Not quite this dumb!

With Rach only being 2 weeks post major abdominal surgery, and sherlock still being a little small for racing (easy to tow you say?) I had to look outside the family for team mates.

Oh sod it, this report has taken too long to write as usual, so suffice it to say that Barryn and I enetered the Big Bang Adventure Race near Otaki and managed to lead it from about 90 secs in all the way to the end, building up a comfortable margin throughout the cycle, run/ bush trek and river tubing event.

This was BB's first race and it went off very well, getting coverage in the local rag the week after, and attracting well over 150 people.

Thanks to Barryn for coming out to play and to Stephen and Belinda for coming out to crew, thankfully the weather was pleasant for hanging around Otaki Forks.

And when I got back to the hospital to go and see the fandamily, someone had parked a car in the hospital - maybe they should have paid more attention to the signs!

Grumble!

Half an hour behind the leader yesterday was tempered somewhat by the fact
that he'd run on the same map the week before, but today's mispunch robbed
me of 3rd in the sprint race which was all my own dumb fault ;-(

Relay this afternoon just for fun, and then we'll see how the long course
goes tomorrow.

Holding the baby

While Rach stays in Wellington cooking Sherlock (2 months to go <gulp>) I'm
taking a well earned break(!) in aussie, hanging out by Lake Hume with
about 30 kiwis here for the Oceania MTBO champs.

For the foot-o champs last week they had GPS trackers on the competitors so
that you could see all their silly mistakes from your desk, check out
http://www.oceaniamtbo.com/ to see if they're doing the same for us on
friday, saturday and sunday.

FART II?

The great american RV migration north seems to be happening at the moment, and we are seeing some magnificent (ridiculous?) Examples, maybe something like this would pass muster as our next race vehicle?

Honeymoon time

It turns out that hixy was right, he said that I wouldn't let a little thing like a cracked rib stop me from riding whistler :-)

Whistler bike co. supplied me with a giant DH glory and I got 6 runs in in 4 and a bit hours. The best riding was very much like welly track, but scaled up to need the glory's 8" of travel, and my only crash was on snow on the very top run.

Rach took an anthem out for a spin round some of the xc trails and had dinner waiting on my return, so a pretty good afternoon all up :-)

Who said wind energy was clean?

Returning from the superb john randal/ simon kennett planned 2 hour score MTBO event at Meridian Energy's West Wind wind farm, it was pretty obvious which one of us had stuck to the controls on the roads, and which had taken on all the cross country clippers.

Despite her condition having kept her off a mountain bike for a few months now, Rach couldn't turn down the opportunity to get out onto this private land for this event, a view obviously shared by many as the turnout of over 90 showed. She therefore teamed up with her friend Jude to introduce Jude to MTBO, while I attempted to maintain a position near the top of the men's open field.

With my 2 main competitors running the event, and with round 1's winner Tim Wilding not here, it was going to be a straight fight with vet Ian Paintin. We both headed South along the ridge and collected the first 2 controls within sight of each other, before Ian headed down to pick up a control (33) that I had decided not to get.

4 controls later and I was regretting my game plan - less than a 1/4 of the time used up and over a 1/4 of the controls passed, and with only 1 big climb in the route, I realised it was going to be possible to clear this course! I altered my route to include all of the other controls that I had previously discounted, and other than wasting about 3 minutes looking for 37 - it was in the right place, but was the only control that wasn't immediately visible - was being pretty efficient, and had put a small lead on Ian.

There was an 'allowable route' that took us down to the sea, that was great fun, and now I know where it goes will be worth going back to see if it is 100% rideable. About here I saw Rach and Jude about to walk up the bit I had run down, so I warned them about 37.

A number of controls were laid out along a slushy valley floor, and the out and back nature of this section meant I got to see that I'd put about 6 minutes into Ian, but I was confident he would still clear the course and it would take me more than 6 minutes to get out to 33 and back!

After doing the loop at the very north of the map I figured I would head out to 33 if I had 10 minutes left, and as I came back towards the finish that was exactly what I had, so I screamed through the S/F area where people were already finishing ( sorry guys! ), cocked up leaving, and then got my head down.

Unfortunately 33 turned out to be 12 minutes away, so I got back 2 minutes late, and later on realised I had been so focussed on 33 that I had omitted an easy 11.

Ian missed the 20 pointer near the start in order to get back with 5 seconds to spare, so neither of us quite cleared the course, and he ended up taking the win by 10 points - I reckon I would have cleared it with about 4 mins to spare if I'd got 33 in the first place, so hopefully lesson learned - if you're going to be anywhere near clearing, pick everything up early and drop later ones!

Rachel and Jude were waiting for me at the finish and Rach was Buzzing, she'd had a great time back on 'Petal', and they'd cleared about 2/3rds of the course, having plenty of fun and finishing in the top half of the field ( they actually got 620 )

Results at http://www.mapsport.co.nz/hvoc/hvoc.html, commentary at http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=236295939728164, and doubtless there will soon be an article at http://sifter-writes-bikes.blogspot.com/.

Thanks John, Simon, Michael etc for a great course, and Meridian for the access!

West coast fun

Not really tlj related, but mark hearfield and I were part of a group of 21 mainly wellingtonians that headed down to the south island to ride the heaphy track.

We managed to get a weekend of great weather which is always a surprise on the west coast, and great fun was had by all. The track was pretty boggy and a lot harder work than expected but well worth the effort, with a group heading in the opposite direction getting caught out, and having to spend the night in the hut we had fully booked out.

Recommended for the fit, or for people willing to take 3 or more days over it.

*

Burglars?

Rachel and I have recently had to gives back our 2 biggest trophies-the women's crazy man individual which is now with Elina Ussher, and the national rogaine champs which is now Emma and Guy de Lacey.

As we've been doing very little other than getting married this year, we decided to enter the annual city safari rogaine in the 3 hour category, and after making good use of the real time system and rach's smart phone, we cleared karori and tinakori to win by a healthy margin.

The 'alternative' ak attack

http://www.mountainbike.co.nz/clubs/hvmbc/mtbo_ak-attack.htm

This year the ak attack moved out of it's traditional home in the akatarawas, to a new, secret location that turned out to be the majority of the hutt valley.

Starting at the dry creek entrance of belmont regional park, Michael Wood and the organising team had negotiated access to private land that linked all the way north through st pat's forest, and the map also covered the eastern hills beloved of crazyman riders, and of course belmont park itself.

St pat's offered lots of points in a short but steep area, and this is where we headed along with favourites john randal & simon kennett, and definite contenders ian paintin & ant bradshaw.

Long story will be on elsidee.com at some point, but short version is that this was obviously a good strategy, as john & simon took the win on 1770, rach & I got 2nd overall on 1620, and ant & ian took out vet men and 3rd overall with 1540.

Thanks to the organisers, the weather, the private landowners, and to Burkes for the bikes and Osprey for the packs that helped us through!