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Keepit Real 100


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By Lach - Posted on 11 December 2015

Status: 
Finished
Time: 
03:01:36
Position (Overall): 
58
Position (Category): 
2

Thought I'd keep the racing season going a bit longer after the Fling and also just had to give the new Niner Jet9 a workout, so drove up to this event, about 5 hrs north of Sydney, near Gunnedah and Tamworth (or as near as things get out there).
Race set up was a little laid back - late rego, late catering, late race start, early presentations, no 100 km course, despite the name (not that that was an issue for me). Campground locale on the shores of Lake Keepit was pretty impressive. My tent would have been lakeside except that the dam was only at 17% capacity, so there was a lot of grass and a few hundred metres to your actual water.
Track was a mixture of loose 4wd tracks, snaky sniggle and plenty of ups and downs in the first 30 km, followed by a flat, open 20 km TT around the other side of the lake on 2 wheel track trails with plenty of hardened cattle footprint corrugations.
Dan McConnell and Paul van der Ploeg put a gap on me pretty early, but I started to haul them back after they finished.....
Seriously though, I struggled after a while with the steep ups and loose downs in the first section. Single track was also a bit narrow between the native cypress saplings for me to get much flow on. So I slowly drifted back in the field, before picking up quite a few places in the second section, where I was able to wind it up to a reasonable pace and hold it for a longish while. Would have finished under 3 hours except for a wrong turn in the back section. Apologies to those that I lead astray....
Finished 58th out of 86 finishers for the 50km distance (there were also 30, 20 and 10km distances and 15km and 5 km running races and 2nd (out of a mighty field of 4) in the over 60's.
Finished off the weekend with a Sunday morning ride over Scone Mountain with my brother-in-law, who is training for the Scody 3 Peaks Challenge in a few months. Needless to say he made me and my new Niner look pretty ordinary on the ride up the steep, loose fire trail where we gained over 400m in about 5km before I got to school his roadie legs rolling down the other side.......

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