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Well we didi it and while it had some intersting bits, can't say it our fave ride to date. The climbs where intersting, marble size stones on hard packed made traction . . . . only a dream.

The single track was fun but really overgrown.

results for the day 2 punchers, 1 busted spoke, and crash in my driveway much to the amusment of family.

A belated and brief blurb on last nights Stromlo training ride . I had the opportunity to leave work a little early last night and hit the trails at about 3.45 for a exploratory / lung busting training ride on one of the newly marked trails , which there are now six . The trail which i rode on was an intermediate / Advanced ......so it scared me a little.... but just the right amount of techy stuff and plenty of flowing berms around the western side where it got a bit crowded ....

What with the atrocious conditions lately, and the flu, and generally being lazy in the cold weather, I had only ridden the Yeti about 50k's in a month. What with El Rancho's warm up ride next weekend and a few days of warm (relatively) weather, it was an ideal opportunity to get some miles under the wheels.

They have been needing it for a while but today finally got round to changing the sole protectors on my Northwave Carbon shoes.

Small explanation - this was probably needed after 9-10 months of riding to be honest, but only wear these shoes when I ride the Rush and it hasn't been out for some time due to injury and wanting the comfy chair (the Yeti) on the first rides back.

Anyhow, here's some interesting (to some ) pictures on the kind of damage Crank Bros Eggbeaters can do to carbon soles.

Thanks to Gavin and Vanina for giving me some of their gels, congratulations to you both for your awesome results. Apart from forgetting the gels my preparation for this ride was so much better than the WWS 8hr at Appin, I've now got a large number of bottles and containers with segments so I can organise all my food and drinks before the race start.

Hey Guys and Girls if anyone has a Irate intern entry for sale please let me know…

Cheers
Mark

Happy days at Sparrow Hill . A great days racing was on today , a mild start with a very cold wind .
Good turn out , Although no NoBMob friends ......yet . This training may just be showing signs of working as i felt great at the start and charged off in about fith place and had the legs to hold off the masses of the furious D grade quicks for at least four k's ( i think thats when the Caffene wore off )

So, here is my story.

Monday night was commuting home across the bridge. As I was braking towards the end of the run for the stairs down, I noticed some scratchy feeling/noise coming from my front brakes.... As I was pulling up to the ramp was deciding whether to go ahead riding down or not and at the last minute pulled off and walked down. Checked the issue at the bottom and found that 1 of my pads were down to the metal so lucky I didn't ride down!

OK so no dramas, its an uphill grind home anyway. Get home, replace 1 pad and leave the other half worn pad in there. Works a treat.

After consulting the riders who turned up ... um me ... it was decided unanimously that a move to Stromlo was in order
( spooky forest alone syndrome at Sparrow ) . After Saturdays OTB fest , ok i went over only once , a cruisey twilight lap was in order around a familiar track . It was cold , bloody cold , i think the official temp was four deg but the air felt like ice . The climb up was made harder by the cold , my lungs said get back to the car or we will hurt you ...ha ha didnt listen though .

The Scummer's been an absolute joy since the rebuild, and I've been out getting in some long hard k's while the tracks have been drying out after the rain. But, disaster struck last week, a 'slam' gearchange, going onto the big ring at the front while shifting to one of the bigger cogs at the back with too much load (I should've known better), and the rear derailleur twisted out of the hanger, stripping what was left of some very tired thread after nine years of use. With a road bike, the hangar is usually permanently attached, and in my case, bonded into the carbon frame.