bmar560's blog

The last Kowalski race leaves a lasting memory of being one of the toughest 50km I've done but something that I will miss dearly.
This is my 4th Kowalski race and 3rd half kowalski, probably my favorite marathon event out of all the races that I've done.

I'm kinda glad the race got postponed as I couldn't imagine riding the trails last month after that amount of rain they've had in Canberra. Overall the trails were in really great condition, some entry points were a mudfest with really soft energy sapping mudfest.

My time is about the same (1 minute slower) as the time I did my last half Kowalski in 2014, but my overall position improved from 133rd to 83rd and my category position improved slightly from 26th to 23rd. Next year I will aim to be in the top 20 for my category.

The last time I rode Ourimbah was 2 years ago for the same race.
Today was freezing cold, but somehow that made me less fatigued.

Enjoyed every single lap. I finished 2 seconds after the 4 hr mark, if I didn't go for a toilet break after the 1st lap I would've had time to do a 7th lap.

Coming in at 9th place for my age category(30-39) I was stoked, best results in a race so far !

I really need to learn to descent faster though, I was able to overtake guys when the trail goes up up but on the way down the guys I overtook would overtake me

Phewww glad that race was over. After the Half Kowalski in September I was looking forward to riding the Fling. I decided to go the full, training involves riding up and down the Oaks for almost 5 weeks in a row, but that wasn't enough as the hills on the Fling are just nastier, longer and there's always another hill around the corner.

Having raced the full Kowalski last year and barely made it in 6hours. I thought I'll take it easy this year and do the half. I haven't really train/ride enough this year to be in a condition to do the full. So a few weeks before the race I did some last minute training, the rain we've had the past few weeks didn't help in motivating me to ride, plus my training trail manly dam was closed for almost a month. So the past week I was riding up and down the pipeline, and mixing it up with a bit of road riding.

Now for the race itself, the 50KM track was great!!

I signed up to this race thinking that it will motivate me to train and ride more. Well it did, and I even bought a new Epic 29er for this event.

Everything went well up until 2 weeks before the race, I was down with hand foot and mouth disease which means painful blisters on my feet on hands and worst of all no riding.
Following that, the Monday before the race I woke up with a painful gout on my left knee, so painful that I couldn't walk for 1 day. A lump about the size of a grape was visible on my left knee, things weren't looking good.

Here's a short summary of my first Capital Punishment 100.

Friday:
Drove down from Sydney and stopped by Kowen to do a quick lap.
Got a little lost there, ended up going round in circles but finally found a way back to the carpark, thanks to my Garmin 800.
They've changed the signs around that screwed with my bad sense of direction. I knew that the trails were going to be dry so I let some air go on the tyres to give some myself better grip.

Race Day:
I arrived at the start venue at about 6.45am and got the bike and myself ready for the race.