RND 3 VICTORIAN MTB SERIES

Today signifies the end of a very very long week. I tried to do a heavy week of riding through a heavy week at work and I’ve discovered that the two don’t work that well together. In simple terms, I went into Round 3 of the Victorian MTB Series today tired, and it hurt me. Bendigo hosted the race out at Heritage Road, Sedgwick, providing an always rocky, hilly, challenging course, that I saw for the first time this morning. Aside from the terrain, perhaps the hardest and most unpredictable obstacle today was the severe heat on the open trails.

The hot sun led to dehydration, which caused some very sloppy technical skills, and by race end severe exhaustion! I rode my first lap as hard as I possibly could in an attempt to stay within 1 minute of Jo Wall, but come the end of lap two, Tory and I had quit alongside each other with no will or want to go on. Jo powered to a 9 minute win, and I held off Tory by a further 3 minutes. I had just the one crash, where I fell into a bush that left me with about 30 million invisible bindies in my arm! That pain wore off when the effects of four coke-zero’s post race kicked in!

In the Men’s race Murray Spink, Robbie Hucker and Jarrod all came through within 10 seconds after the first lap. Robbie punctured and relegated himself to finish second by 3 minutes, while Jarrod lost control on a tricky descent running head first into a tree! His kamikaze style crash left him sitting airy fairy on trackside for ten minutes. Then with a broken helmet, a scarred face, a grazed back and cuts to his hands, knees and elbows, he went on to complete a second that that he barely even remembers!

Results: Round 3, Victorian MTB Series XCO, Bendigo

INJURY PRONE

MTB’ing brings with it so many different challenges. At Nationals I punctured, pinch flat style. In Shepparton I punctured twice and sprained my wrist after a heavy fall. On Wednesday night I rode rocky descents blind, because I forgot to charge my light. Yesterday I saw a snake and had to push my bike up the climbs after hunger flatting. But today...well today I thought I was on a real winner! Jarrod, Glen Rea, Jason Sim, Leigh Matthews and I ventured down to Woodend for a change in scenery, finally some smooth dirt tracks we could race around. But trouble follows MTB’ers...

I was riding well to stay in contact with the boys after my epic adventures yesterday, and even started conjuring up some blogging words about how I’d completed my first MTB ride ever without crashing or unclipping. As I grew cocky I started taking some of the A lines, going over man-made obstacles as opposed to the B line which takes you around them. Then I rode up a short man-made plank to the top of a log, and face-planted off the other side :( After picking myself up we waited for Glen, who unbeknown to us had crashed at the beginning of the lap!

Jason continued to lead the way, around corners, over jumps, calling ‘heads’ when he passed under an over-hanging branch. A branch that Jarrod hit with his camelback, that scraped the back of my seat as I passed under it and came crashing down on the track infront of Leigh. Then came lap 2 where Leigh was the first to crash. Jarrod didn’t stop this time and karma would come for him. While passing one of the slower larger ladies she would attempt to move off the track, hit a tree, and take the tree with her to land on top of Jarrod! It was no surprise we headed home after two laps...