a heater would have been nice..

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.

Arrived early on Friday to partake in the land grab, wow! it really pays to have someone local to stake out a claim, a lot of the local teams simply turn up chuck up a small tent or flags/bunting marking out their spot and go off (I can only assume) to work for the day.. kinda unfair but hey what can you do? I guess that’s about the one good thing about living in Canberra..

Got our place marked out and had some fun keeping the tents from blowing away, then went for a lap of the course.

This year I took two bikes, hardtail for the day laps and the full susser for the lazy night laps, turned out that it was a good idea to have two bikes as I busted the chainstay of the suspension bike riding the course on the Friday.. bugger! but hey Santacruz had a display at the event (lucky me).

Anyhow.. I was in a mixed 4’s team, we placed a category top 10, I wasn’t terribly fast and tried to ride at a pace that made it fun for me, decided that I’d pull out one fast lap and was on time to beat the magical 1 hour target when I pinch flatted just before fire trail climb into the love child.. then had a hard time getting the tyre off the rim and then found out that one canister isn’t actually enough to inflate a 2.3 29er tyre.. bugger!

Had the one or two w%#ker wannabe racers nearly end my weekend passing after forgetting to call track or one more as they passed after I’d called a rider through, but this is to be expected at these events and it made me more determined to be nice and so I made extra sure to thank everyone who I passed and let anyone who was behind me know that all they had to do was call and I’d stop and let them pass.

Would have liked to have more light for the night laps as a few times I was unsure of the line and found myself braking mid corner (a lot) as I couldn’t read the corner.. more lights for me next year for sure.

Found that my hardtail didn’t seem as quick and fun as I would have liked through the slideshow and beer garden so I borrowed a tallboy from the Santacruz guy (well he seemed more than happy to help out with a loaner when I turned up with my newly snapped blur..) for a couple night laps, but I neglected to tune/set the suspension (the previous guy who rode it must have been like 150KG’s) so it felt like it was pretty much the same as riding my hardtail.. actually Strava shows that the hardtail was quicker than the tallboy, but I have no doubt that the tallboy would have been a blast if I’d taken 5 min to set it up correctly.. truth was my fingers were just too cold to bother with the shock pump in the middle of the night.

A big thanks to the event organizers and the wheelbarrow with a k guys for the awesome tracks! and lets not forget the pizza guy!

Back next year for sure, with the blur again as the Santacruz (neezy) guys have already shipped me a replacement triangle for the blur.