It has been over a month since returning to Australia from the Cape Epic in South Africa, over a month since I come home from the 8-day event feeling, quite honestly, like I had had my fill of sporting competition for a while but, as any sports person will tell you, the feeling of saturation soon passes and you immediately start looking for your next sporting 'fix'. For me, my next hit was to be the annual Dirtworks 100 mountain bike event, one of the premier events on the New South Wales mountain biking calendar.
The event starts and finishes in the small town of St Albans, situated 2hrs north of Sydney. The race is over 100km, taking in around 2000m in elevation.
So the 7am start time meant it was an early drive up to the race on Sunday May 2nd. Checking in, I decided to take a punt and see what a mtb race was like up front and so checked myself into the Elite wave category. I was feeling pretty strong going into the event after taking some time out to recover from the Epic, my technical skills had improved enormously over the past few months and there were significant 'congestion' advantages starting in a smaller group.
The race started out well enough with a easy opening 8km flat section before the first major climb of the day. And that is pretty much the last time I saw the learders! The guys just blew off the front up the climb at an incredible speed and I was left a little deflated and fully aware that I still had a lot to learn about mountain biking.
However, I steadily made my way up the climb and started to pick up a few spots and reckoned I was still within the top 20 or so. I was making good progress and my confidence started to pick up again. Turning at the top of the ensuing climbs I could see no-one in front or behind and started some of decents with the freedom of riding alone.
It would not be a few minutes though that I would hear squeeky brake noises coming up behind me! I thought I was decending pretty well actually - keeping things fast but within control - but these 'mountain-goat' riders would just plummet down at brake-neck speeds, actually make that 'neck speeds' as there was absolutely no brake or braking going on!
So I am still quite a newbie to this sport and I still need to put in some work before I can attempt to hang with the big guns, no point in pushing beyond my capabilities and risking injury. I decided to come of the boil a little and enjoy the race and take in some of the fantastic scenery on offer.
Around 70km, the route tranverses a 50m or so wide river and the organisers build a bridge out of planks and canoes. I really had to force myself to attempt the bridge which was rather tricky to say the least. You can see in the photo below that I was getting closer and closer to the edge as I rode over but I made across without getting wet which was a great relief.
The final 30km was an up and down affair with pretty much 15km uphill before a fast downhill/flat 15kms to the finish. By this time, it was getting pretty warm and I began to really miss my second water bottle which I had lost during a bumpy section early on in the day.
Thankfully a couple of rescue personnel were posted at the summit of the final climb and I downed two bottles before pushing on to the end.
I finished after 4hr49mins in 37th spot overall - the winner posting an amazing 3hrs57mins!
