Awaba build day

Today was the final tidy up before the Awaba 8.25 hour in November and it was hot, muggy and freaking hard work. Too many pies and not enough digging has made me a fat white collar worker with soft hands.

We all split up and worked on different parts of the trail with Mark and I working on an old section of fire road between S-bend rd and Little Falcon rd. It had the potential to be a great passing opportunity however only one side of the road had been opened up, so we concentrated on filling in the myriad of holes and benching and benching and benching. We pretty soon became ambitous and added a nice little table top jump. It looks fairly underwhelming in the pictures, but its going to be a hoot when it beds in.

We still had some left over soil so we did a little bit of work on another berm. Not a big one and it isn’t perfect since it needs to accommodate two lines but it is better than it was.

Anyway, here are some pictures since that is what you came here for in the first place.

Mark christening the table top

Side view of the table top

The transition on the back side of the jump is perfect

Looking at the bifurcation point

The run into the jump

Tabletop

The double track with merge point in the distance

More bermage

XXC #9

Exciting day today – XXC issue #9 is out. I love that emag – full of stories of hardcore racers suffering on the otherside of the world. Inspirational stuff.

Things have been a little quiet on the blog front for the last fortnight. Mostly because I have been too busy eating pies to actually write anything. The subsequent weight gain has been rather impressive and so this fatty is going to start riding again fairly soon. There is a build day tomorrow at Awaba so i’ll start my stage 1 weight reduction there.

The Mclovin Loop

This was a first for the cogheads as the Ronnster took us out for a spin on his home trails departing the Taro hotel at 7am. I’m still recovering from the Worlds so elected to drive out there rather than join the cluster who rode to the start line. I may have been convinced if either of my two geared bikes were in any shape to ride, however, the single speed was the weapon of choice today and a 40km road loop running 32×20 didn’t sound like fun to me (particularly with a Nevegal on the rear).

This ride seemed to turn into a swingers outing with lots of bike swapping going on. I probably spent about 20% of the ride on the bike that I started on, while everyone played around on my rigid single speed. Stu took a real shinning to it while Kev put me to shame with one of the longest wheelies I have ever witnessed. It unfortunately means I can no longer blame my bike for my inability to wheelie and will have to face the facts that I don’t have the skillz.

The peleton

I narrowly escaped destroying Stu’s drive line when a stick found a novel way to jam itself in the chain. I was debating whether to just mash and hope for the best when someone behind me yelled for me to stop since the stick had the derailleur at full extension with the chain dragging on the ground!

The trails were great. Probably more firetrail than single track, however there were some sensational pieces of sniggle which made it all worthwhile. Especially the pump track section. It was a section of lumps that must have extended for at least 500m and was so good that I am going to ride out there again just so I can have another go!

After 40k’s, I am totally smoked. I still have a lot of recovering to do and need to give some quality time to the lounge this afternoon.

Super busy wednesday

Oooooh, so much excitement. There really wasn’t enough time to squeeze it all into one day.

HMBA have had an offer by a landholder in Paterson to use his property as the basis for a race to raise money for the Patteson local community. A decade or so ago, there used to be a race called the Patterson classic and it was a real humdinger by all accounts although not many people I have spoken to can remember anything about it.

To be totally honest, I was a little ho-hum about the races prospects as I knew it would require plenty of work to get some form of race track built. I’ve invested a fair whack of time in Awaba and it is sometimes hard to get excited about somewhere else when you are chanelling it all into another outlet.

Well, El presidente, EcoSean and myself went out for a look-see on wednesday morning and met up with the land holders for a guided tour of what as around. The land holders were really lovely people and explained what was on offer and then took us out in the 4×4 to tour the interconnecting network of fire roads.

The more we drove, the more the possibilities of what was on offer dawned on me. Free reign to build trail where-ever we want. No flora and fauna studies. Unlimited parking and camping facilities. On-site running water and electricity! This is an event co-ordinator’s dream!

El presidente and myself took out the bikes for a spin afterwards and continuously stumbled upon glorious single track which has been formed by livestock and Kangaroos. The downside was the ever present lantana which tore me to shreds as we navigated the overgrown sections. So with a quick trim, half the trails are already formed.

It was clear that this was going to be a venue that the club is very interested in pursuing and I am fairly confident that I will be spending quite a bit of time in sunny Paterson chopping away lantana. It might even be used as a social ride venue just as soon as I can get some sort of trail structure started.

Afterwards, there was a build day evening at Awaba which I arrived at scratched, bleeding and worn out. The switchbacks up camelback were put in and actually make a fairly nice piece of trail. There is even an uphill berm which will keep Landon happy. That section of trail will probably be called “The Straw” (since it broke the camels back – I think it is quite punny) and is certainly fairly green at the moment, however it should bed in nicely with a little rain.

To follow on, the cogheads were holding a post-Scott 24 dinner which I was unfortunately quite late too. However, I felt I had earned the beers that evening and quite enjoyed hearing the tales of heroics, suffering and carnage that inevitably come from a team 24 race.

 

Frame bag is done

It came up reasonably well. There are a few little issues that I am not 100% happy with, but I am not unpicking hundreds of meters of seams to fix something that is essentially cosmetic.

It’s pretty big – you could almost fit a pie oven in there! Good thing too, since it’s for the ‘pie eater from Weston’.

 

HMBA social ride

Somehow I got conned to take my bike along to the social ride. I was planning on just hanging out beside the lake in the sunshine but that didn’t eventuate. We had around 10-12 starters for the ride which was a mixture of everything. Grassy parkland beside the lake, technical single track, fire roads, staircases; you name it. I think I will actually take my bike back there another day and do some more exploring – there were a lot of little offshoots that we didn’t ride and i’d like to check them out.

I felt surprisingly good on the bike at a social pace and thoroughly enjoyed myself. I did notice that it took almost no effort and I would reach redline. Any small hill and my pulse would sky rocket and i’d feel zee burn. This is exactly why I didn’t enter the highland fling this year. The hills on that course hurt me far too much last year and judging by how much some of the puny little hills in Wangi treated me, I would be in serious trouble this year.

This morning I am again playing with the sewing machine and working on bikepacking frame bags. This should take my mind off the fact that I can’t ride the BFO social ride (for those of you wondering, the B stands for Big and the O stands for Off). The guys will be out there smashing it up right now and I have always wanted to do a 100 miler. Next time for sure!

 

Where to from here?

I distinctly recall the conversation with Danbot regarding our plans for the future during the weeks leading up to the worlds. We were both weary of the preparation and training as-well as apprehensive to put ourselves through the ringer yet again. We both confessed that we thought this would be our last 24 solo and it would be a fitting farewell to the sport in the biggest race of our lives.

It would be fair to say that I was struggling to find any excitement in the whole circus that is the world solos. This left me feeling pretty uncertain about why. Was I unexcited because I wasn’t enjoying it anymore? Had I grown weary of the 24 solo formatt already? Was I missing something that everyone else could see? Everyone else seemed much more excited about it than I was and lots of people began asking the question I dreaded the most “Are you getting excited yet?” People would look at me like I was an alien when I would answer “No, I just can’t seem to find the excitement”. I felt silly and a little bewildered; after all, it is a pretty special opportunity.

Now in the wash up of it all, I have stumbled upon a few truths that were pretty obvious at the time but are interesting to me none the less. The biggest of which is: I wasn’t excited because I was so calm. Nervous energy is one of the biggest contributors to excitement and since I was feeling reasonably well prepared, at no point was I really nervous. In fact, I felt completely calm and in control even standing at the start line. I probably won’t get particularly excited about races any longer, but it isn’t due to a lack of enjoyment – I still love doing them. I have just replaced the pre-race buzz, with pre-race cool. That probably sounds a little self indulgent, perhaps conceited, but self discovery is a nice journey and that is certainly part of why people do 24’s.

Secondly, I am keener than ever to keep riding and doing big events. Amazingly, so is Dan. All the pre-race weariness has been blown away and I am left to figure out exactly what comes next. I don’t really want to spend the rest of my life doing solo races on Mt Stromlo. That has been done to death now. So new venues will be key. The Merida 24hr in Brisbane looks like a strong possibility. Then there are international races. Perhaps a 24 in Rotorua and even an appearance at the 24 worlds wherever they might be held next year.

Bikepacking has really gotten under my skin. Especially the idea of self supported multi day enduros. If only we had some in Australia. Mr Eds coast to coast ride was a good starting point and heres hoping that we can start to build some kind of underground no prize – all glory race scene in Aus.

So with a distinct lack of these sort of events locally, there only real choice is to head to the US where they have more of them than they know what to do with. Tour Divide has garnered a lot of press lately and looks set to grow exponentially, however, it is a challenge worthy of traveling half way around the world to participate in. Then there’s the CTR (Colarado Trail race) – high altitude silliness for days on end. Sure sounds like fun.

So ultimately, the world is my oyster at the moment which is probably a good thing for anyone reading this blog since it will surely include may tales of things going right, things going wrong, high jinx and suffering.

 

 

Recovering

Well, This particular 24 has really smoked me. On monday, everything hurt. On tuesday, everything hurt. Today, everything hurts but not as much. I am pretty sure tomorrow will be pretty good although it will be my first day back at work and it is going to be HARD.

I get worn out if I spend longer than 10 minutes on my feet, or have to think which is

In fact, I am so buggered, I can hardly be bothered finishing this post.

Goodnight.

Some stray photos

 

Finish

 

 

Hows my 'truckers arm'?

 

World 24 solo champs: wrap up

(Warning: Very long post for a very long day)

At long last it is all over. It has been a long time coming and it has been a complete rollercoaster for the last couple of months, however, it has all been worth it. As you have no doubt read from my wonderful wife’s posts, I finished 6th in my age group which I guess makes me the 6th biggest sand-bagger in the 30-35 age group since I wasn’t quite brave enough to enter the elites. In hindsight, elite men is probably where I should have been however that takes a giant leap of self confidence that I am yet to learn.

The setup and race prep went extremely well and wifey and I worked together to have everthing as organized as we could make it. I let her make the calls since this part of the world was her domain and she was in charge here.

We watched the elite men start and cheered for the Aussies before racking the bikes and heading for the start line.