Lach's blog

Last month, I was lucky enough to take a few friends on a trip to the the Flinders Ranges in SA. A mate and I took our mtb's and rode most of the Flinders Ranges By Bike (FRBB) loop. Here's how it went....

Registration

Loved the track, apart from the two ascents of seismic hill, and loved that the track was dry this year after getting bogged often last year. Better time than last year (shorter / faster track?), but drifted significantly in the overall and super masters rankings.

Had another blast racing around the dry and dusty tracks of Back Yamma Forest this year.

From the start we were off in a cloud of dust, with a bit of jockeying for positions prior to the first bit of single track. I’d been a bit casual about the start, so was in a large bunch and settled down to about 10th place in a train once the single track started. Must have been a few dozen on ahead as well.

First race after 2 months overseas without a bike and a couple of weeks recovering from manflu when I got back, so a fair bit underdone and even more overweight than usual. Enjoyed the single track as always (although there are some narrow tree gaps for a big bloke on a big bike), but will have to go back for a clean run at the main new bit, as it was a traffic jam. Could do with a few less km's hauling my carcass up all those fire trail hills however.....

I decided to do this at the last minute. Had been toying with the idea of going down to Victoria to do the Giant Odyssey and rack up a few more Maverick Series points, but a bit of work, family stuff and imminent travel pushed it into the too-hard basket.

Made a late call go down to Wingello on Sunday morning for this, as they were taking late entrants on the day.

Decided to use it as a learning process with the new HRM in a race situation, so went with the Garmin HR zones easily visible on the screen. Spent much of the first lap in zone 5, including hitting 6 a couple of times on the climbs. I didn't think there was a 6! I hadn't been able to get there on the only real training ride I had been on with the HRM, despite putting in a few hard (albeit short) efforts on hills.

Category was actually "super" masters, but it's not on the drop down list.

I had upped my training a bit in the lead up to this event and had set twin objectives of knocking 10 minutes off last year's time and finishing in the top 20 of the increasingly competitive over 50's category.

However, this year's visit to Canberra was a bit of a "hit and run" effort due to other commitments. Got down there late Friday and after shovelling some food and kicking back for an hour or so, it was almost midnight. Not much zzz time before a 5.00 am alarm.

Of all the XCM races on the calendar, the Fling qualifies best as a true “event”. I love it, even though the Half Fling is a solid 57 km, with all the hard stuff – big hills, technical single track – in the last 15 km.

Did the 50 again this year. A pleasure to finally ride these tracks without much mud. Still coughing up a bit of dust this evening however. There were still a few patches of water in some of the 4WD wallows and it was a bit scary just how deep some of them were....

Did the half, but no heroics to report here. Congrats to all that did well.