Kanangararara thingy

Going into this ride I had not had a lot of training with only the one mountain bike ride since my “hospital” exit at the SRAM single track thingy back in September and a handful of lazy road ride commutes to work.

Oberon is a interesting town (featured in the flame trees music vid?) and I was expecting a crowd there on Saturday afternoon, but alas it was pretty calm so we registered and as it was an cracker of an afternoon, we headed out to see the race start and see the sights.

After spending the night in Oberon we headed out nice and early to the start, not surprising it was dark, cold and windy but the sun came up to reveal not a single cloud in the sky, arrived a bit before 7 and got the bike ready, loaded up on perpetuem and power bars and headed off to freeze my ass off at the rider briefing.

This ride was also the christening of a new bike that I had been building up over the last few months and my first event on a hard tail.

For the race start I assumed my normal back of the pack starting position and awaited for the gun, no transponders here, so we were all timed as a mass start, waiting for the gun in the windy shade on the gravel road I was so looking forward to getting going so I could warm up (did I mention it was freezing?) and we are off for the first 12 or so K’s of a steady gravel road climb that spread out the field before the next fire trail section that had some fast downhill then a “muddy pit” crossing and then the only real hill in the whole race, sure there was a lot of overall climb (nearly 2000M?) but most of the climbs are gradual and there is only one big hill that’s easily rideable. At the boggy hole I had the chain suck up over the chain stay when I changed down to the granny (under load), swore at my bike mechanic (home built bike..) so the chain was now wedged up over the chain stay, but titanium is very forgiving both in compliance and surface hardening so it was an easy fix with no damage done.

The actual course is two 50K laps and pretty much a couple river crossings and fire trail gravel road mix absolutely no technical sections (its sure is no dirtworks ) and there are no places to get held up (highland fling style).

Besides the chain problem; the first lap was pretty uneventful, frozen toes and spectacular scenery with my favorite bit being the inner loop, second lap was a repeat of the first but a little slower (with some refueling stops) and the climbs seemed harder.. So after a long uneventful ride (there was not a lot of competitors so a lot of the ride was in solitude) I was crossing the line under 6 hours.

Well run event, and a few observations:

Very friendly officials and event staff.
100K’s on a hardtail is kinda tough on the ass…
No distance markings on the course and the marshals didn’t know how far to go when asked.
The last 100M of the course shared a single lane water crossing with cars.. (people leaving from the 50?) kinda annoying when your sprinting to the finish half dead and have to stop for traffic.
Remoteness of the event kind of killed the “race festive vibe” with most simply finishing, loading up the car and heading out.
Dry course with spectacular scenery, I’ll be back for a social 50 next year.