What a course! These trails, only a few kilometres from the Victorian town of Castlemaine, are seriously fun. The organisers did a good job to get the most from the area with a heap of fun, flowing descents, a few technical drops and climbs, and generally plenty to keep you interested for six hours. All up there were well over 300 competitors at the race, a great turnout!
I entered in the solo category for the first time this year and felt great from the gun. The problem was I was having so much fun in the first few hours that I forgot to eat much, or drink. There was one really bumpy descent which also caused me to lose my bottle on a few laps so I was basically doing everything wrong (and was only half aware of it…).
At about the three hour mark I was still in the lead but Phil Orr was breathing down my back and I was getting all those familiar feelings of having not looked after myself in the first few hours.
At about the three and a half hour mark I was starting to struggle and Phil put in a solid attack that had him out of sight within a few sections of track – impressive. I limped around feeling a bit stupid and then, just as I was heading into the transition, my pedal fell apart.
So I stood around for a while and eventually a nice young bloke allowed me to borrow one of his pedals. I headed out again having refuelled and felt pretty good although, having lost over 20 minutes, my race-head had well and truly fallen off!
So that was it for me, I decided to cut my losses and wait until the next race (there are plenty coming up!) Well done to Phil for smashing it at an awesome pace for the whole six hours and taking a well deserved victory.
It was a great day, the trails were simply awesome! It was also good to get back into a bit of solo racing after racing countless six hour events in teams – all those familiar memories came flooding back!
Thanks to Stephen Rowe for the pics and thanks to my sponsors for another fun day on the bike.
“Heavy winds have wreaked havoc across the state with roof-tops being blown of houses. Melbourne is expected to receive the full brunt of the storm front at about 9am today…”
I listened to the 7am news on the radio as a drove to the 4th round of the Chase the Sun Series in Lysterfield, east of Melbourne, looking at trees being blown into the horizontal position alongside the express way and wondering what the hell I was doing! Surely they’d cancel the event.
But I arrived and everyone was meddling around, unpacking their cars and preparing for the race so it looked like it was going to go ahead. In fact, when I got out of the car, it was windy but dry and not too cold. It mightn’t be so bad after all.
The start was scheduled for 830am but, due to the track being covered by falling trees and debris, it had to be delayed an hour for the organisers to clean it up as best they could.
So the race got underway and Murray got our team off to a good start sitting with the teams Torq and Felt. Olympian Dan McConnell was riding for another Torq team and managed to put daylight between him and second place on the first few laps but the familiar teams – Giant, Felt and Torq – were locked in a pretty close battle.
We decided to do double laps each and at the end of Murray’s double the other two teams had opened up a bit of a gap on our team but it was still a long way to go and I wasn’t too concerned.
As I set out on my lap it started to rain. Throughout my two laps the rain just got heavier and the track quickly turned to a boggy mess in sections while I was getting colder and colder. It wasn’t fun.
I’d been struggling on the bike the week prior with heavy legs and battling a cold so I wasn’t too excited about pushing myself into the red in cold and wet conditions – especially if it made me even sicker! So I was less than enthusiastic when I finished my double and I wasn’t alone.
After a chat to the Felt and Torq teams, we decided this day wasn’t worth getting sick for, and we all agreed to call it a day! So that was that. Murray came in and I told him the good news and we packed up our soggy gear and headed home.
It did leave me with a bit of an empty feeling driving away from the race without having seen the event through but as I write this I’m healthy, don’t feel too fatigued and I’m looking forward to the block of racing in the next few months!
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