Awesome Weekend in Orange

It was a bit of a late decision to enter as I was speaking with @dicko and mentioned I have been riding heaps but have done bugger all racing this year and he mentioned how damn good the track is at Orange. I entered the 4hr solo then checked interest levels of the family. Liz was keen, Qualia was keen but Lach gave me the "dad I'd love to come but my cold isn't too good..." speech. Oh well, 3 out of 4 is good so on Friday I did a quick search of accomm and found Turners Vineyard met our needs.

We headed up Saturday minus Lach arriving mid arvo. The room looked down over a vineyard and was nice and big. I went for a ride around the vineyard while Liz researched restaurants in Orange for dinner. We ended up at what was basically a shed behind a house at a farm about 10mins from town called Racine. Wow! Great restaurant and I broke my rule of no drinkies the night before an event...

We were surprised then when we checked event details that our hotel is only 10min from the race. Awesome. Got to sleep in.

We arrived at the event and had to hurry a bit. My new rear tyre I had fitted before we left home was flat. Oops. I then heard the announcer talking of how much climbing we were in for. Oh crap! @dicko had only mentioned the last 1km of descent to me. I hate lugging this frame up hills.

The race started with a fire road climb. About 1km in I was buggered and ready to go home. Then I started noticing how damn nice the single track was. Reminds me a bit of Kowen in Canberra. My back packed it in early reminding me of why I hate these events with lots of switchback. I raced the first 3 laps in a lot of pain. My physio has taught me to switch off muscles in spasm but it's much harder at speed during a race but I kept changing my position on the bike until I found the solution. I started whooping with joy on lap 4 having nailed my back problem and was now enjoying the course. I actually rate it my favourite.

My other problem was a funny one. I have a new Magellan GPS unit which is touch screen. This was its first event and as soon as I started sweating the unit was sensitive to my drops of sweat and kept changing screens, turning off etc...

As soon as I finished Liz showed me they had an ice bath set up. What a great idea. I went and spent some time in there and kept raving on the drive home how good my legs felt. What a great idea the ice bath was Choc Foot!

Kicking back now over a couple of reds thinking Orange is definitely on the radar for future events.