Coondoo Choc Foot 7hr

Round 2 of the Chocolate Foot series was delayed by a couple of months due to the bad weather but the time had come to ride Coondoo Road single track again.
Team BMORC were coming off a good 2nd place result in round one in a pretty thin field and we knew competition would be much tougher in Nowra. Unfortunately, Paul managed to break his wrist and we needed to find a replacement rider. Cue Mr Pidgeon who performed very well in his first short lap race and allowed us to stay in our category to go for an overall result in the series.
A couple of practice laps on Saturday afternoon showed us a track with some awesome flowy track early in the lap, some soggy wet track in the middle, a bridge covered with carpet, some loose off camber track, a slight uphill into headwind fireroad, some fast downhill toward the end, a bit of techy/rocky track, and a final climb back to transition.
The key to riding this track fast was to nail the corners and keep your legs spinning, grit your teeth and chew the stem into the massive headwind along the fireroad and stay in big ring for the final climb back into transition.
Craig started us off with the massive field of riders and managed to stay ahead of the main group almost walking the first few hundred metres of the single track. I took off on my first lap and was battling traffic the whole time - no one wanted to give up any track positions and passing was only possible on wide sections or along the fireroad. I was pretty disappointed after my first lap, knowing I could go much faster.
Mr Pidgeon came across a freshly felled tree on his first lap and, with the assistance of 4 other riders, managed to move it out of the way.
My later laps were a bit clearer and I managed to find a good rhythm. The fireroad into the headwind was a nightmare but a good pace could be maintained with determination. I found myself with my head about 8 inches off my bars, staring at my speedo and battling to keep it above 30km/hr in the early laps and dropping toward 25km/hr in the later laps. The final climb was fairly tough but I managed to stay in big ring and push up to keep my laps fairly quick.
After my first lap, my 4 following laps were all within 4 seconds of each other and were pretty quick - one of the biggest advantage I've found with the new 29er dually is the consistency of my lap times even when I start to fatigue.
I found the track got faster as the day went on and was really fun the whole race.
Thanks to Phil for stepping in, you're a top bloke.
Bring on Awaba......
Ian