Pleasure & Pain not so pleasurable nor painful

We came to Coffs Harbour last week to have a quiet wedding and it turns out there was a mountain bike race on dead smack in the middle of my holiday...happy days!

There has been a lot of rain up this way over the past weeks but we arrived to terrific weather. In fact I packed longs thinking it would be cool so the washing machine in our holiday house has been working every night so I can wear my only shorts and t-shirt each day. We've even been swimming in the pool.

We had a cloudless day on Friday for our big day then Saturday saw heavy rain all day. I turned up to register late in the afternoon and decided that with all of this rain and the fact I'd drunk half my body weight in champagne over the last few days that I'd change from the 100km to the 50km. The race is actually held on a 25km trail in the Pine Creek State Forest so now I'd be doing 2 not 4 laps (or that was the plan anyway).

Coffs again turned on its charm on Sunday without a cloud in the sky. I decided to go it alone as I knew the forest would be muddy so the kids would be a handful for Liz. Being laps of a circuit it was easy just to take a bag along with some bottles and dump them near the start. When I arrived I was pleased I had my 4wd as I saw one 4wd working overtime extracting bogged cars. During our wait at the start I got chatting to a guy who had just flown in from an 18 month stint in PNG (couldn't pay me enough to live there!) and it turns out he's a mate of my little brother and they used to ride a lot together. Small world.

Finally we took off and I was sitting about 5th wheel in my group. All you could hear for the first few km was laughter as we charged along the flowing single track but every time there was a slight incline bikes would be going side to side and wheel spinning without any forward momentum. It was so greasy. After a few km I realised it was actually quicker to jump off and run. I'm not talking hills here, when I say slight incline I mean it. These were the sort of single track you should be hammering in the big ring at 25km/h instead we were in granny gear going sideways uphill feeling like absolute beginners. I think we were all so surprised we just kept laughing.

The downhills had to be ridden slowly too as you knew if you went quick you'd end up in the trees so any slight downhill was ridden carefully with the brakes on. The only way to ride was to aim at the water. If you tried to go highside of any water you'd end up sliding into it anyway so it was faster just to aim at puddles and try to keep the bike straight. Small Block 8's weren't the ideal tyre for the conditions but I think even a tractor tyre wouldn't have had enough tread depth. I got to about half way through the lap when we came out near the start and noticed a lot of riders off their bikes looking like they had called it a day. I rode about 100m further on then thought to myself I'm doing more running than riding. I have a wine fridge full back at the holiday house....

A quick U-turn and I was out of there.

I decided there was no point getting my gear off at the car as I was that muddy there was no hope of keeping the car clean so I jumped in still with bike shoes on and drove back to the house where wife was waiting with camera. It was definitely the muddiest I've ever been. It was like glue. I couldn't see my derailleur's during the race there was so much mud caked to them but they still shifted silky smooth.

The trail network we raced on would have been awesome in the dry. It is all single track and is fast & flowing. You would normally ride the big ring almost the whole way around. It was all under tree canopy so wouldn't get much sun to dry it out but is really beautiful terrain. It is similar to that section at Awaba towards the end of the lap where you go under a sub tropical canopy. It was also one of the most relaxed events I've been to. I didn't come across a single dickhead in the race, everyone seemed so relaxed.

The 100km race was shortened to 75km and was won by Jason English. Had the race been 100km he would have struggled to beat 5hr which is an hour slower than he does most races so that gives an indication of the conditions. There were 32 finishers from the 83 starters. The 50km race wasn't a whole lot better with 53 of the 101 finishing.