Niki was next up with a single lap and then it was me again.
I was feeling pretty fatigued by this point and decided to knock it back a few notches given that we had a good lead margin. It was about half way through this lap when my race took a turn for the worst. I was cruising down a descent when I caught a girl in front. I called ‘track’ in no particular rush, I was happy to wait for her to find some space on the trail to move over. Instead she seemed to get really nervous and crashed right in front of me. I’m not sure what happened after that but the next thing I remember was that my head felt like it had copped a massive whack and there was blood everywhere. “You’re bleeding” she was saying. Others told me to wait for the First Aid crew. I felt fine so I assured them I’d take it easy, and got back on my bike to complete the lap. Looking back, I think I must have hit the girl’s bike as she crashed and then slammed my head on her frame.
It looked pretty dramatic anyway, provided a great story, and meant I had to get 5 stitches in my head at the local hospital.
Niki and I (Team Giant) ended up taking out the Mixed Pairs category and we both had a whole heap of fun on the Beechworth trails. Finish Line Events put on a great race and it’s obvious why this is many an enduro rider’s favourite event for winter. Another race down and yet more crazy mountain bike stories for the archives!
Thanks to Nic Eagle and Niki for the pics