It was a weekend of a few firsts for me. It was my first legitimate mountain bike race (NRMA Careflight doesn’t count), first time riding in Wingello State Forest and the first time riding my mountain bike over the 50km mark in single outing. The day started early, around the 5am mark, so I could meet the guys at Pheasants Nest at 6:30am. I suggested we meet later after doing some research on whereis, but everyone was still keen for a 6:30am meet up. Lucky Jing was running late like always
as we ended up getting to Wingello around 1.5hrs before the race was even meant to start, it would have been longer if Jing was on time. Offcourse I had to make the most of the situation and rub in the “I told you so” a few times before we headed off to register and find something to do until the race started.
As the time ticked away we all started to get ready and thought it would be a good idea to warm up, this was another first for me. After a few KM in an easy spin, I decided to do a last minute check went over all my gear and realised I forgot to put a new C02 canister in my bag and had to spend 9$ for a new one (what a rip).
The race was self seeded so I parted ways with the other guys as they head to the front as I’m way slower than them. You always hear people whinging about traffic in races, it’s something that I thought would never really bothers me, and so I had no issue starting up the back. The organisers planned it pretty well with the first loop being 9km of fast flowing fire trail so the race whippets could stretch their legs and spread out the field. I had no issues passing people or letting people overtake so it seemed to work quite well. Once hitting the second loop and walking up two monster climbs we were finally rewarded with some nice single track. But I was stuck in traffic so I couldn’t go as fast as I wanted to, it was pretty clear that a lot of people just ride on fire roads. It was abit of a shame as the single trail was pretty sweet, especially because it always felt like I was going downhill.
Throughout the second loop I was chatting people along the way, I got in a long conversation with a fellow voodoo owner, as well as a guy riding a Kona SS who gave me some tips on the course layout so I wouldn’t kill myself before the finish line and a girl riding a 29er SS who called me soft for walking up a climb that she was already walking up ha-ha. Everyone seems so friendly at MTB races especially at the “back of the pack”.
As I was heading back to the transition to top up my bottle for the last 20km loop I passed a dude on a Uni cycle, I was in shock; I couldn’t believe how fast he was going down a hill. Massive respect to that guy. The last loop was a killer it was all fire road with some large descents that were pretty funny except in the back of my mind I knew “what goes down must go up” and at the bottom of the decent I was faced with the biggest hill I have ever seen on a bike. I was wishing “I didn’t leave the gears at home”. I made it to what I thought was the crest but little did I know the fire road looped around and I realised I wasn’t even 1/5th of the way up the hill. I hoped of the bike and just walked the rest. There was nothing I could do and walking was pretty much same pace as people just spinning up the hill in the granny gear.
Once reaching the top the trail opened up onto fire roads cutting through farmland for the last 5kms or so. I passed quite a few people through this section as most were clearly broken from the 45kms before. I really enjoyed this section as it was a cruisy ride back to the finish line with some nice views of the surrounding farm land. I thought to myself this is what the tour divide would be like.
I crossed the line in around the 3hour 35min mark, which placed me around 450th mark out of the 700 riders. I was aiming for sub 3hours 15mins so I didn’t quite reach my goal. But there will always be next year and I had such a good time just enjoying the ride. The other guys were waiting for me back at the cars, they all seemed to have a pretty good race, except Jing who didn’t look the best, he left early as the rest of headed to McDonalds’ for a post race pig out.
I learnt quite abit from the race and its time to get in some more training before the 110km Highland Fling, there was no way my legs could have done another 60kms on Sunday.
My Garmin somehow switched off half way through the ride, I turned it back on but it didn’t log the whole race, but you can see what it did log at this link:
http://connect.garmin.com/activity/41890534
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