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| Smooth Transition Paul, Jimmy, Simon, me, Hamish, Ed |
The morning pack for the race took a little longer then I expected and had me arriving at track side at 1015am. The team had my back here already and had taken care of signing on and picking up the plates. I wasn't rushing, actually I was doing quite the opposite, trying to move as slowly as possible to conserve everything for stomping out some laps. The relief of arriving at the campsite soon turned into excitement when I notice Simon already on the trainer, getting warm and keen.
A quick meet and greet and within minutes we were talking about our approach and rider order. Within another few minutes the plan was sorted and attention turned to the start. Everyone in this group is so laid back but on the other hand are equally as keen to do well on the track. This formula is very hard to find.
Simon started us off with a solid performance and came through in the first 120 out of 600 riders, which positioned the team into 26th in our category. We would soon work our way into 14th place with Jimi smashing out the fastest lap for our team in the first 12 hours period.
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| Ed pumped and ready to hit out his first lap |
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| Jimi tags Ed in and completes one of many smooth transitions |
I was really worried about how my legs would respond because they were feeling like rubbish in the lead up. With swollen glands and a sick kid in the household I also wasn't sure if my body was going to play the game either. But after the nerves subsided and I got on the bike for that first lap, my legs felt punchy and immediately felt good about going 100%.
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| Ripping in my first lap |
The night grind was on and our unlucky rider was chosen when Paul got a double flat. The instant he realized that his last CO2 was not enough for those big 29er hoops, a girl crashed right next him and proved to be the cartwheeling pump queen when Paul borrowed her hand pump to get him back on the track. Once he got back into a rhythm and made it across the line it had cost us about 14mins. Never mind because it was only a matter of 4 laps or so and we were back in 7th place.
I felt great on my last lap, the course really opened up with new lines and the traffic had thinned out a little with some teams pulling the pin before the buzzer. I had nearly made it home with only about 5kms to go, then I struck a tree root with my left pedal and it flicked me on my back like a helpless turtle. My bike was upside down with the stem skewed at nearly 90 degrees. I quickly straightened my bars and jumped straight back on. Have to say thanks to the 4 guys who stopped and sorry for not even making eye contact because I had some where to be and it was only a few kms away.
We would finish in a credible 7th place out of 120 teams, or 22nd overall out of 600 teams. The team put in a couple of great late laps including the fastest of our race with Hamish bombing a 54:03. The gap between us and 6th closed quickly but we fell just short and finished 2mins behind our closest rivals.
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Beer Garden enjoying my last hit out for the weekend. |
http://www.racetecresults.com/MyResults.aspx?CId=16253&RId=130&EId=1&AId=19690
SMOOTH TRANSITION
Race No : 7146
Category : Six Packs - OPEN - Male
Status : Finished
No Laps : 24
Fastest Lap : 00:54:03
Slowest Lap : 01:18:44
Average Lap : 01:01:30
Distance Done : 487.2
Finish Time: 24:36:12
Overall : 22
Gender : 19
Categ : 7
The team dynamics worked really well this year and it was great to race again with a like minded bunch of lads. I'm hoping we can keep this group together for upcoming team events or even just some weekend pedal out in the local bush.
Team Captain award goes to Ed Meeuwissen for showing so much improvement since the Scott and riding so well during this event. You had an awesome preparation with heaps of racing in the lead up. Keep it up mate.
*Yoda: Potential in you there is, keep training you must.
Special thanks
TLC Cycles for race prepping my bike, it was flawless the entire race.
Don from our Rough Transition team who setup the massive marquees
Our interstate riders for making the trip and making the race so worthwhile
Hamish for making his comeback on race day. Who does that, seriously!
Dan Parker for coming out and taking some photos, he was meant to race but was out injured
All the cool peeps who dropped by the campsite just to say hi and give support. It all pays when you are grinding out laps at 3am.
Stay tuned and I'll bang up a post with rider comments about the race and some more photos/vid etc.
Next race is the last round of CORC XCO, with Hamish on the come back running in 3rd overall and me runnning just a few points behind its going to be an interesting race.
Ride on.
Dave
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