Blogs

We came to Coffs Harbour last week to have a quiet wedding and it turns out there was a mountain bike race on dead smack in the middle of my holiday...happy days!

There has been a lot of rain up this way over the past weeks but we arrived to terrific weather. In fact I packed longs thinking it would be cool so the washing machine in our holiday house has been working every night so I can wear my only shorts and t-shirt each day. We've even been swimming in the pool.

Hey guys,

today i picked up my new ride

2012 Giant Trance X1

I bought it through the team at inner city cycles. They really looked after me and did an amazing price compared to the other quotes i got.

Tomorrow I am putting on XT cleats and going to start riding clipped in

The bike was brand new and beautiful and i couldnt help myself so rode from Manly Beachfront to the top of the Dam and hit it hard. Got to the bottom covered in mud haha.

Not so new anymore

When Craig asked me to be part of a masters team for the 12 hours I didn't really know what to expect. I had only done one teams event before and we didn't actually "race" that event as we were all there to support my brother in the 24hr worlds. Getting closer to the race it was clear that we had a pretty strong masters team and if things went well would have a shot at the podium.

blog courtesy of seasoned international road/sprint champion Ben Isaksen who appears to be making the switch to the wonderful world of singletrack, and was also in the winning team.

Jetblack Sydney 12 Hour

Saturday the 13th of August saw the first of 2 days racing on the fast trails of Dargle Farm, 75 kilometres North West of Sydney. Saturday was the Sydney 12 hour, followed by the 3rd round of the Rocky Trail GP series on Sunday.

arrived at the track in a blanket of fog ,I suspected we were to have a sunny day ahead and I was not dissapointed. We were entered in team 4 masters but as we were the only team in this cat we had to run in mens open team 4.

Not a bad track there at Dargle. Plenty of interesting and challenging sniggle and plenty of sections to recover a bit in between. Still a little gluggy in places, but there was even a dusty section – haven’t seen dust around Sydney for months!

Seemed a slightly smaller crowd than Awaba a few weeks ago, but with the 12 hr on the day before, there were probably a few who opted for the 12 instead. Meant the track was well bedded in however.

Finally after a crap year health wise that has seen me stack on quite a few kg I finally competed without either a chest infection or back ache.

The Rocky Trail crew put on another great event with awesome weather and at a location which has become my favorite for these type of races. I like the track because switchback kills my dodgy back so I hate racing those venues but this track has some really good technical mixed with fast flowing and such different scenery & surfaces. I find I just don't get bored on a lap.

Team Mixed 4

Was looking forward to this race. After breaking the 6hr mark last year, I was aiming to to hit somewhere between 5 - 5 1/2 hrs.

Prep before the race was limited to mainly 50km length rides, but thought this would get me through given the course as I remembered was relatively flat.

Arrived Saturday late arvo, registered, and then came the rain. Rain fell pretty heavily for a couple of hours and then eased off during the night. Got to race start next morning and the paddock at the start area looked very boggy - this was going to be a bit different then last year I thought.