Blogs

This was my 4th time doing the Convict/Dirtworks and so far managed to better my times each year. This year my goal was to break the 5 hour barrier which I thought was going to be touch and go given I did 5:14 last year and didn't think I had it in me to shave off another quarter of an hour. In my favour was my new 29er Epic. But to counter this were back problems and some loss of training and skin due to a recent conflict with a car where I lost.

I raced out to StAlbans after work, registered and settled into the bunk accommodation that someone offered up at a property at the bottom of shepherds gully.

No beer and early to bed means that I got into St Albans early but stuffed around so then got to the line a little late, so I couldn't get into the first group.. Gotta love self seeding starts So I started in the second group.

After a couple of years of going backwards with my fitness I pulled my finger out and started training in January with Convict 100 as my yardstick on progress. I've even stopped drinking wine mid-week which is a huge sacrifice. Last year I did about 5:52 and set my target as 5:15 this year.

This year the 50km race started in 4 self-seeded waves, with the first wave being for riders expecting to finish under 2 hours or place in the top few in their category. I certainly wasn’t expecting a podium finish, but 2 hours was my goal so I decided to go in the first wave. While we waited to start the announcer was making some pretty negative comments about how many people had seeded themselves in this wave, especially if they were wearing “cotton t-shirts”. Apparently lycra was compulsory for this group…

Round 1 of the Choc foot STM series was held in Taree this year - tracks I've managed to ride a few times.
With Taree being fairly far out and away from Sydney, I knew a few teams wouldn't make the trip out - although the trails would prove to be up with the best for racing. All the better for us.
I went out for a quick rece ride 2 weeks before the race weekend and was pretty impressed with the condition of the tracks. Come race weekend they were a bit drier and dustier but didn't show any signs of damage after the race.

Well this journey starts way back in December last year. After some disciplined training and racing in 2012 I wanted to take this a step further. To do this I had a chat to Ant Shippard, outlined what I wanted to achieve, and asked if he was willing to help me get there. My goals were quite ambitious, but Ant agreed to help and said that he would do what he could to put me into a position to achieve these goals, but all the hard work depended on me.

For those interested, these goals were:

1. Be faster than Jenny Fay in an XCM Marathon

I'll start with wow, what a hard race. Below also includes the week before as we had a few descent rides up there in the week leading to the race.

Originally I wasn't gong to do this and just focus on the XCM series. As the XCM series announcement kept getting delayed I decided I would have a crack at this. I was already signed up for the Wombat but once they announced there was no series Dicko and I decided to pull out of the Wombat and head up a week early.

As the date came closer I was excited about the whole trip, a weeks riding and then the race.

I was up visiting Dad at Forster, and took the opportunity to go ride the Taree Tip trails to show some mates around, and catch up with Hugh from CBD who was having a demo day for customers and hangers-on.

This is a fun little descending track that comes after a nice testing climb, but is Part Two of the route that takes in Up River and Son of Skull for about 10 minutes of twisty, swoopy descent that includes some berms, and gap jumps if you're game (I'm not )

Enjoy! I'll put some music with it later.

http://youtu.be/amxnGWvcnjA