obmal's blog

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…

The weekend started with the usual Friday carbo loading coopers pale ales, checking the bike and loading up the camping stuff.

Backing up for my second DW 100, its totally amazing how quickly you forget just how hard this ride is, how big that first hill is and how really small easy climbs become impossible mountains after about 80K’s. I’m convinced that (for me) a 60-70K ride can be done with relative ease, but it’s the extra stuff required that all but totally eludes me when I start to hit some climbs after that!

08:10:00 for first timer, really just glad that I made it

Pretty sure that I said G'day to a couple of the nobmob folk at the top of the first hill? I still cant actually believe that anyone could ride that hill!

I had no idea this would be so tough, having only been riding for about 6 months.. I was pretty sure at the 30K mark that I would be a DNF, legs just were just not strong enough as I had already started to try to walk out the sore legs on the bigger climbs from about the first water stop!