I raced out to StAlbans after work, registered and settled into the bunk accommodation that someone offered up at a property at the bottom of shepherds gully.

No beer and early to bed means that I got into St Albans early but stuffed around so then got to the line a little late, so I couldn't get into the first group.. Gotta love self seeding starts So I started in the second group.

I can’t exactly explain why I signed up for the 100Mile, there are many excuses that mask the complete lunacy of doing 100 (it’s actually like 165K’s and 3500M of climb) miles on a mountain bike, but I think the best reason is that 100K events just seem so “yawn” and don’t represent any real challenge

what they said...

tough race and happy to finish this one.

Ahh the dirtworks.. over the years this has been that “one” event for me, as it was my very first race of any distance just after I changed my life by losing a real lot of weight and got into ridding mountain bikes, the first year I did 8:10, next year I did 7:10 and last year I wanted 6 hours but ended up with a DNF.. so this year I really didn’t care who beat me or who I beat as long as I worked to my time of 6:00 I’d be super happy and as an extra bonus if I could finish the race without needing an ASS transplant, as I was riding a hardtail this year, I’d be super double happy.

As always a fun event, if a little cold!! (more than a little cold.. it was f%$#ing freezing)… seems that if it’s not raining then its freezing, at least we didn’t get the “raining and freezing” as that would have been horrible.

Last year I rode with a mate who pulled out at the half way point, so in the ensuing year I’m pretty sure that I bugged him on no less than 1000 separate occasions that he had unfinished business that needed to be completed and that I would see to it that he entered and barring terminal mechanical or physical failure that he finished this race.

Going into this ride I had not had a lot of training with only the one mountain bike ride since my “hospital” exit at the SRAM single track thingy back in September and a handful of lazy road ride commutes to work.

Oberon is a interesting town (featured in the flame trees music vid?) and I was expecting a crowd there on Saturday afternoon, but alas it was pretty calm so we registered and as it was an cracker of an afternoon, we headed out to see the race start and see the sights.

Driving home yesterday afternoon I thought that its nearly the end of the year and I’ve finally finished a 100K race (this year’s seen a Dirtworks DNF and a Husky last min change to the 50) sure I did the nearly 400K Mountains to beach, but the longest MTB race stage was “only” 90K’s.

Already having one wet 100K DNF under my belt this year I was sooooo glad that I switched down to the 50 for this one.

For my own personal reasons the Dirtworks is a kind of spiritual event for me (yeah WTF..? as if any bike event could be classed as a spiritual.. then perhaps its the Buddhist temple...?.. who knows?) and this year I had trained hard for and was touting a 6 hour finish, having turned my lard ass from an 2009 8hour+ novice/newbie into the finely tuned wannabe road riding boy racer that I think I am today…