Blogs

I’ll start by saying I had an awesome time for my first 24hr event. The team members were (alphabetically) brakeburner, Brian, craked, Logan, loki & Rob. Rob has been out injured so we weren’t expecting many laps from him and he didn’t disappoint .

I arrived Friday mid morning to find we had a spot in the overflow area. At first I was thinking WTF, the grass was knee high and if you’d laid your bike down you would lose it. Anyway, it didn’t take long before it was starting to get trampled and ended up being a really good spot.

Firstly let me say what a great day Sunday was. Well organised everything ran smoothly.

Tough ride. Used this ride as a training exercise for the opener of the 2011 SRAM SingleTrack Mind Series. It was super tough! First 15-18km's of sheer climbing. Flew into the 20km drink station on the back of some awesome SingleTrack... Time for a quick rest! Exhilarating downhill fire trail followed... then climbing again... and again... and again!!

The last 10km was awesome singletrack and excellent quick steep drops down onto wooden bridges, heaps of fun just as well given the last climb was a killer!

Tathra is awesome - that's if you like hills that is !

Day started very cruisey with a low key vibe around the event centre. Locals everywhere checking out the event and would have to be the friendliest event and feel for an event that I have been to out of town.

Anyway race started with a lemans start us in the middle of an oval our bikes down near the goal post. Matt and I started probably mid pack and cruised out to the Mimosa National Park where the real challenge began.

Tathra enduro is the start of a week long MTB road trip for @dicko and I.
Got through the brokeback mountain jokes from the nice accommodation lady. Tathra is a great permissive community.
Early in the year picked the 50km, (thankfully) and we got a nice welcome from John from the original owners who have agreed to a whole lot of singletrack on their land. Le mans start with a leisurely jog down the oval and onto the bike.

had a great day ,all went well for me however Steve lost his front brake before the start and rode all his laps without any front brake at all, to his credit he still managed good consistant times even after hitting a tree on his first lap! was a well run event and the track was good, the xtra bits of fireroad were also good and added a few more passing opportunitys. we were pleased with our result in 4 hr masters pair and also
happy to get 7th in all mens 4 hr pairs .

Another great Rocky Trail event held at the new Mt Annan venue.

I came into this event knowing I was going to have a painful experience. I have a ruptured disc in my back which is the reason I started riding about 6 yrs ago as it's one of the few things I can do to keep fit without aggravating my injury too much. Last month I caused it to flare up but did the Willo event anyway. I was able to ride at 80% on the fire roads without issue but the single track hurt.

I actually enjoyed Capital Punishment but I really should not have.

Hmmm SS and canberra are normally great fun......
Not so much today. Dont get me wrong I had a great day out on the bike, the tracks were awesome as always. My problem was I was on a SS set up to climb the big hills that the Otway 100km race had that I did a month earlier, I was too lazy to worry about changing the gear to suit this race and as such I found the going very tough on the flat parts of the course.

This was my first 100km event and also marked one year since I got hooked on this MTB lark (Last years CP 50km was my first event). There's already been lots of posts on the event and track so I won't repeat that content, instead here's the patented Danny summary of how my ride went

What worked:
- The weather; after last year it was just perfect
- The track; with the exception of the fields around the airport it was great and a lot better than last year. Bring on the Mont 24hr so I can try more of that Kowen goodness