Blogs

The SS drivetrain was perfectly suited to the track condition yesterday, and ran faultlessly and silently.

The powerplant however performed less well. I managed to clip a tree at the 17 km mark and OTB. After passing a snake of numpty scummers in some single track the bunch in front stopped to inspect a log roll over at about 20 km in. I was forced to dismount, the act of which caused me to cramp a hamstring. This was the start of cramps which were to dog me to the end. Blondie caught up to me while I was trying to ingest a handful of salt tablets and Cramp Stop pills.

My second 100 k'er and I was hoping to post a sub 6 hour time.

My overall race plan was to grab someones wheel at the start and make some good time for the early firetrail sections. This worked very nicely for a very short time. Then we hit this trail that should have been easy but ended up picking lines around ruts and puddles and my average speed just plummeted.

Set off with a couple of mates, looking forward to a day out but knowing it was going to be really wet. With the absolute bog that was this track, I was getting chain suck after 5km and my chain finally got caught up and snapped but a quick powerlink and I was on my way. After 15km I only had the big dog at the front and a few gears at the back, everything else would just skip about but that was enough gears on what is a pretty flat track. At 30km the rear derailleur left my bike and ended up in my spokes - snapped hanger, cage ripped in half, broken spokes and warped wheel.

MUDDY!

not really that impressed with this one. regardless of weather, organising a race in a floodplain is only asking for these sorts of conditions. poor marshaling led to numerous shortcuts, some riders were correctly penalised, some not. if you're going to have a course that reuses so much of the same trails and loops around on itself like spaghetti junction, then you need to have a means in place of verifying positions around the course.

presentation was a flop. no podium, no photos - just wander on up to the banner and grab a pump or other prize, all in the most disorganised fashion.

As stated by others, a complete mud pit.

After my first 50 last week I decided to learn from my mistakes and start a bit higher up the order, only problem here is it turns out to be a fairly fast start, should of perhaps taken it a bit easier but that's not easy when people are racing away.

Lots of sliding action to be had, had a couple of mud baths when my chain locked up and couldn't turn the pedals (I'm sure some women would have paid good money to be covered in the amount of mud I was carrying). That probably cost me a few mins lying down trying to unclip. Single track was great.

Already having one wet 100K DNF under my belt this year I was sooooo glad that I switched down to the 50 for this one.

This was my first repeat race so was hoping to go faster than last year. Ended up doing that but only by about 20 minutes. Guess it was a tough day cause the elites were 24 minutes slower than last year. Overall I moved forward about 100 places from last year so I guess thats the most relevant way of measuring the improvement. Got to be happy with that.
After feeling good last week on the back of limited preparation I was hoping that a few hours light training during the week would result in another good day. It didn't end up being a good day but I guess it didn't turn out that bad.

That was tough today. This was my first 100km race on the 29er HT.

I started today’s race with Wayne. My plan was one stop at the 56km water stop which I knew was cutting it fine but thought as it as cooler I should be ok.

The gun went and heading up the golf course my race was nearly over when a stick flew up into my rear wheel but I was lucky after it freed itself with no damage.