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2011 Australian Marathon Championships
The marathon champs were held in Qld yesterday at Mt Joyce just south of Brisbane. The men's event was taken out by Jason English followed by Andy Blair then Shaun Lewis. Jason the machine is doing the national solo 24's next weekend then the Dirtworks the weekend after. Crazy?
Mrs Antsonline Jenny Fay won the women's event. Awesome!
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for marathonmtb.com to post up a report as well. Sounds like it was a good weekend.
I'll give y'all a quick run down of the race.
It was odd racing a track that you werent allowed to pre-ride at all - not even on the morning of the race as a warm-up.
Women went off first, pack of about 15 I s'pose. Up the first climb there was a group of four or five that had detached themselves. Jenny Fay, Jenny King, Nomi Hansen and Nicki Fisher. Then they disappeared into the bush.
Mens race, usual nonsense at the call-up / gridding. In the end it was sorted, and gun went. We flew out along the 1km of bitumen and up the hill. A group of 11 or so broke off the front - English, Mather, Flemmo, VD Ploeg, Lewis, Gordon, Hatton, Cooper, Blair, Jackson, James Downing, and myself.
A totally blind ride through 7km of freshly mown field before some singletrack.
This is the good bit.
They have built a FANTASTIC trail network around the dam at Mt.Joyce. Easily good enough to rival Stromlo. Amazing berms, and double jumps, and even a huge wooden wall-ride around a berm. Its fantastic.
After swooping to the bottom, James and myself had been 'detached' from the lead group (read: dropped) by 15 secs or so. Then came the kicker. A huge, enormous, steep climb. Fire-road, but so steep, and never ending. It was a real test, even for the fittest to ride it. A massive climb.
Get to the top and swoop down.
This is where I came unstuck. I tried to pre-jump a rocky section, only to find (given the course was all un-seen) that it actually was a drop off. I was about 4foot in the air, and crashed. Again.
I'm having a bad run of it, and opened up the big scar i got In Adelaide. Race over, blood everywhere.
I get back to the race center in time to see the Jenny Fay come through, with Jenny King 90secs behind, with one 29km loop to go. Both looked exhausted. I told my Jenny to just push on.
The guys came through and all looked spent too. Blair was leading, with English chasing and Hatton very close.
The next 1hr 45mins was long as a 90sec lead is nothing over 29km of techy track. In the mens race, elite riders were pulling out, competely spent. It was a very demanding course.
In the end, my Jenny (Fay) rolled over the line. Completely spent. Jenny King came in a few mins later, having pushed on to the end. Both girls had an amazing ride and would right up there in the top 20 of the mens race.
Jason won the guys, with Andy and Shaun closing out the podium.
It was a great day for Jenny, and rubbish for me. We'll both be at Dirtworks, so come and say hi.
I tihnk it is now officially open, Mt.Joyce recreation park. Its well worth a visit. Its only 60mins easy easy drive from Brissy airport. MTBA blazers were there in force at the weekend and they were all in agreement that it will become a bit of a mecca for MTB competitions in the future. It would be a great venue for a Mont style team 24hr (it would be too tough for solo racing).
Put it on the bucket list, a very good course.
Oh - and well done Jenny. I'm very proud of you.
What happened to Mather, Hatton & Gordo? Seems unusual for 3 of the race favourites to dnf.
Great write up and well done Jenny, great performance out there.
Prolly see you guys on monday up at the GNR.
How did the MarathonMTB boys go?
Gordo had a tumble in one of the freshly mown fields. The grass had hidden an 'wheel sized' hole. He was going well.
Hatto and Mather, and VD Ploeg - you'll have to ask them. I know it was stinking hard out there and the pace was on. Pete would have been tired from the Cape Epic too. Dont really want to speculate.
MarathonMTB boys - went pretty well. No doubt Mike will have a write up soon - he was all over the place with his dictaphone taking interviews and quotes!
Rotten luck for you & Gordo. At least you had the satisfaction of watching your better half win!
Hope you're fit for Dirtworks.
Thanks for the report.
Bad luck with your race. I hate traveling interstate to something and then having problems. Guess Jenny's result makes up for it though.
My brother lives up in QLD now so it was a local race for him. He called me afterwards and was on a bit of a downer as he was only just scraping through the cutoff times and blew up on the last lap due to lack of water and then had to wait 10min while they got the copter back in the air.
He was a bit happier today when he looked at the Masters finishing rate, only 7 finishers out of 54 starters so anyone who wasn't mentally prepared for a tough day would have got a wake up call.
Also less than half the open men finished.
btw he agreed it was a good place to ride. I think he walked part of the step fire trail on the last lap and he has 3*10 on his stock Anthem 29er must be as steep as the first DW hill.
Its was probably a bit steeper than the first DW hill. More like the Wall in wingello, but a better surface, so slightly easier. THe thing was, the steeped bit came at the end of what was probably 5-10mins of climbing already. It was a heartbreaker.
Lots of withdrawals tells the story. It was brutal, but lots of fun. It was honestly like a long long XC course. Long climb, super long descent / ST, then long climb again.
Its a great venue. Well worth a visit with a dually. A two hour ride there would be fun fun fun....
bummer about the stack. never mind the knee.... hows the bike?
I notice there were no DNFs in the open females .... maybe all you blokes got a bit too much of the red mist in the heat of the race!
Hope youre right for DW.
results:
http://twowheelpromotions.com.au/images/stories/...
I heard he broke his collar bone in that stack. Poor fella seems to be spending more time in the garage than racing
At least the Mont win is still fresh.
Poor bastard has so much bad luck. 11 broken ribs a couple of years back kept him out of action for ages although the repair looks like it has increased his lung capacity!
Crashing before the world 24 last year was a major setback after all his training to put himself in a position to win.
Even last month when he came 3rd at the Willo he had come off another break then on the Friday before the race crashed into a drunk on the cycleway near home which blew his knee up so he raced with lots of black & blue.