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Mud, mud, mud...
Only time I've ever ridden Canberra single track and wished it would end.....
Starting of at the back of the 100 meant that the Kowen trails were badly chopped, glugged and mushed by the time I got there. It was like riding on a bumpy slippery dip covered in 3cm of grinding paste slurry. Never seen so many broken chains from chain suck early in a race. Had to take the glasses off after about 5kms so I could see where I was going. Then had my rear derailleur somehow flip itself - possibly when I fell after getting chain suck on a little pinch out of a gully - it wasn't changing gear or staying on a cog. Spent about 10 minutes with the bike on its back trying to work out what was wrong, but finally managed to wrestle it back into place - put a bit of lube onto the mud and didn't have many problems from there on - with the bike anyway.
After Kowen, there seemed to be an interminable amount of grassy paddock riding across from Sutton Rd to the Majura fire trail. OK-ish in the dry but in the wet it was a choice between a slightly firmer bumpy grassy line or a smooth, but soft and muddy wheel track. Not much fun either way. Rain had stopped so I actually got the rain jacket off for a while at the back of the airport.
The Majura trails were even more trashed - the 50 km guys had all been through as well. And it started to rain again just as I got there. The gullies were mostly unrideable and unwalkable - lots of detours developed. Uphill on the single track - even relatively gentle slopes - was almost devoid of traction. I think my back wheel went about 20% further than the front and I walked a lot of up. Majura was followed by more grassy paddock riding - also even softer now after more rain.
Anyway, long story short - I pulled out at 80km and 8 and a half hours riding, knowing I'd missed the cut offs for heading up Stromlo and knowing I didn't have the legs left anyway and knowing I didn't want to ride in any more mud. I headed back towards the lake on cycle path and phoned in the support crew. Would have pulled out even earlier if I didn't have that option. After hosing down the bike in fading light and stashing all the muddy gear in my sister in law's garage, it took about 25 minutes under a hot shower to get the circulation back in fingers and toes.
While the single track would have been great in the dry, the links were a bit average - lots of boring grass two wheel tracks, two of those stupid log horse grids, a long slog up Gungahlin Rd on the tar. And call me soft, but I don't reckon climbing Mt Stromlo at the end of 100 km is a brilliant way to finish 100 kms.
The Capital Punishment 2011 may not be at the top of my list for next year.
Be interesting to know how CORC feel about having most of their single track cut up so badly - I imagine there will be a lot of repair work required.
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Lach
I concur with everything you said. One more addition was the pine forest immediately before stromlo at the 88k mark - the worst mud of the day - 20 to 30 cm deep in places.
I finished in just under 8 hrs but would put it up there with one of the days to forget.
Oh one last thing - the stromlo 10ks wAs the best part of the whole day.
D
Makin Trax, a private company, maintains Stromlo's tracks exclusively, not CORC. They're the only trails in the ACT maintained by a contractor paid to do the job, who have the budget to maintain the trails using material designed to take punishment. That's why they held up so well. All other ACT trails are predominantly made from whatever was on or in the ground there.
Nobody maintains Kowen regularly, except some building happens when a race is scheduled, because of the MotoX riders who trash them. The Kowen trails (first 5-30km odd of CP) were in a varying state of having been chopped up by moto's before the rain started anyway, and on Sunday they'd have been ripped up again by them.
That section of ST through Deekes Forest (just before crossing the road into Stromlo was, I believe, new, and will be bulldozed anyway in the next months to make way for housing (yes, that whole section from where you cross a wide concrete bridge up to Urriara Road at Stromlo will become suburbia in the next few years.
The only track CORC maintains with any regularity is Majura, and in November, or June if it keeps raining, lots of the existing trails will be lost as Majura's pines will get thinned, plus there is going to be a road put through the bottom, flat bit of Majura sometime in the next few years, so whether as a result of Capital Punishment, logging, road development or just general wear and tear, this and other working pine forests are always going to get hammered and the trails eventually repaired or re-routed at some point.
One comment I have noticed through threads about the state of the trails is "I hope AROC/CORC/someone fixes them up". Nobody who actually rode the tracks on Saturday and said that sort of stuff has also said "Can I come down and help fix up the tracks". Are you going to put your shovel where your mouth is when the call is put out for vollies?
As for next year, there is some beaut ST in the nature park alongside the road slog we all had to endure. This is presently illegal to MTB but it's hoped that by next year that trail will replace the road section.