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Punishment in the Capital
Did the 50km Capital Punishment on the weekend as my first ever race and was pretty happy with my time despite dropping about 20 places on Stromlo as my legs stopped working and started cramping.
What i wanted to know is, was that bloody hard or was it just me? The sucking mud and clay felt like riding on flats for 40km and that last small pine forest just before Stromlo was like wading through a swamp. I must have seen about 10 people fall over going up the mountain as well, purely from fatigue.
All said though it was awesome fun especially the Majura pines and coming down Stromlo. Felt sorry for all those who couldn't complete the mountain as their brakes were gone from all the mud.
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Read the blog posts listed on the event page (see "What Happened?"):
http://nobmob.com/node/13705
Sounds like it was just you!
Sorry - joke - no, it sounded like a complete nightmare, so glad I decided to give it a miss!
No need to worry.. Definately not just you. That course was horrendous!! Did the 100k (first one for me) and found even some of the mud covered gradual descents felt like i was grinding up a steep hill. It was just relentless. As for the 'swamp', consider yourself lucky. Imagine that section after another 800 bikes had gone through!! Looked like a giant herd of buffalo stormed through the area. Stromlo descent was definately a highlight for me too, always is..
To give you an idea of how brutal the track was, 1/3rd of the field in my category alone (open) DNF!
Overall though, even with 1 big crash (not to mention a few smaller ones), broken chain, half my gears not working, cold, constant rain and the 2kg of mud i ate, it was still a 'fun', and a very memorable 1st time 100k event
Poor Canberra trails.. They're going to need a bit to recover from that.
agreed, i did the 50 and it was tough!
the mud didn't make it too much beter either, shredding my brake pads so i didn't have any fun down stromlo
it was still an awesome race but