Dad does 6 hour on his bike at Woodhill
Mum and Emily had a nice relaxing weekend away visiting family and friends in the Bay of Plenty.
I decided to spend 6 hours on Saturday competing in-no, participating in a mountain bike race out in West Auckland run by www.totalsport.co.nz.
Last year Jungle Coffee entered a 5 person team and we won the open mens class.
This time I wanted a real challenge and entered the solo grade - here's how it panned out.
10.30am the race kicks off with a le mans start-I wander off to the porta loos instead of running around the paddock, take a wizz and casually slide into the middle of the pack on my trusty old Klein hardtail (98 vintage) to take advantage of the gears to cruise through the first lap congestion.
Stefenso Colenso, Tommee Tippy and Helen OC were also in my grade.
Steve was just in front and Tom just behind at the end of the first lap.
I pulled into our tent site to change bikes (Merlin singlespeed), have a beer with Tom (Monteiths Black) and a slice of cold pizza (Phil Woods once told me it was ok to eat junk food at endurance events)
Off we went again, the track had thinned out and the riding was sweet.
Then in the spaghetti trail a fellow rider had fallen off on a smallish wooden bridge and messed up his shins pretty well. I opted to use my 'good kharma card" to ensure he was ok and Tom and I shepherded him home.
At the end of that lap we applied for a time credit for helping the young guy which would make up for us having a beer after the 1st lap - talk about cunning.....
I also changed to a suspension seatpost for the Merlin thus losing even more time and didn't get the set up quite right -seat too far forward, bad weight distribution the result.
End of third lap was another stop to adjust said seat post-Tom didn't see me and carried on: destroying our loose plan of stopping after every 35-45minute lap to take on more fluids and food.
This proved to be the undoing of Tom as he only had two more laps in his legs. Afterwards he was heard to say "I'm shagged" Unconfirmed reports suggest his current bit of fluff may have to answer for his crap form on the bike.
Steve and Helen - well I can only guess they were circulating far more efficiently than myself.
Laps 4,5 and 6 passed by with a helmet full of sweat and a big grin on the downhills - a welcome reward after struggling up the hills with only one gear to choose from.
I timed my last lap down to perfection-evidently 45 mins was my average lap time including stops.....I got back to the tent at 4.20pm with 10 minutes to spare.
Steve and Helen put in 8 laps, I did 7 and Tom 5. The winner did 11 - apparently he knows Lloyd Flandis so there may be a protest.....
In conclusion, I rate this event as a goodie. The transition area was great, George FM layed down good tunes all day, good organisation and set up from Total Sport and the sun was shining all day - even needed sunscreen !
Also, big ups to Jungle Coffee for helping to sponsor the event and in a roundabout way pay for all our entry fees.
A lot of folks did the full 12 hour event as solos or teams - good on them. by the time they'd finished I was in the spa at home having a beer.
Next year I'd like a few more beers to ward off dehydration during the day-maybe even a team commited to a riding like a goods train and we commit to a beer a lap ?
posted by Redwoods @ 2:02 AM
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