Blogs

Wow!!! is all I can say. Best race so far in terms of track and event. The single track through Majura was simply awesome as was the switch back climb and the luge downhill sections of Stomlo. Lots of variety including some road and firetrail make this a true adventure. My time was a little disappointing but I have never ridden Stomlo before so I was pacing myself for the final climb. At the beginning of Stomlo I crashed in some thick sand and remove some skin from my knee, but despite having no water left I managed to stave off cramps, climb and finish.

Was an eventful first section for me yesterday, had the front tyre washout and also clipped a tree leading to an OTB. Racing Ralph tyres had no traction through the damp section of single track. After hitting the tree I had to stop and adjust the bars a couple of times. Luckily as I hit the road section to the first water stop I found a fast group to ride with. I only needed to stop for long enough to refill a bottle so left most of them behind at the stop.

First "proper" race and had a ball.

After crashing badly at the National Champs in Adelaide and wrecking my bike, the guys at Jet Cycles in Sydney worked really hard with Specialized to get me sorted as quickly as possible. A huge thanks to them for all thier hard work - and patience with me as I stressed.

The bike was finished at 3pm on Friday arvo, I loaded it onto the back of the car and drove to 'berra.

Category was actually "super" masters, but for some obscure reason it's not on the drop down menu

This year's version almost lived up to the original hype about linking up the best of Canberra's sniggle into one great 100km race.

I unexpectedly managed to grab a free ticket on friday from CB (generous Nobmob member) and headed down that afternoon a little unprepared. Given i hadn't had any time to gear up for it, the game plan was to simply treat it as a training ride. I find i learn something each time i race, and this one was no different.

So 6 days on from Willo and looking for a sub 5 Hour for Capital Punishment.

Got to the start and no rain and a little bit chilly but apart from that all good, headed out in the 2nd wave and came across a roadie immediately struggling with the single track, dispatched him and continued through the nice singletrack of Kowen, once again really found my flow in the singletrack and managed to pick up some places. It was a bit wet in some of the singletrack which led to a off, unfortunatly the Racing Ralphs didnt cope to well with some of wet patches, however no major damage.

After watching AROC fail to do anything right at last years Angry Doctor I didn't have great expectations for this race. There were a couple of substantial changes to the course in the weeks leading up to the race so it was hard to tell if it was just going to be lots of commuting on roads and bike tracks with some token single track thrown in or a good course.

A well organised race run by a group of people who should be very proud of the event as it was a great way to remember the impact Willow had on so many people.

I arrived at the forest camp on sat arvo after driving through rain and found lots of water and mud around,met up with Steve (CROMERBOY) who was setting up camp,we were going to have a ride but pulled the pin on that prefering to keep the bikes clean and functioning for tomorrow. We drove up to the event centre and got rego out of the way then relaxed over a cold beer at our campspot enjoyed some good food that was for sale and got a good nights sleep.