Sunday, November 19, 2006

The last week.

Another caffeine free passed reasonably successfully. I am still not sleeping managing to get a full nights sleep though which is very concerning, I do not think I am stressed with anything but I maybe I am ? I am going to not worry about avoiding coffee when I am in Australia next week, but I plan to keep off it at work any way. I guess the next thing to give up is alcohol but I don’t really drink that much or that regularly to believe it has any impact on my daily life.

Tai Chi was good again, we learnt a few more steps in the process, I started off the week getting up at 6.30 and doing 10 minutes each morning but got slack as the week progressed, will have another go this week at early rises.
After Tai Chi I went down to the school sports field and after a 10 minute warm up did a few sprint runs. I aim to do some sprints once a week to augment the slower runs I am supposed to be doing but aren’t. If I am planning on doing this marathon next year I am going to have the ramp the running up a lot over the next few weeks.

Tuesday night was another great little Murawai ride, it was just the 2 of us this week. I really struggled on the climb up the first hill to the forest entrance, all muscles hurt and breathing was a struggle. I do not why I am struggling with my running and riding at the moment, I have been fairly consistent with the amount I am doing and my diet has been pretty reasonable lately. Maybe I need a holiday from exercise as well ? We rode down Wild Thing and a bit of the Dak Track and then out the back and up the forest road to the quarry. There was quite a strong northerly blowing so riding up the road was quite hard work and I was pretty knackered by the time we got to the quarry. The quarry was an interesting place to ride, not a big area but lots of little challenges to play on, I had never been there before. I was worn out and riding like a real muppet so didn’t do try anything silly as it was just going to end badly, but I would like to go back there again. We left the quarry and continued north looking for trails made by the motor crosses that were rideable, we fond one great run that was no too chewed up and powered along there for a while before climbing over the fence and riding back down the road, with a nice tail wind back to the start. It was a good ride as it was a new set of trails and we saw deer, quail and rabbits, but I was very awkward on the bike for some reason.

I didn’t do much with the rest of the week, too lazy to get out and run, though I had good intentions !

On Saturday morning I did arrange to go riding with Miles and even got as far as driving all the way to the forest but the weather was awful and I waited in the rain for 10 minutes for the guys to turn up and it was cold and miserable so I packed the bike back in the car and piked. I think this must be my first pike ever from a ride. Normally the weather does not bother me at all. On the way home I dropped in at a new bike store in Henderson where I know the mechanic and had the disk brake fitted to my new wheel.

That night I cooked an OK butter chicken for dinner and had a couple of wines with Miles and the wife.

Sunday number 2 son went out to play softball with mates so I went out for a run. Drove up to Titirangi and ran from there to Exhibition drive, did 2 circuits and back to the car. One hour 27 minutes, 7 minutes faster than 2 weeks ago. I felt good, though again I had quite a sore arch. When I am in Australia next week I will look for a pair of Nike Pegasus from the Nike discounter shop, I have never had an issue with those shoes.

After the run I fitted a road tyre to the new wheel and now have the Cindercone going in road mode again. I now have 3 bikes that mostly work, though none of them are in perfect condition.

Been listening to a lot of Jawbreaker lately, loving that CD, but this afternoon has been Fields of the Nephilim on the stereo – loving the goth.

I must get back to updating more regularily. Roll on my holiday 1 week to go.




Sunday, November 12, 2006

The last week wrapped up

Tai Chi was good on Monday night, learnt another step in the process of whatever it is we are learning, along with some more stretches, I was still feeling a bit crap when I got there though the appalling head ache I had been suffering during the day had abated a bit.

When I got home my wife and I were discussing what to do for our 20th wedding anniversary at the end of the month and rather on the spur of the moment have decided to go to the Gold Coast for 4 days and visit her family and then take 4 days up in Cairns. We booked the flights that night ! this will be the first time we have been away for more than a night without the kids for 12 years. My sister will take the youngest and the big 2 can stay at home by them selves. We are placing a lot of trust on the two teenagers to not have parties while we are away. I am not so worried about my kids but I do not have a lot of faith in some of their friend.

Tuesday I booked my leave from work.

Wednesday I bought two CD’s Jawbreaker – Dear You and Ride – Smile. Both old CD’s and both are great. First Jawbreaker I have bought and I really do like it, will be hunting down some of their CD’s now. The Ride CD is a compilation of their first two EP’s, it is also very good. 2 good music purchases in one day, awesome.

On Friday night I decided to stay for a couple of drinks after work and not unusually I ended up getting completely toasted by 9.00 PM. Had a couple of wines or 3 with a couple of the finance people at a pub down the road from work. Miles collected me about 8.30 and we went off to a Japanese place for food which I really did not feel like. It is times like these that you really appreciate BK ! My wonderful daughter came and picked me up and between us we located the party number 1 son was at and drove home.

The next day I was up at 7.30 for number 2 sons softball game, I felt like crap and spent the 30 minute game warm up slumped in the car. The game was Ok, they were winning up until the last innings when they got slaughtered… still the boys enjoyed the game and number 2 got player of the day for a fine hit. I also succumbed to a very week instant coffee to perk myself up, it was so week I certainly did not notice any caffeine hit.

After the game and lunch, number 2 son disappeared with mates for the afternoon, my wife disappeared to see some friends, so I rode the AC in to town to pick up my car. It was a real struggle, I wasn’t in prime form, and a heavy fully suspended bike with 2.3’’ tyres is no road machine, though I did have a new seat post…

Sunday morning I was awake very early, it was a gorgeous day so I was up at 6.30 AM and drove into town for a run along the waterfront. I parked at Okahu Bay and ran east along the waterfront and up the hill at the end of St Heliers, then back to the car. I felt pretty good during the run but the arch of my left foot was really tender by the time I got to the car. The intention was to run for an hour and a half and I believe if it wasn’t for the foot I could have easily have done that. I am now experimenting with some arch supports.

My daughter has decided to go flatting with a friend, in a house above the friends mother, so it not a complete cut off. I am quite excited for her, she is 18, has a job and this will be a good learning exercise for her to see what you actually have to do to run a house – she has no idea.

She also broke her wrist in a drunken slip on Saturday night, so I spent Sunday evening at the A and E clinic while they x-rayed and plastered her up. She could be off work for 4-6 weeks, though it was not a major break.

Wednesday, November 08, 2006

Giving up coffee

It is now Monday, my third day without coffee, I am at work and I feel less than average. If I did not have a budget finalisation meeting this morning I would probably have stayed in bed.

The weather has been very warm and sunny, the first of the summer weather arrived for the weekend. I did run on Friday, ride on Saturday and run on Sunday, I am guessing part of the issue is dehydration, though I did drink a reasonable amount over the weekend. I am also wondering if there was a small element of heat stroke. Though it is hardly hot at the moment it has been hotter than normal and I wonder if my body needs to adjust.

• I am extremely tired after 3 lousy sleeps with Friday and Saturday nights being particularly bad, I am not sure if it is the caffeine withdrawals or just my normal cycle of bad sleep, though I feel worse than normal.
• Yesterday I had a really bad headache in the afternoon and early evening, I really do not like taking pain killers but if it kicks in again today I will have to pop some Nurofen or I will not survive the day at work.
• Most of yesterday I had a mildly upset stomach and it is not 100% right today, not sure what that is related to, caffeine or something I ate ?
• I have long suffered from pain in my lower back, a couple of visits to a osteopath a few years back resolved the issues and rarely suffer anymore, and can usually stretch it out. The pain has come back again, though I have not really started to stretch properly again. I will get onto that tonight.
• I have had a stiff/sore neck for about a week, not terrible pain, more frustrating and niggling.
• My legs hurt….. I very badly broke the “do not exceed the previous weeks exercise by more than 10% rule” so it is my own fault. I was planning on introducing some sprint reps into my training after tai chi tonight, but I will wait until next week.

It was my wifes turn to do softball this week so I went riding on Saturday morning with Miles, I took the single speed up to Woodhill forest. If the dry weather remains much longer then Woodhill is going to be un-rideable soon, but Riverhead will be fantastic ! We had another slow ride, kept the pace down on the flat and climbs to as close to easy chatting pace as possible. I am really enjoying these slow chatty non-stop rides. Rode up Powerball, where we stopped so I could adjust my chain, then hit Big Mumma, and the back trail to enchanted forest, where we had to walk one section of this trail, though it has been un-rideable for years, I must talk to the bike parks people about making a bypass to that section… We then rode Haggis and Northern Exposure and stopped before riding no brakes. Stopped again at the top of no brakes and then did Iron Horse, I kept the seat right up and didn’t do any of the jumps this time round. We had another small break before the steep climb up to the fun back section of Conifer Loop that links back into Haggis, followed up with Tree Huggas, Link, Cookie and finally Raceface down, back to the car. Though we kept a fairly sedate pace we did cover a fair bit of ground and I was quite tired when I got home.
On Saturday night we celebrated Guy Fawkes with friends, though I was quite tired and I am guessing the caffeine withdrawals were starting to kick in. I still slept badly though.

As usual I had planned to get up early on Sunday morning and go for a run before my wife went to work and as usual I stayed in bed till 10.00 reading a novel. Once I had all the shopping completed I did get out for a mid afternoon run along Exhibition drive. I took it very slow as my legs were extremely tight and almost painful. I ran for an hour and half at a very slow pace, running from Titirangi, 2 laps of Exe and back again. One of the sections took me 21 minutes, I can do that lap in 16 minutes if I apply myself, I was running that slowly. I did keep my heart rate under 150 though which was the goal.

I am definitely not ready to do any distance running at this stage, 15kms in an hour and a half and I was pretty wrecked, not a good sign.

Had a BBQ at our place, my head was so sore and one of the guests tuend up an hour early so I was very unprepared and had not done all the house work I wanted to do. It was an Ok night, but I was not really up to it.

Sunday, November 05, 2006

Work trip to Tauranga

I had a work trip to the Tauranga office on Friday, it was all kinda last minute so I did not try and arrange a ride bit took my running gear and planned on a run if the weather was OK.

In fact the day was awesome, warm and sunny with no wind. I finished work around 2.30 and drive up the road to Mt Maunganui and went for a run around the seaward base of the mount. I have never been round the base before so it was a great run, no idea of the distance but I ran for 50 minutes.






I then jumped into the sea here for about 30 seconds, it was still damn cold, before driving back to Auckland. It was a great ‘work’ day.

Thursday, November 02, 2006

Tai Chi and Tuesday night riding

The week at work has been a real shitter, not too sure why, it has been no different than any other week, I am just not up for work any more. I would take a holiday but have no idea what to do or where to go and I do not want to just hang around at home doing the odd ride on my own.

I had my first tai chi lesson on Monday night, it was ok, I am not sure what my real expectations were but this is a pretty low brow course at the local high school. Still it was kinda fun and the hour passed fairly quickly. We learnt a basic move involving 4 steps (stances ?), the instructor was not that verbose… Anyway I have a few things to practise this week.

Tuesday night I headed up to Murawai for a ride. I am still riding the AC with a shortened seat post and it just feels so weird on the first climb, I still ride the AC like a single speed hard tail, standing and pounding on the climbs, it kinda works but I am sure sitting and spinning on the climbs would be more effective and a lot less tiring.

Had a good ride, just the three of us this week, rode straight to the forest and hit up Dan’s track, then back up to the old National downhill, only had a couple of runs down the jump section then we went and rode a really really old track called Wild thing. Wild thing existed when I sued to ride there years ago, though there is only a short section of it left now. Still it was a bit of fun. We then pushed back up and rode down Mainline. I have not ridden this track before, it was pretty sandy at the top but once we got into the trees it firmed up a bit and man it was a fun track, I do like to lead on these pedally downhill tracks as I can hit it at my own pace…. From the end of Mainline we pushed most of the way back up AFL. I am loving this track, I really nailed most of it, missed one of the tricky bits that I by pass so lost some speed, but I reckon I had my fastest run down that track, I must get a speedo to find out.

Got back to the car after an hour and a half of riding at 8.00 and it was still pretty light.

Sunday, October 29, 2006

the week wrapped up.

It has been an interesting week, work has been as busy as usual and as frustrating as ever. I found that I slept really well over weekend but come Monday I slept badly again and have slept badly ever since. I am not really sure why I cannot sleep properly all the time I do not think I am overly stressed from work, certainly work is stressful but I have been in worse situations. I have decided on 2 courses of action, firstly I have long been thinking about starting something along the lines of yoga or tai chi. Primarily to help me relax, but also to help build some core strength, improve flexibility and balance and develop some breathing techniques. In the end I decided to try tai chi and the local high school has a community education course starting on Monday which I have signed up for. Secondly I have decided to give up coffee. I am going to reduce my intake this week with a plan to quit completely the following week, I am expecting a couple of weeks of hell when I stop though so I have started warning the family.

My youngest son, who turned 13 this week, has decided to join a few of his friends and play softball. This is pretty much going to kill Saturday morning riding. This weekend is out as it is the first game and I cannot miss that one. I am hoping/expecting my wife will go to every second game which means I can ride every second weekend at least. I hope to continue with the Tuesday night riding though.

With that in mind and with the Kaweka challenge coming up again February I am going to focus on running for a while, easier to get out and do before and after work - at least until I can get a decent bike for riding on the road. I am still keen to do the Kaweka run and then continue on and do a full Marathon later in the year. I will still do some events though, at least the last round of the Auckland champs and probably 1 or 2 24 hour team events depending on timing.

Yesterday we had my sons 13th birthday outing, we took him and 6 friends to the hot pools at Parakai for an afternoon session and BBQ dinner. At least with 12 and 13 year olds you do not need to watch them all the time, so my wife hung around the pool to provide food and drink and I got out for a run. I ran west for 45 minutes and then turned round and ran back. Fairly simple run, kept the pace down, though there was a reasonable westerly blowing. It was Ok, I was really knackered by the end and probably could not have gone out and done much more running. I think I could pull off a half marathon if I needed to right now but it would not be easy. Having said that in the last 8 days I have done a 1 hour run an hour twenty run and now an hour thirty, which is an awful lot more than in the last 3 or months so I should expect to be a bit tired. I will not run again until Thursday.

I hope to finally get the right seat post for the AC today...

Monday, October 23, 2006

A rainy day public holiday run

Yay – another wet day, got to love long weekends ! Raining a bit more persistently today, though it is not heavy. I got up at 7.30 and went for a run.

Started doing the same Godley Rd, Portage Rd, Clark St, Titirangi Rd loop as Friday but carried on up through Titirangi and along Kohu Rd to the bottom of Scenic Drive were I looped back into Titirangi again and down to home. It took me 1 hour 19 minutes to complete the 13.5 km loop, which is not particularly fast really but I was pacing myself and there is a fair amount of climbing which is really the purpose of this run. I hope to get out this week and do some sprint runs at the park as well but we will see how it goes.

I did measure the run in the car today and took some section distances as well so I can start to build some runs with a reasonable idea of distance.

I planted some tomatoes, lettuces and beat root this afternoon, get the vege garden going for summer. Will have to see how long the enthusiasm for growing veges lasts, it is not ling usually…

Sunday, October 22, 2006

Saturday ride

Drizzly morning again today.

I got up early and went into work at 7.15 to print off some stuff for my wife and print, sign and scan a document for work.

From work I drove up to Woodhill for my normal Saturday morning single speed ride with Miles. Had a pretty good ride, kept the pace down and just rode for 2 hours, didn’t really stop much – gate crossings, adjusted brakes once early on, so it was a pretty solid nicely paced work out.

We rode Powerball to the main network, then down Spaghetti as far as Afterglow, then finished off with Tortellini. We then took the easy road option to Haggis then Northern Exposure, No Brakes, Python and the horrible Anaconda, I really do not like that trail it just goes on and on and mostly seems to be up hill, there is just no fun in that trail… After Anaconda we did the last section of Conifer and I cleaned the rooty pinch climb which I haven’t done for a while, then powered through the lovely flowy section just before it joins back into Haggis. After Haggis we rode Tree Huggas, Link, all of Cookie for a change before thrashing down Raceface Down back the car. It was a good ride, I really tried again to focus on body position through the downhill sections and keeping my fingers off the brakes. I believe I am getting better at this and I do appear to be faster. I only had a couple of moderately scary moments as I got the body postioning wrong going into rutted corners.

After the ride I spent the afternoon scaring the neighbours by working in the garden with my shirt off, weeding and digging over the vege patch...


Listening to some old XTC - Go 2 LP on vinyl

Friday, October 20, 2006

Day off work

It is Labour Day in New Zealand on Monday so we all get the day off work. I have been feeling particularly sluggish this week, though I have actually got things done so I decided to take Friday off as well for a 4 day weekend. My plan for the day was to get a decent run in and then go do a whole bunch of shopping stuff, present for juniors 13th birthday, wheel barrow, seat post etc so the weekend can be spent doing stuff and avoiding the shopping areas at all costs. Well that half turned to crap as junior ended up being off school as well so I could only do half the shopping. He was off school to attend a funeral of an old cub leader, well he wasn’t old, he died of cancer 2 days ago at the age of 54. My wife went to the funeral, but I decided not to attend as I did not really know the family that well and some days I am a selfish asshole. I did get the wheel barrow…

As usual when a public holiday long weekend come around the weather turns to pants…cloud and drizzle forecast for the weekend.

I did get out for a run, did my almost 10km loop down Godley Rd, Portage Rd, Clark St, up Titirangi Rd and back down Godley again. The weather was OK, slight rain, no wind not too warm, but I still ran like someone who is 2 -3 kilos over weight. The fun felt Ok just not very fast, though at 55 minutes it was way off the slowest I have done it.

Seat post still not in the shop !

Tuesday riding

I have tried to source a new seat post for the AC so I could get the seat up a bit higher for the more XC focused rides, though the local bike shop had loads of posts in varying sizes they did nnot have one for me, I do have one on order though. Wouldn’t the world be a better place if there was some standardisation ?

This week I got a new work phone - so I have taken a couple of sample shots, and for the first time in ages I have been able to upload photos to here.

The riding area

I managed to get away from work nice and early on Tuesday and had a reasonably slow, though stress free drive up to Murawai. 10 of us rode this week so we took the longer ride option and rode all the way up the road to the dodgy walking track down hill. The AC is a pain to ride up prolonged (it is only 1.5km but it feels prolonged) climbs when you are sitting so low your knees are banging into your chin. The ride down was not too bad, faster than I have done it on the SS but I am still such a chicken on fast DH runs. The brakes on the AC were really grabby, felt like they were either on or off, very little modulation, could be just need some time to settle after not being used for a while, or maybe they just need a good bleed.

We rode back up and into the forest and then up to the top of the old down hill course for a play on the little jumps. the climb to the topI had replaced the cleats in my shoes so my feet were not popping out of the pedals and I was a lot more comfortable getting little bits of air. Had a fun session, man - the groms are just so comfortable leaping about on any sort of bike…

We then dropped down and did the riverside trail and by then it was too dark to ride back up to do AFL so we cruised back along the road to the cars.

Another good ride.

Sunday, October 15, 2006

Spring has sprung

Yay spring is here, it has been quite windy the last few days but it is certainly warmer and now day light saving is here we have light until 8.00 or so in the evening.

I am going to try and not waste my evenings and at least get out in the garden and do ‘stuff’, the place is a bit out of control but I have no real plans so will just do the basic stuff like weeding and pruning.

I have been fairly productive the last few days;

Edged the lawn with my bro-in-laws weed whacker – that was fun.
Mowed the lawn twice, it needed doing really badly.
Pruned the trees over the path so now I can wheel the bin down without hitting my head.
Drilled out and replaced the cleats in my old shoes so I can ride with the platform spd pedals on the AC.
Bought the wrong size seat post for the AC so need to return it.
Bough some herbs and started a little herb garden for summer.
Tided and swept the garage.
Cleaned the bikes
Cleaned the car

I am turning into a bit of a porkenstein again, we have had 2 nights for dinner at friends this weekend, both nights I ate lots and drank too much. This week I really must start to turn this back around.

I did get out for a light run today, did 1 session on Exhibition drive, was thinking of doing 2 but ran out of time again.

Right less type more work in garden…

First Riverhead ride of the spring.

As we ha not had a lot of rain in the last few weeks, discounting the heavy fall with hail on Tuesday, Graham wanted to go and check out some of the trails are Riverhead to see how rideable they are. The Freeriden boys had a loop that was supposed to be fairly dry but we did not get organised enough to get a map of the loop so decided to go and check out some of the tracks we rode last year.

Miles, Brendon, Graham and I rode today - with The Boys on their fully’s and me on the single speed. The ride up Barlow Rd to the start of Pattersons has not got any less steep but it felt OK, I have definitely gotten stronger over the winter period which is good. Pattersons 1 and 2 were a mixed affair, muddy in parts and dry in others, but the horses have been through there over winter and track is in awful condition, very hard work for a fairly flat track, not a lot of flow and the exposed roots are a lot further out of the track giving the upper body a good workout as well. I managed to get to the top of Christ hill Ok but was pretty broken, and took the opportunity of being first there to have a bit of a break. Richies is not one of my favourite tracks at the best of times, the down hill section was surprisingly dry so there was plenty of traction but there was some huge bogs on the flat sections and some of them were pretty smelly… As we were pushing time and the trail was not getting easier to ride we went left at the bottom of Richies with the intention of getting to the Chatham road trails and then to bottom of Anzac Rd. It appears the Chatham Rd trails have all disappeared now with all the trees and we ended up on a long section of old fire road that was at least heading in the right general direction. At the end of the fire road I was not 100% sure where we were but headed off again to the left and after a hundred metres or so ended up at the end of Anzac Rd which was most cool. Anzac was a fair old slog to the top, I had forgotten the final few metres was quite steep and I was again happy to get there first so I could suck some air down before the others arrived. The final run down Nature trail was Ok, again not a favourite trail as there are a few sections I get off and walk as they are too steep, both up and down, for me. I must get control of my fear and ride the down sections, they are perfectly rideable as Graham shows us every time.

Not a bad ride, ended up muddier than expected, muddy enough to clean the bike when I got home which I have had to do for a while !

Tuesday, October 10, 2006

First ride on the AC

I had a great ride tonight.

I got the AC ¾ sorted on Sunday, all I need now is a long seat post as the one in the bike has been cut down really short so Dom could drop the seat. There was just 4 of us riding tonight Pete and his 2 teenagers and we got away early enough for a hour and half ride without lights. Pete and I rode our AC’s and the kids had their DH bikes so this was going to be e bit of fun…

The wind was very strong off the beach so we decided to avoid the normal circuit and just get into the forest and play on the fun trails. We rode up to the top of Dan’s down that trail then back up to the top of the old national DH course. We played around on the small jumps on the this track for a while and I had a bit of a play on a new Giant Glory which was a lot of fun, these DH bikes get air born so easy compared to the DMR. I was riding with clip pedals and the cleat in my old shoes are too loose to really jump as my feet keep coming out which is not a good look – or feeling when you land on the top tube. So I kept it small and only hit the flowy jumps – not that I was going to bigger anyway…. From the midway point of the old nat’s track we moved on to the AFL track and sessioned a couple small jumps there for 15-20 minutes. I did get more and more comfortable hitting the jumps at higher speeds which was really cool – and the whole idea of getting the AC going again.

We then rode back to Pete’s place via a small loop down towards the beach that was like riding into a sand blaster, the wind was so strong.

A great first ride on the AC, will replace the cleats in the shoe’s so I can stay stuck to the bike.

Sunday, October 08, 2006

Single Speed Poker race day

Friday night was spent making up card packs for the dealers, as I had no real idea of how many people were likely to ride or how many of the volunteers were going to show up. I guessed on 8 volunteers and 22 riders so made up 8 packs of 20 cards each and a nice distribution of high value cards for the furthest away dealers, but a few wild cards thrown in for good measure ! I had dealers standing in Big Mumma, Spaghetti, at Dead Mans Corner, Tree Huggas, No Brakes, Iron Horse, Slipperies Delight and the beer stop in the old car park.

Race daydawned nice and sunny and I wandered the road at 7.45 for a paper and came home had coffee and toast. It was looking like being a top day, naturally half an hour later the cloud had moved in and the wind had picked up a bit…

I was quite nervous about the race, maybe nervous is a bit extreme, but I was certainly something, too much energy, luckily I had a few house jobs to do before I packed up and left. I had borrowed my brother in laws petrol weed wacker so I made good use of that and flattened the grass edges which is always fun, petrol powered tools are so cool.

I left home at 11.00 with a car load of bike, (which I didn’t ride) beer and prizes and headed for the supermarket to buy some basics for the BBQ. Got to the forest about an hour before the start and found a good spot to set up the barbie for race headquarters.

The riders and helpers started to show up soon after I arrived and the time before the race disappeared in a blur of chatting and getting peoples names down for the prize draw after the event. Luckily all the people who said they would help out, did and I was amazed to get 28 riders, which was a few more than I expected.

There was a small amount of chaos as I read the rules and shifted everyone to the start line, some of the helpers were not quite ready so I had to hold everyone back for a few minutes. Next event I will get this organised a bit better, I wanted to make sure the riders knew what the ‘dealers’ looked like so they knew who to ride up to in the forest.

Once the riders left 5 minutes late 2:05 I went and borrowed the bike parks BBQ and got that set up, I then hung about for an hour a half waiting for the riders to come back for food and a drink at 3:30.

The BBQ and prize giving were a bit of a blur for me, I remember having a couple of beers, cooking one hell of a lot of sausage, chatting to a lot of riders, handing out spot prizes and generally having a good time. The race was won by a girl with 4 kings.

The feedback on the day was everyone enjoyed it, which was just great, I wasn’t sure how people would find it. With the larger number of riders, more people would have missed out on cards then I planned. There was enough interest to run one of these again next year but next time I will ensure there are more cards and more dealers out there. At least next time it will be easy to get interest going now everyone knows what the heck it is all about !

Photos are here ;

http://aucklandsinglespeed.spaces.live.com

Friday, October 06, 2006

Race day tomorrow

Plans for the single speed poker race are as complete as they are ever going to be with race day tomorrow. This being my first eventy racey thing I have ever done I am a bit pensive about how it will all turn out, but at least the weather has turned it on for me - big blue skies forecast for the day.

I have the prize giving beer and more than I expected, prizes from Vorb.org.nz arrived in the mail on Wednesday and the rest should turn up tomorrow with their respective riders.

I guess now it comes down to getting enough volunteers to lur in the forest and enough riders to make it fun !

I have put together a blog site with some info about the race and a place to store photos.

The weather was filthy early in the week with massive rains and high winds, the winds are just about gone now, but it is still quite cold. I went out for a ride on my own on Wednesday night to check out the tracks and the rain has really settled them down, they are hard are going to be fast. I had an OK ride, I havent ridden on my own for a while and it was quite a challenge to keep motivated... It was an Ok ride, though I had issues with one a screw in one of my cleats and had to stop and tighten it twice.

Last night I went around to my friend Darin's house with the AC and he took out the BB, which is pretty knackered, greased it up and installed it, it is still stuffed but at least it doesn't creak so bad....

Still have issues getting one of the flat pedals out of the cranks, the crank insert keeps coming out with the pedal, we have super glued it back in again and I will try and remove the pedals again tomorrow morning. I will take the AC for a ride on Sunday morning, I haven't ridden a fully for a while, and have never ridden the AC in anger before. It should be fun !

Fingers crossed the race will go well tomorrow

I am keen to organise someting else if it does !

Tuesday, October 03, 2006

81.2 KG

Arse - a kilo heavier than 2 weeks ago.

Shows what a week of bad diet and doing less exercise than normal does.

But now for the good news.

Last night I took possesion of 4 9 packs of Matakana Lager for the race this weekend.

That is 1 9 pack for first place, 2 for the beer stop on the ride and an extra pack that I can share around the volunteers. - Awesome

Monday, October 02, 2006

My fitness is slipping

I must weigh myself tonight when I get home from work. I have been rather slack lately and have not kept up a regular exercise routine, though this is quite typical of how I, and I assume many others, work. I had a good couple of weeks on the gym and I can feel it all slipping away, over my belt in some cases. In the last couple of weeks I have really hit the chocolate biscuits, chips and ice cream again. What is worse is I have bought (relatively) expensive protein shakes to have as a mid afternoon snack to replace the free biscuits at work, and I am now having both the shake and the biscuits and some days I even drop $1.20 into the snack box and have an early biscuit. Bad, bad, bad.

So this week it is back to exercising more regularly again, 2 rides, 2 runs. Some time on the gym thing in the sleep out and walking the stairs at work.

I have also decided to have a look at something along the lines of Tai Chi. I want to find an activity that I can do to improve fitness, build core strength and help with flexibility, balance, breathing and stretching. It looks like it could fit the bill. It also looks like an activity I can do at home to train without specialist equipment. I hope to find something over the next few weeks that is local, in the evenings and not on a Tuesday night so I can still ride.

I had my first crack at the 14 floor stair walk today, it hurt !

Sunday, October 01, 2006

Sunday ride with the lads

I have had a really sluggish week with my wife away. I ate dinner just before bed after riding Tuesday night, ate out Wednesday night my wife came home Thursday night so I cooked, we had burgers and chips on Friday night at friends and I had a couple of wines, went shopping on Saturday and I cooked Saturday night and had a couple of beers then as well. I seemed to have spent the whole week eating and/or drinking. I feel fat, slow and uncomfortable. The weather finally turned to crap on Saturday afternoon, the forecast for the whole week had been rain but it managed to hold off, when it rained it did rain though ! heavy and short. I decided to go run in the afternoon, and luckily by the time I had got organised the rain had stopped. I did a quick splash along Exhibition drive, ran it in just over 32 minutes which was reasonably quick for me but I felt awkward the whole way.

Day light saving started this morning, so I had to get up an hour earlier than normal, luckily one of the riding group sent a text to see who was riding or I would have slept late – shame – it was the best sleep I had had in ages.

While the clouds were quite heavy overhead it wasn’t raining, and didn’t rain until very late in the afternoon, lightening storm at the moment ! so the ride remained dry. I was riding with the jumping crew so it was not a high paced or long ride, had a lot of fun and it was good to spend a couple of hours with the lads. I popped the single speed off a couple of jumps but I am having trouble getting the front wheel off the ground at the moment, I just cannot seem to ‘pop’ it , not sure why. I had a couple of close calls on jumps on the Big Mama trail with front wheel landings. I think I need to practise more. I was going to ride the AC, but still have not got around to getting it completely rideable. Aim to do that this week if I can though with the race next weekend I won’t be riding anyway and the following weekend is round 2 of the Auckland champs.

Rode Big Mama and Afterglow with the lads. Josh did the biggest jump I have ever seen on the junior mama jump, it was just huge, I think he scared himself as the landing is sketchy. I then did a sprint up Link down the side of Cookie and Raceface Down to the car.

Not a bad ride, nice and relaxing for the most part.

Broke out some old Brian Eno vinyl this afternoon, felt like listening to something cruisy.

Thursday, September 28, 2006

"Japanese" food

My family are still mostly away so I met a mate after work for a couple of beers and then we went doen to Ken's Japanese restaurant.

We sat on stools in front of where the chef was cooking and drank a beer and ate. it was a damn good evening. I was a bit annoyed I had the car as I could have stayed there a lot longer eating this great Japanese BBQ food and drink Sapporo. The atmosphere in the place was so convivial. I am definately going back.

Wednesday, September 27, 2006

Tuesday night ride

With most of the family away I took the opportunity to slip out for a Dodgy Tuesday ride. My intention was to take the AC out but it was still not in a rideable state. I got it back from the shop yesterday and the pivot bearings were all done nicely but the shop wanted the BB was pretty dodgy and it was making one hell of a noise. I was happy to ride with it like that but in the end I had to flag it as I could not get one of the pedals off, the crank insert came off with the pedal and there was no way I was going to ride with flats so the trusty DMR was loaded into the car again.

The weather over the past few days has been gorgeous and as I was having one of those days at work when I could just not focus, I got a good lunch time walk in to stretch my legs out, it took a while to open them up so I am glad I got out prior to the ride. I arrived at Pete’s place at Murawai and there was a good crowd already there, nice mix of teenagers and older folks and there was another single speeded DMR as well which was good, all up 9 of us rode, the biggest crowd yet.

We rode up the road as normal and down the walking track then back to gannet colony and down the steps, traditional start and I am getting more and more comfortable with the steps though I am still one of the slowest riders down both those trails. I have realised that compared to the other riders my home made lights suck big time on the down hills. I am just not getting a range of light that makes me comfortable to hit things at speed. They are ok in the tighter slower stuff or on trails where I know every corner and every root, but for speed in not too familiar territory they just suck !

In the forest we rode up past the start of Dan’s track which we normally do to look at a new trail being built by one of the young guys. It was steep and short with a number of lethal looking jumps. I like steep and short and I am not opposed to jumps, but what pissed me off a bit on this trail was the first jump I saw had a small sand kicker to a steep bank tranny, nothing wrong with that you might think, except the mong had dug a pit on the transition forcing it into a step down. If I had been coming down the hill I would have hit that jump as it was tiny and then landed front wheel first into the pit and brained myself. Given that we are not supposed to ride here and the land owners seem to tolerate sensible trails and well designed jumps – and there are some big jumps here, building something stupid that some one is going to get hurt on is brainless. Anyway….

We rode back and did Dan’s trail which is a fun and well designed short downhill trail and then rode the riverside trail as normal. We then rode back up to the top of AFL through the back road, I haven’t ridden this road for a while and got a bit of a sprint on one of the climbs until I realised/remembered this was the start of the climb – I ended up walking the top of it, it just seemed to go on and on (we are talking Auckland climbing here folks so on and on is not much !)

AFL is such a fun trail to ride down, I really want to do it during the day so I can see here I am going and get to learn all the corners and where the jumps are. I missed one corner and went straight off the side of track, but it is just scrubby cutty grass so no injuries.

From the end of AFL we rode back to the cars and went home.

Tuesday, September 26, 2006

Auckland Champs race 1

The weather for race day was great, the first really warm day of spring, maybe even too hot for racing so early in the season (especially the day after seeing a documentary about global warming…). There has been a warning over the last few days that the hole in the ozone layer has a temporary tear in it so today was supposed to be particularly hazardous with extreme levels of ultra-violet radiation.

The first round of the four round series was held in Woodhill forest so it was a good place for me to start as I am familiar with all the trails and will know how to pace myself against the rest of the riders in the expert 40+ class. I arrived in the forest with plenty of time to spare and got my registration completed with about any hassles. As always there seemed to be very few riders given that there are a few thousand riders in Auckland, probably only 150 across all the classes. This is a real shame as the racing is fun, it may be called the Auckland Champs, but a lot of the punters, like me, are only there for the fun of racing and testing oneself against peers.

The race was scheduled for 5 8km laps for the 40+ men with a lap cut off of 1 hour 45. I wasn’t 100% clear on that at the start as I had never experienced that in an event before, soon found out what it meant though! The course was supposed to be fast and for some it was, I thought it was tough for single speeding, but then I am not a racer.

The race village was next to the training ground by the old car park. The loop started with a 1km climb up to the top of Link, then down the fence line between the Travis trail and the road we just climbed. We then rode through the valley between Link and Upland and walked up the steep climb a the end of the valley towards Enchanted Forest, down Enchanted Forest and straight through the firebreak down the middle of the Haggis block. We then climbed No brakes – (this was going to hurt) down Conifer the wrong way up the nasty pinch climb and into Tree Huggas, then across the finish line and back up the hill. There seemed to be a lot more up than down… I completed 4 laps before being stopped on the way out for my 5th at the 2 hour mark. If I had realised I would have ridden harder on the last lap but I would not have made up the 8 minutes I was behind the single speeder who finished in front of me.

As there were a few single speeders riding the organisers, at our request, split us off into a separate class which was cool – and even better the class will remain through out the series.

I managed to average around 30 minute laps which was slower than the lap times for the Taupo race even though the course was shorter, it was definitely a tougher course.

In the end I came 6th out of 9 single speeders which I was happy with.

Saturday, September 23, 2006

Inconvienient Truth

My wife and I took our youngest son to the airport this morning as he is flying down to Nelson to stay with my sister and her young boys just out of Blenheim for the first 10 days of the school holidays. I think everyone is looking forward to his trip. My oldest son has moved out for a couple of weeks and is supposedly living with his girl fried and her family. I am not 100% sure, it is a major concern to us, but not something here. On Monday my wife goes away for a holiday with a friend for 3 nights so there will be me and my daughter home for a few days. I think I will squeeze a couple of night rides in 

My wife and I went to see An Inconvenient Truth this afternoon, interesting movie, I liked it, Gore is a good presenter and covered the at times technical material in an interesting and easy to understand fashion. I will need to think more on the film.

Listening to some D and B - NZ band Concorde Dawn. I have never been a fan of D and B but I really like this, my daughter bought their CD.

Friday, September 22, 2006

The week wrapped up

Well it has been a busy week since I came back from the Day Night Thriller, caught up on sleep on Sunday night after a family birthday dinner at my parents.

The first race of the Auckland MTB XC Champs is this Sunday so I intended on taking the exercise easy this week while watching my diet. Sadly I have managed over exceed in the taking it easy part but have stuffed my self stupid with all sorts of crap all week – a real chocolate biscuit blow out. I am looking forward to the race even though I am doing it on the single and really expect to more last than first. There are some quick guys in expert 40+.

The Auckland DH series schedule has also been posted and I am sort of interested in having a go in one of the easy races. I will at least turn up for practise day and see how I go. I will ride this on the AC, though it is no way near a DH bike it will be heaps quicker than the DMR. I have taken the AC into get the rear swing arm pivot bearings replaced. Hopefully that is all that is wrong with the bike as I do not want to spend too much money on it. It has only been ridden a couple of times this year as number 1 son is not interested in riding any more. I plan on riding it on Tuesday night for my first Dodgy Tuesday ride in a while.

Went for a run last night, did the Godley, Portage, Astley, Taupo road 8k, loop. It was OK, I haven’t run for a while. I neglected to stretch after and later in the evening I really was quite tight.

The race is coming along nicely. I have had enquiries from over 30 people now, quite a few I have never heard of before so I am getting a bit excited about the whole thing. I have also had some spot prizes donated by the NZ Fox clothing distributor which is very cool as well…

Sunday, September 17, 2006

Day night Thriller 12 hour race

Stayed the night at Nici’s family’s bach in Kinloch as we are down in Taupo for the annual Day night Thriller 12 hour team race. I am in single speed team riding under the Essence Bicycle banner again. My normal event buddies Miles, Nici and Graham are riding in geared teams. This is the 6th time I have been down for this race, though it is my first year on the single speed.

Had my usual pre-race really bad nights sleep so got up when I heard noises coming from the kitchen about 6.15. Had breakfast and a couple of coffees with Miles and then we drive to race site meeting some of Miles team mates on the way. Their teams had sites in block A but I was way the heck up in block C. So after helping put the tent up I humped my ten tons of crap over to my team. We had 2 teams of 4 single speeders racing in the open mens 4/5 person class. All the usual suspects were there plus a couple of guys I have not raced with before but had met at previous rides. We had riders from all over the north island riding with us which was pretty cool.

The race itself started at 10.30 AM and our first rider completed the first lap in the chaos of 400+ riders on a fixed gear bike – the nutter came past in 38th place, setting a big challenge for the rest of us. Apart from some screw ups with the timing system that saw us, plus others lose laps the race went well. We were not overly serious about it all, but every dug it in for their laps and we ended up 22nd out of our class of about 120 teams with the other teams not far behind in 27th place. We completed 28 of the 8.2km laps with only 1 lap over 30 minutes long, my longest lap was 27 and something minutes so I was very pleased. I have never done 7 laps before and never have all my laps been under 30 minutes, I am getting fitter and faster !

From our site the course was flat on a dusty/sandy path for about 100 meters then it shot down a grass hill with a tasty off camber corner at the bottom that was sure to see some carnage if it rained. After a further 200 metres of open riding the track started a gradual climb into an open pine forest. The single track of previous years had been widened the whole way to double track to allow for easier passing it had also been extended by quite a bit as well which was cool. It was not in any way a technical course, but it do have some small pinch climbs, some down bits and some flat bits so it was fun in the forest. After the forest there were 2 nasty little pinch climbs that I managed to ride up very time, though it was close a couple of times and then there was a kilometre or so of riding through the camp sites and over the timing line back to the site were you changed rider.

Not sure where we came out of the whole event as the results and timing was a bit screwed this year, normally it is fine so not going to whinge too much.

I left my team as the last rider crossed the finish line and made my way back over to Miles car and he drove us home. I had to be home as my youngest did not organise himself somewhere to be on Sunday when my wife went to work and I believe it is unfair if I tell where to go just so as I can go off and have fun. Miles was happy to drive home as well so we did. My wife decided not to work and went with the youngest and stayed the night at a friends place – oh well. I Got home at 2:30 AM, had a shower and went to bed. Slept till 6.30 and work up starving and 1 year older. I am 44 today. I got up at 9.00 and made myself eggs and baked beans on toast, as that was kinda all there was.

Went and picked my wife and youngest up and had lunch with friends got a couple of good books for my birthday so spent most of the afternoon reading and dozing.

3 rides in 3 different locations in 1 week - Awesome !

Friday, September 15, 2006

Whirinaki Ride

The track is in the Whirinaki National Park which is managed by the Department of Conservation (DOC). It has only been very recent that DOC have started to allow mountain bikers back into selected wilderness areas so we were keen to show our support for this initiative.

I would like to say I have been looking forward to this ride for a long time but since I only read about it in the June/July NZ MTBer magazine and the trail only officially opened in mid-August I could be called a liar. I can say I have been looking forward to this ride for a very short time, but I have been really really looking forward to it! The review in the magazine and the feedback I have read from other riders suggests this 2 or so hour ride in virgin native bush is just stunning so it sounded like the perfect warm up for the Day Night thriller 12 hour event the following day.

My normal riding buddy – Miles (I am going to use names from now on) picked me up at 7.00 AM Friday morning with coffee at the BP being the first stop for the day. We had an uneventful, and quite fast trip to Rotorua arriving about 30 minutes earlier than expected so we stopped in for a coffee at Fat Dog, met up with Brent who was riding with us and then went looking for a bakery to pick up some lunch for later on. I spotted a bakery and noticed it was next to a new bike shop Kiwi Bikes, owned by Jeff who custom builds bike frames. I have never met Jeff before but have seen his beautifully crafted steel frames under a number of fellow single speeders, in fact there are 2 of them in the Essence Bicycle SS teams at tomorrow’s race. Jeff is a pretty cool guy, had a good chat, rode his SS around and got measured up in case I want to order a frame ! – which I do. This could be the plan for next year. While I love the geometry of the DMR it is a bit too small for XC racing, a frame an inch or so larger but keep the style and geometry of the DMR would be perfect. We then carried on down towards the Whirinaki forest, I have not been down to that part of NZ in well over 20 years, it is quite rugged, quite beautiful and for the folk living there, quite poor, verging on Deliverance country. We got to the car park earlier than expect and had to wait around for a while for Colin who was coming up from Wellington.

Though the day had started off wet and cold, by the time we hit the forest the clouds had parted and we spent an hour waiting here ;




Could there be anything better ? I really regret not having a decent camera, my next purchase major purchase, even before bike stuff, is going to be a camera.

Once Colin arrived we set off on the ride, the trail was wonderfully crafted, a fairly gentle gradient led the way up into the hills. For most of the rise the track was fairly wide single track, well benched and with a number of water bars, there were a couple of fire road sections and one log ride over a gully. The whole track was easily rideable, though I chose to walk a couple of sections to avoid blowing out the day before a race.

At the top of the climb we stopped here for photos and a snack.


The forest was incredible to ride through, sub-tropical native bush full of massive Tawa, Kahikatiha and Rimu trees (I think). From the mid-way stop there was a 1-2km downhill that was grin inducingly good, not steep, just long and swoopy, fast but not furious – oh was I smiling when it ended…

There was another longish climbing section out of the park, which reduced the width of the grin a bit but it is such a lovely place that even climbing was good.

After 1.45 we popped out of the forest and into the car park and into the waiting arms of 2 DOC workers. These were the 2 guys who built the track, neither were bikers – they said so, but you could tell by their size ! They had had some guidance from one of the local Rotorua riders but the rest of the trail was there own work. It was hard to believe that this trail had not been built by riders and experienced trail builders, it was so well constructed. They were so keen to discuss the track with us, their enthusiasm was quite infectious, we discussed various sections of the trail and why they did it the way they did and did we like the log, and were the water bars too intrusive. Great to see such enthusiasm for delivery a quality product from DOC.

After they left Miles and I took a slow drive down to Taupo and purchased some supplies for the race tomorrow. We then drove out to our Friday night accommodation with Graham and Nici at Nici’s family bach in Kinloch, had a beer or two and went to bed.

It was a great day !

Tuesday, September 12, 2006

Oropi Grove ride

I had a work trip to Tauranga booked in today, conveniently one of the Vorb Tauranga locals had a bit of free time in the afternoon so we planned to hook up for an afternoon ride at Oropi Grove.

Had a painfully slow drive to Tauranga in the morning, I left home at 6.45 AM thinking I would miss the worst of the traffic, damn road works proved me wrong, it took me an hour to get to the BP fuel stop on the motorway, get a coffee and back on the road. 3 hours to Tauranga – slow !

However, work went pretty well, I had the audit complete by 12.00, the network upgrade went pretty good at mid-day and most things were wrapped up by 1.00. I went to catch up with a friend for a coffee at 2.00 and then managed to clear the office by 3.30 to go to Oropi for a ride. I have been pretty lucky with getting rides in when I go to Tauranga on work trips, and you would think I could find the damn place…. No ! I had instructions from a guy in the office plus instructions from the guy I was meeting; they sort of conflicted so I ended up getting quite lost. To compound this my horn started to go off kind of randomly, which was a bit embarrassing as it hooted at the car in front of me at a red light. Luckily I found an auto electrician who spent an entire 10 seconds disabling it for me. Once that was sorted I got new directions and soon found my way to the bike park and met my riding buddy.

The weather was good but there had been a bit of rain over the weekend, so the tracks were a bit greasy in places, most of the track was pretty good, but I did slide off once when I my front wheel did not go round a corner at the same pace as the rest of the bike. We rode at fairly decent pace, not too fast but definitely not slow, we also hardly stopped so it was quite a good pre-race build up ride. There is not a lot of trail at Oropi, In the 50 minutes we were riding we covered most of the trails and one section twice, nice mix of short climbs and twisty downhills. It is a fun place to ride with heaps of little (and not so little jumps and drops to play on).

It was a good ride, I felt good getting back into the car for the long drive home.

No injuries and no mechanicals, though I do need to buy some more brake pads before I go away at the weekend.

Monday, September 11, 2006

A rare sunday ride.

My wife worked Saturday this week so I was able to do a Sunday ride with my old buddies, it was good to ride with them again so soon after the last time. It was lucky really as the weather on Saturday was just awful with really heavy rain, Sunday was no summer’s day but at least the rain held off for the ride. The great thing about Woodhill is it sand based so the really heavy rain does not cause too much damage to track or create miles of bog land. The tracks were the wettest I can remember though with some massive puddles. So bad I had to clean my bike when I got home, which is really rare after a Woodhill ride…

For various reasons only 2 of the Sunday crew turned up, along with my normal Saturday riding buddy there were just the 4 of us. With all the miserable weather the car park was quite empty as well which is pretty unusual for a Sunday.

I was still getting over the head cold so the first climb up to the main riding hour was almost a struggle. The old Sunday crew are a pretty slow bunch, so I was fairly settled into a slow ride with lots of breaks, which really suited how I was feeling. We meandered along through the first few stage of Spaghetti and then took a run down Afterglow. I dropped my seat for the down hill section and really had a blast riding down it, took all but the big jump at the end as well, so really getting some confidence back in the air. I think once I get the AC all fixed I will take some time and go do some jumps and try to get into doing some of the bigger ones again.

Took a bit of a slow grind out through Fattucine and then I did a sprint up the link trial because it was there. Slow meander through Cookie and another sprint down Raceface down back to the car.

Not a bad ride, nice to see the guys again and good to blow some of the last of the head cold out.

Tuesday, September 05, 2006

Sick

Bugger I am sick again

Second time this year, I am never sick more than once a year. So far just a crappy head cold and nothing too bad, though I did not ride tonight on the normal dodgy Tuesday ride.

I am hoping to sneak out tomorrow night if I can though the forecast is pretty average, well it is for rain..

I bought the new Drive By Truckers CD yesterday with the CD vouchers I got. It is not bad, but I think I prefered the early darker stuff. I havent had a good listen yet though.

Sunday, September 03, 2006

Sunday run

Sunday was Fathers Day – so naturally there were no children about to welcome in the day with me or make me breakfast. I had a few wines last night so the day started slowly. I couldn’t be bothered riding which was a surprise. I had breakfast about 9 and got out for a run at about 10.00.

I ran up through Titirangi and along exhibition drive and back, about 13.5k with a nice hill to start. Felt Ok though my time was a bit slow at 1:11.

Though in the day I started to come down with a crappy head cold, so I guess that was a key to my average run.

Got a nice stainless hip flask and cd vouchers for Fathers day.

Saturday, September 02, 2006

A normal ride for me and my various riding crews is to ride a trail, usually as hard as possible and then stop at the end of the trail for a chat and wait for the group to reform. The plan for this and next weeks Saturday morning ride is to do 3 x 30 minute non-stop sessions as a final build up to the 12 hour event in 2 weeks. Most of the trails in Woodhill are about 10 minutes long so I am very used to a 10 minute ride, rest, another 10 minute ride. While I can now do these rides at a reasonable pace, I need to be able to easily sustain 30 minutes at pace.

It was another good riding day, cloudy and cool with no wind. 3 of us rode this morning same as crew as last week. We took the first climb up Powerball at a leisurely pace as a warm up and then started the first 30 minute ride on Big Mama, I tried to keep to a fairly regular pace along the trails and was feeling good at the top of the Big Mama hill, possibly the easiest I have done it on the SS. By the end of Big Mama I had a bit of a gap on the other two riders, so I dropped the pace a touch as we went into Big Mama’s tail. I haven’t ridden that trail for ages, may even be the first time on the SS, the trail starts off quite nice with a swooping twisty ride down hill before rolling up and down for a lot longer than I remembered. Pretty much hit the 30 minute mark at the end of the trail. I have developed a really bad habit of riding with fingers over the break levers – I have dropped this to one finger now. But what this means is I feather brakes going into most corners, whether I need to or not, this is very very evident on trails I do not ride much. Today I really focused on keeping all my fingers around the bars except on down hill sections where I tried to brake as little as possible. I think I succeeded, I definitely went into some corners faster than I felt comfortable with but I never came close to crashing so I have new boundaries to push in my drive to be faster round the track.

Next ride was Upland, Lightening, Enchanted forest, all of Haggis and Tree Huggas. It took just over 30 minutes. I stopped briefly on Haggis to make sure my riding friends went straight ahead rather than taking the turn into Conifer. When we stopped we got passed by a rider who was hitting a nice fast pace so I caught him and hung on his rear wheel for most of the trail until he ducked off near the start of No Brakes. I did get run down and passed by a fast rider at the end of Haggis though. Man I haven’t been passed while riding for months, it sucks…

Next lap was a quick ride to the end Link, Cookie, Off Piste 2 and Raceface down. I haven’t done Off Piste for months so that was kinda fun. This last section took almost 30 minutes as well, though we were chatting as we rode.

Good ride, 3 30 minute rides as planned.

I have been listening to a bit of Slayer lately, really liking them at the moment.

Friday, September 01, 2006

Thursday quick run

In my effort to capitalise on the 2 solid weeks of gym work I did last month I really want to get a couple of runs in each week as well as my 1 – 2 rides. If I can get an hour long run and a shorter run once a week I will be reasonably happy. My original plan was to do at least 1 morning run a week as I did get used to getting up at 5.30 to go to the gym. 2 weeks later I have failed miserably to get up before my normal work time of 6.48 – damn.

I did however go for a quick run last night. My goal was to the gently rolling 4.2km return run down Godley rd in under 20 minutes. I started off at a good pace and was 200 metres or so into the run before I realised my watch was not going. Arse. I ran the rest at a decent pace and set my watch at the half way point to see how I would have tracked, the return is slightly more up hill than the first leg so it was not a great test. I completed the return leg in 10:38 which could have been an under 20 but I doubt it. I did struggle a bit on the return. I really do not like running after a meal and I had stomach pains which I do not normally get.

Next week I focus on a morning run..

For this Saturdays ride I am planning on doing 2 or 3 30 minute non stop bursts to start getting used to short bursty rides before the day night thriller in 2 weeks time.

Wednesday, August 30, 2006

Another Dodgy Tuesday ride

Had a great Tuesday night ride this week, there was only 2 of us riding so the stops were less and the pace up a bit. We seemed to cover a lot more ground than normal, though we were being fairly sifty and chatting all the way.

Started off with the 2.5km ride up the road to the walking track, that we took fairly cautiously, I must learn to DH faster, at least trust myself more on these night trails. As the wind was not so bad this week we decided to ride up to the gannet colony trail and slowly drop down the stair ridden track. It is kinda fun but slightly nerve wracking, though I am getting more confident riding them. At the bottom of the stairs we ride past the beach car park and there was a car load of drunken hoons who started yelling a bit of abuse. We ignored them but it was a bit never wracking riding up the road to the forest entrance. The road is quite narrow, dark and twisty, and drunken hoons in cars are not what I want to see on the road when I am riding.

We rode the riverside trail which is getting better and better to ride as I get more familiar with the “trail”. As this is quite un-official riding the riverside trail is probably only ridden by 10 people once a week, it is quite hard to follow as there is no defined trail yet, just markings here and there, but we are getting better and predicting the flow of the trail now. As we were way ahead of where we were the previous week then rode back up the 1.5 of road and back into the forest. I am getting so much better at the road climb, it isn’t at all steep but the more I ride it the further I can get while remaining seated. I am definitely getting stronger! We then rode down the AFL, I have never ridden this track before and man was it fun, my sort of DH, not steep, but pointing down all the way, lots of corners and lots of small jumps. I only did one of the jumps as I do like to scope these out first. Hopefully we will do it again with a bigger crowd and I can follow someone down who knows the jumps and can advise me as we go. Great track ! and a great way to end the ride.

Monday, August 28, 2006

Sunday run

I watched a bit of the worlds on TV, it is on quite late (by my standards). Last night they had the 4X. It was pretty cool to watch, of course I would have loved to have been there ! But I think on balance I would mush rather have been at SSWC06 in Stockholm, maybe 1 year I can get there.

Miracle of all miracles all the kids were home today which meant that the oldest was around to watch the youngest while I went out for a run. I didn’t take off until 11.30 and drove into town so I could run along the water front. It had been a while since I had run further than 8kms so I wanted to find something fairly flat to start with plus I had bought an arch support for my right shoe and I didn’t want to stray to far from the car. The weather was OK, though there was a reasonable breeze blowing which I hate as it really stuffs up my sinuses. I drove for 6 kms from the start of Ngapipi Rd, which took me most of the way into St Heliers, parked the car and started.

I had a reasonably OK run, I thought I was going fairly slowly as my goal was to keep a low HR, but made it to Ngapipi Rd just about dead on 30 minutes. The run back to car had a bit more of a head wind but again I kept my HR down and completed the 12.4km run in just under an hour. I was pretty happy with that, I felt OK afterwards as well.

If I can keep up a minimum 1 hour run once a week, plus a shorter run during the week then I should maintain a reasonable base for when I decide to train for the marathon.

Saturday, August 26, 2006

Saturday ride

Had an average ride on Saturday, not sure if I am a bit tired but I felt I rode OK, certainly cleaned some sections while remaining fully seated, which I always view as a good sign. But I also rode like a muppet in other sections, washed out tires, dug my front wheel in on a corner and just about went over the bars and failed to make a technical climb I have done dozens of time due to bad line choice.

Rode with my normal riding buddy and a friend of his that hasnt ridden with for a very long time. Last time we rode together he cleaned us out with his power and fitness, though I was pretty confident we were a hell of a lot stronger now.

Rode up the normal Powerball trail then took the back road of Cookie to the water tower and down the Travis trail. I haven’t ridden that track for a while and had a little bit of fun on the small jumps at the end. I am getting more confident getting small amounts of air while riding with the seat right up. We then road Upland, Lightening, Enchanted Forest, Haggis, Northern Exposure, No brakes, Ironhorse – where I did drop my seat and got some air, back through Haggis and the Doris to Slipperies Delight. Slipperies was riding well, I love that trail, it is probably the most technical bit of single track in the park, nothing too complex, a few rooty tight sections with pinch climbs and drops all through it - it is fun to ride. We then rode Tree Huggas, link, by passed Cookie again and did the new section on Raceface down. We were out for 2 half hours and covered quite a bit of ground. Rode at a reasonable pace on average and had a few breaks. We did break the new guy a bit, which is always good !

It is my birthday in a couple of weeks so I will pick myself up a cheap cycle computer as I am quite keen to see how much ground we cover on some of these rides. We are certainly doing a lot more than we used to.

The next event is in 3 weeks time, the Taupo day Night Thriller 12 hour. I have done it 6 times now (maybe 5) once as a solo. I was not going to do it this year but am now in a team of 4 single speeders so it should be fun. Though the track is not really that SS compatible with quite a long grass section that is just hard work on a geared bike, will be a b*stard on the SS.

I watched a bit of the worlds on TV, it is on quite late (by my standards). Lasty night they had the 4X. pretty cool to watch, of course I would have loved to have been there !

Friday, August 25, 2006

Thursday night run

Had a good run last night, it was quite a cold evening with a fair breeze blowing as well.
I did the 7.9km Godley Rd/Portage Rd/Astley Ave/Taupo/Godley loop.

My aim was to keep the pace down enough that my HR stayed below 160. Normally I find it is quite hard to run slowly enough to keep my Hr down, but last night I managed to do just about the entire loop under 160.

The last 1km back up Godley Rd I kept quite a decent pace on as well. I stopped at the end of my drive and walked back up to the house, by the time I was inside I was not puffing and my HR was close to normal.

I have had a pretty good week of exercise and reasonable diet management, lots of protein. I am hoping that my weight going back up again to 81.5 means it is muscle and not fat. I dont feel fatter.

The SS race is taking shape

The Race I am organising is starting to take some shape.

I have permission from the bike parks managers to hold the race on Saturday Oct 7 as proposed.

I have a reasonable amount of interest from the local SS community and a small amount from riders from out of town. I would be really happy with 12 riders, but I have 20 on my possibles list.

I have had some people volunteer their time to be ‘dealers’.

The SS Poker rules are taking shape, at least in my head, and I cannot see why it cannot work the way I have planned it, and still be fun for all the competitors.

I now have a prize pack from a small boutique brewery which should allow me to attract a couple more riders. I can also have a beer stop in the event which will provide an extra card for those who partake.

I hope this turns out OK, and that we can have some more social riding events, and hopefully a ‘serious’ SS race later in the year.

MTB World champs

The MTB World champs are in in NZ right now - this week.

They are on in Rotorua 3 hours drive away. Why am I at work, when some of my riding buddies are they for a week of marshalling, riding, hanging out and having fun.

Why ? - because I am an idiot...

Wednesday, August 23, 2006

Dodgy Tuesday ride

I have been having another one of those weeks at work so decided I should sneak out 15 minutes early, try get home before 5.15 and then go for a dodgy Tuesday night Murawai ride. For once it all came together ! I was home on time, got changed into riding gear and had the car loaded before 5.30, which is the cut off time for getting to the ride meeting point to be riding for 6.30.

Had a small group tonight - 2 teenagers and 3 adults, though the weather is not the best, quite a strong wind, the odd light shower and cool enough to be wearing long pants, thermal top, long sleeve shirt and a wind breaker. We rode up the road to the walking track which is a great warm up on the single speed. I had a much better run down the walking track than last time, though I am sure an 8 year old would till beat me, I am just so unconfident when it comes to downhill in the dark – well downhill period I guess. I still need to learn to trust my tyres and relax more. We did not do the gannet colony loop as the wind was so strong so we looped back up the road and into the forest for a run down Dan’s track and then down the riverside track. There was quite a few downed branches and small trees in the forest from all the bad weather over the past couple of days so we stopped to clear the trail a couple of times.
The riverside trail is just so much fun to ride, we are probably the only people who ride it so it is very unclear, quite rough, but a load of fun. We then pedalled our way back to the cars and I went home.

A damn good ride.

It must be very cold at the worlds...

Sunday, August 20, 2006

Sunday Woodhill ride...

A couple of Vorbii were up from Wellington this weekend so a ride had been scheduled for 10.00 AM at Woodhill, there seemed to be quite a bit of interest with some riders coming up from Hamilton as well.

My youngest son was at scout camp so I could go ride Sunday for a change. Wahoo ! As I had been preparing for the race yesterday and did not get to do the full 35km ride I had bit of excess energy today so decided to go to the forest early and meet some of my old Sunday riding crew and ride with them for an hour. Surprisingly everyone was there early so we hit the trail on time, some things have obviously changed since I have been away. The Sunday crew are definitely more into hucking and other freeriding type activities than I am so it was a slow grind up to the Spaghetti trail and then a chat and ride session for 50 minutes through the various jumps and stunts on Spag until I had to shoot back down to the car park to catch the Vorb crew. It was good to ride with the lads again but I could not sustain the slow pace for too many rides. My fitness and ability has improved immensely over the last 1 months and I just like to trail ride as fast as I can for as long as I can.

Met up with a big bunch of Vorbii and guys from the Freeriden shop, probably 20 riders altogether. We left 30 minutes late as expected and started up Powerball, waited and waited at the top and then a couple of us went back down the trail to find the other SSer had broken his chain – just like me yesterday – and did not have the bits to fix it – also like me yesterday ! Luckily some one else had all the required bits and after 15 minutes of shagging around we were back on trail chasing after the big group who had ridden on, we caught them fairly quickly on the big mama trail. We left Big Mama about half way along and shot down SPCA, had a good run down and the out of towners really had a blast. The bunch split at the end of SPCA with some riding the road up to Ironhorse and a bunch taking the longer single track options up Upland, down the Lightening and enchanted forest and through Haggis. At the end of the Haggis we lost a few more riders who took the short option and 2 of us went and rode Northern Exposure and then No Brakes. Finally meeting what was left of the group up at the top of Ironhorse. I dropped my seat for the first time in a while and hammered down Ironhorse clearing most of the jumps. It was great to get some air again and I really enjoyed the run down the track. I was really pushing my time limits to pick up my youngest so a few of us jumped onto the forest road and went back to the start of Link and then rode that and the side of Cookie, whipped down raceface down and I threw the stuff in the car and took off for home.

Had a great ride, was quite wiped out afterwards. Did a bit of chatting but most of the ride was done at a pretty good pace and we covered a bit of ground. Great to see the Wellington and Hamilton crew and to show them our bike park.

Saturday, August 19, 2006

N-Duro 3 35km race

Friday night was nice and quiet, had a wine and then left work on time, traffic was light so I was home quite quickly. Had dinner with the family members that were actually at home and then took youngest son to his scout camp and bought a bottle of Riesling on the way home. My riding buddy turned up at 8.00 to stay the night so we could get away early tomorrow for the race in Rotorua. Had a quiet evening and I went to bed quite early.

Up at 6.00 for a quick breakfast and coffee and on the road by 6.30. Stopped for gas and a proper coffee at a truck stop on the motorway and then took a slow (determined not to get a speeding ticket this time) and steady drive down to Rotorua arriving at 9.30. We unloaded the bikes and sifted up to the registration tent and got our race numbers and then I hung around and chatted to a bunch of friends and other riders, got back to the car in time to get changed, load the pack with food and get my the last minute tasks done and head up to the start line to watch the 70km riders leave.

With the MTB world champs happening in Rotorua next week there were a lot of international riders in town and a few of the team racers were in both the 70 and 35k race today.

30 minutes later a small bunch of us single speeders drifted to the back of the 35km pack and waited for the gun.

I got off to a good start, felt strong, the first bit of climbing is on a sealed road and I stayed at a fairly steady slow pace, but surprisingly was passing people in a fairly steady stream, this continued on for pretty much the entire 20 minute climb, we walked one section that was steep and quite lose, but the rest of the climb I managed to pedal away and was felling pretty OK at the top of the first single track – the lovely downhill Gunna Gotta. I managed a great run down the trail, I passed 1 slow rider before the fun parts and then had a clear run to the end. Picked up another single speeder on the way into the next bit of single track and realised I had another 1 behind me. The 3 of us moved along in convoy at a good pace until we hit the traffic where we were forced to slow down significantly, which was probably a good thing. Cleared the end of A trail, passed the slow people on the road section before tickler and dropped down into the twisty section of tickler down to the stream.

I got about 100 metres into Tickler when BANG – my chain snapped. The quick links exploded. I had no chain breaker and no spare links. I managed to get the chain back together but it was too short and I could not get it around the cogs. Race over. Arse. My first DNF. I was gutted, annoyed that I had links in the car and not in my pack. I took the walk of shame back to the finish line and handed in my race number.

I had a coffee and a feed and hung around chatting to friends until the riders started to come in. Some of the international riders were incredibly fast. The 70k riders were coming in before some of the 35k riders, even riders I consider quite quick. Guess that is why they are at the world champs.

Watched the riders come in over time, one of my SS riding buddies also DNF’d with a damaged wheel, but every one else came in happy but tired. They enjoyed the race, said the course was tough but good and commiserated with my DNF.

We left the site about 2:30 and drove the 3 hours back to Auckland for beer and pizza. 490kms and just under 6 hours of driving, $90 of gas for a 10k 50 minute ride…

At least I had legs for a ride tomorrow.

Friday, August 18, 2006

General update

The Loaded Hog fun run season started again on Tuesday night. The weather wasn’t too bad, cool and a bit of a breeze that seemed to drop before the run started. There didn’t seem to be as many people as last year, but there were 109 runners so that is not too shabby. I was expecting to do a 23 minute 5km but ended up with a 21:34 which I was more than happy with and came 47th, top half to start the season is pretty good.

Though Tuesday nights are starting to get a bit crowded with the dodgy night ride, Hog runs, Adidas have a run on Tuesdays with 3 distance options, and there is now a spin class in a hall in Titirangi, which looks fun. Will try and do the dodgy night ride next week if I can.

The bike is pretty much ready for the race this weekend, will tweak one of the wheels either tonight or when I get there tomorrow morning. I was going to swap the cleats in my shoes but I cannot one of them out so will run with the old cleats, or maybe swap shoes to the Nikes, which don’t fit as well but do have new cleats plus a better sole for walking, and there is going to be some walking in this race. The course has 2 big climbs, neither of which I have ridden all the way to the top of before, but then I have done one of them in a race situation either.

I am expecting some of the riders from the world champs to be racing as well, as the worlds are next week, it would be great to be in a race with a world champ. Must remember to take the camera.

The social race is taking shape, just waiting on clearance to hold it at Woodhill at it will be on. Have had more interest than I thought with a few emails from some absolute strangers…

The SSWC06 is on this weekend – one year I would love to attend this, sounds like a blast.

Tuesday, August 15, 2006

Bike maintenance

I must admit I suck at maintaining my bike. I can do the basics, but I do not have the tools to do the bigger jobs and well I am just not that good. One of the great things about the single speed is there is just so little to go wrong. I have taken this to a bit of an extreme and have got a bit slack at cleaning and lubing – though I do look after the chain.

Last night I went around to visit my buddy - he is an awesome bike mechanic, to get one of those once every few years jobs done which was replacing the BB. He installed a new, though, cheap bottom bracket in the DMR. I was given a Raceface BB with flogged bearings, which I will still use one day, but in this instance it was cheaper to buy a new BB.

Also replaced the chain, I did not get a test ride in so tonight I go for a quick zap around the block and make sure everything works, adjust the brakes and lube the chain. Tomorrow night I will try and get a longer short ride in to stretch the chain a bit and get the cranks going so I can make final adjustments before the 35km race on Saturday.

Monday, August 14, 2006

Final gym session

Got up at 5.35 and went to the gum for my final free session.

Had a good spin and did a few of the weight machines. I think I am stronger than when I started, I sure hope so. I managed 12 out of 14 days, had 2 Sunday lie ins.

At least tomorrow I can stay in bed until 6:30... Yahoo.

Nice and quiet at work this morning, so listening to some Clutch

Saturday, August 12, 2006

Riverhead trail digging

Friday I registered for the 35km leg of the N-Duro Marathon race. I will do it on the SS but I believe I am going to be broken at the end. There are 2 good climbs, neither of which I have ever completed on the bike. There is also some nice single track with the inclusion of Hot X buns this year as well as Be rude not to which is still one of my favourite Rotorua trails, even though I am always half broken when I get there.

The MTB world champs are in Rotorua the week after the race, with the race being the first event in a week of MTB stuff happening in town. I really wish I had got my shit together and organised to go down for a few days. I know so many people taking the week off and volunteering during the week day events for free entry in to the big weekend.

I had a good morning at the gym, got a decent ride and some weights in, it is my second to last free day and I don’t think I will join.

After the gym I went straight to Riverhead forest for a trail scoping exercise with James to try and find an old trail to be cleared as part of designing a course for the last round of the Auckland champs in December. Riverhead is a commercial pine forest that has been half felled. The area we are looking at was felled about 2 years ago and 10 ft pines are starting to grow. Unfortunately the gorse has been rampant and it is incredibly thick and well over 6 feet tall in places.

Riverhead has long been an Auckland mountain biking institution though there have been access issues over the past few years with the previous forestry company. The new owners have yet to decide on what access they will allow the various interested parties and where and how they will allocate access, so we are all being cautious and following the basic trail building rules.


He was looking for a ‘trail’ that he had seen from overhead photos, the aim was to scope the trail and see where it ends, clear the worst of the gorse so that a trail cutting crew can go through on Sunday with scrub cutters to start cleaning the mess.

The weather was not the best for scoping at Riverhead, or in fact for doing anything at Riverhead. It rained on the way up to the forest but luckily it did not rain while we there. We walked up one track clearing some of the worse old gorse until we hit the top and then climbed the road to the top of Pattersons. There was an old fire trail off to the right that had been widened into a full forestry road and at the top of that an old bit of single track headed off down the ridge. We cleared the entry into the trail with the loppers and opened up the first 20 ft or so before heading down the trail clearing the worst of the old hard gorse as we went, leaving enough space to walk down without getting too scratched. The track was fairly greasy and in parts was over 6 inches deep in muddy water, there will be quite a bit of drainage work needed as well to prevent large ruts forming before the race. We realised time was moving away from us so really started to only clear the really thick stuff that would prevent a larger gang from seeing the track. About half way down the gorse cleared a bit and we had a good run to the end of the trail, before walking back to the car.

There is going to be a lot of work needed to complete the trail before any racing can be done it, gorse and cutty grass needs to be completely pushed back, otherwise it will grow over the trail again, the major ruts need to be taken out and some decent drainage put in. It will be a fun trail when it is finished though and is another option in quite big loop.

Wednesday, August 09, 2006

No cable - no ride !

I left work early to rush home to get the car back from the shop, it did not cost too much to get the electric window repaired, but any money spent on the car is money wasted.

Made it home by just after 5 which was enough time to get changed, load the car with bike and bike stuff, ram some bread into my mouth and hit the road to get to Murawai for a sifty illegal Tuesday night ride by 6.30 PM.

I managed the get changed bit, the start to load the car bit, before realising I did not have the bit of cable that goes between light and battery. It got left with someone at the Woodhill 12 hour. Shit bicks, unloaded car, got unchanged and sat in the lounge.

I did go round to a mates place to talk about replacing bearings in the new old BB I was given. I will check out bearing prices on Wednesday, but it could be cheaper to buy a new BB.

I have had 3 good gym sessions so far this week, getting the intensity level up, it is feeling just right now, mixing the bike one day with a run the next. 4 more days of free gym to go.

Monday, August 07, 2006

SS Poker race

Had a day off from the gym yesterday, just didn’t get around to going in the morning and then I had the youngest and his cousin for the day so couldn’t go till my wife got home from work at 7.00 and then it was dinner and then yada yada.

I did get up at 5.30 this morning though and got in a reasonable session before work. With the car off the road until I get the window repaired tomorrow I did not want to take it to work so caged a lift of an old colleague and caught the bus home. The bus ride was OK, not too crowded and relatively quick, took an hour but that is tolerable. Will be bussing in and out again tomorrow, as well. Thank God for MP3 players though !

I have decided to organise a single speed race at Woodhill. I have posted on a couple of forums and emailed a few single speeders to see if there is any interest. If I can get 10 definite starters it will be on. Tentative date is Oct 7.

Going to be based loosely on Bike Poker. There has been some reasonable interest so far, including a few people who are happy to help out with the event.

Saturday, August 05, 2006

A good rainy ride

The gym has been going well, 5 days in a row and lifting the effort each day by a tiny amount. I still wonder if I am whimping out a bit though with the weights, but I am happy with what I am doing. I even went this morning before mountain biking.

The drivers side electric window in my car has broken, unfortunately it is in the full down position and for the first time in weeks it is raining solidly. Luckily I got a ride to the forest today otherwise I would have been unable to ride.

The plan for the ride today was to do a fire road loop and get some consistent hill work in – though the hills are not big, high, steep or long. With the rain and wind we decided to go straight into the forest. Rode Powerball, Spaghetti to the start of Afterglow, quick break there to take the rain coat off then a fast zap down Afterglow and the down Tortellini to the car park. Over the road and up Upland straight down the Lightening and Enchanted forest and brief break at the start of Haggis. Kept riding at a reasonable pace and was aiming to stop as little as possible. Haggis was great, cleaned that again without getting out of the seat, then the same on Northern exposure. Had a quick 5 at the start of my track and then rode up that, again sitting down for as much as possible. Had to stop in the middle a shortcut line had started to appear that cut a good 250 metres out of the track. I closed it off with logs and trail trash as best I could and we rode on. I guess one of the good things about people putting short cuts in a track means that it is a challenge to ride and they have failed to meet the challenge, which makes those who meet the challenge are the better for it. Shit the track ain’t that tough, I can ride the whole thing on the SS and I am not that good a rider. We rode the first section of Ironhorse then dropped out and finished Conifer loop and Haggis the rode the road back to the start of Raceface down and back to the carpark.

Fitness wise, I rode extremely well today, I felt good, kept a reasonable pace up, rode as much as I could sitting down. I am not sure of I was going to quickly or the conditions were a bit slippery, but I felt like I was riding like a muppet, washed out the front wheel, slipped on wet roots, Pity I cannot get skill and fitness all together in the same ride…

I have decide to do the 35km N-duro race in Rotorua in 2 weeks, will do it on the SS and it s going to be the longest SS ride I have done.


Listening to the Misfits this morning, I never really liked them that much but have borrowed a bunch of CD’s from a friend to see if my tastes have changed at all. They are still only OK.

Wednesday, August 02, 2006

2nd day at the gym

Hit the gym again this morning, got there 10 minutes earlier than yesterday at 5.45 AM but had a better idea of what to do so did not feel so stupid standing there staring vacantly at the machines. Jumped straight on to the bike and did the hill climb ride again for 30 minutes. Slightly higher level this time, and the one I will stick to for the next few days. Though tomorrow I may run instead to break up the training a bit. I followed that up with 8 minutes on the rowing machine, I wanted to do 2km but on this particular machine I could not work out how to change the view to show distance. I feel so stupid.

I did get to use some more of the weight machines today, there were more people there so I could sneakily watch how they used them and then follow. I did get stuck on one ugly piece of machinery that I gave up on. I now have 3 leg exercises sorted and 1 upper body pull down thing.

I appear to be really weak compared to other gym users as I cannot shift some of the weights the machines are set to.

Listening to some Skatalites this morning. Oh Yeah – the music at the gym sucks terribly.

Tuesday, August 01, 2006

12 Hours of Woodhill

I have been looking forward to this event since the team was called together. We have a 4 person SS team entered in the 4/5 person open team category. I have ridden with all the riders before, 2 at the Moonride 24 hour in May and 1 from N-Duro 24 hour in Feb. I am the only local which makes it all that much cooler. I have team leader and his wife staying at my place for the weekend which is cool, nice to be able to assist out of town racers for a change. We are all Vorbers... We are racing as Essence Bicycles Singole Velocita and now have matching shirts so really look the part. Though of course we are all riding different bikes.

Saturday morning dawned extremely foggy, though the forecast was good. Team leader went directly to the site where the other guys plus a couple of other Vorb related teams had set up and camped overnight. I went into town to pick up another out of town Vorber was racing 6 hour solo women. The 50 minute drive out to Woodhill saw the fog dissipate and nice clear sky come through for by the time we arrived at 9.00 AM. We left the car at the top car park and I took 2 trips to hump all my crap down to the site, man I am a heavy packer…

The main site
 













By the 10:30 race start, the bike had been tweaked, though I had horrid noises coming from the BB, I had sifted around and said hello to numerous riders I knew and had a good cup of coffee from the on-site cart. I felt for the organisers as sod all people turned out for the event. I am not sure of exact numbers yet but expect less than 1 third of the maximum was there. Really disappointing as there are around 3500 riders in Auckland more could have turned out to race. At least the traffic in the forest would not be too bad.

Our site

 












For a change I was not the lead rider, team leader took that honour which was great as it started with a 500 metre run to the bikes. Our plan was to take this event at a gentle pace and have fun and aim to not come last. Team leader came out of the forest 8.5kms and 28 minutes later in 7th place !

Team leader on the trail
 















which sent number 2 rider off at a charge. I took a couple of photos at the end of the single track and there was a steep sandy descent that was screwing people up on the first lap. It was going to be fun later in the day when it got really carved up. Team leader and No 2, both looked pretty broken and when it was my turn to go out I determined to take a slow ride up the hill and conserve energy for the rest of the lap, I also had a reasonable idea of the course and knew areas where I could gain an advantage on other riders if I had the grunt left in my legs.

A broken rider 2

 














The lap started with a 200 metre ride up and metal road and into the single track, going up Raceface Down the wrong way, turning off and down a narrow wooden bridge to the new section of trail we dug a few weeks back, the trail meandered up the hill with a couple of tiny pinch climbs but mostly doable seated. We then went over the road into stage 1 of Big Mama, then down into a tiny section of Cry Baby, popping back out onto the unsealed road and then back into Cray Baby and down all off Cookie. I nailed it in Cookie, patience on the climb meant I had plenty for this slightly uphill but wide, twisty single track. At the top off Cookie we crossed back into Spaghetti into one of my favourite sections of really twisty, slightly rooty single track, perfect for SS, couple of small jumps and some ride-alongs. I was starting to pass people from the end of No 2’s lap and aimed to nail all the slow ones before the tight decent as that was gong to be one of the fun parts of the track, fortunately no one held me up on that and I popped out at the bottom of Granny Hill. This was a bit of a grind – didn’t really need granny, I expected this to go through to the tent site, but it popped back into the forest again for another 500 metres of single track, then out and down the steep sandy descent, up a short climb then out into the tents, and a 29 minute lap done. I was happy…

Lap change Over

 
















No 4 went out for his lap and we were all settled down relaxing when 17 minutes later he came running back into the site pushing his bike with the chain dragging on the ground. We quickly sent rider no 1 back out while rider 4 lay collapsed in a fetid heap on the ground. His tensioner gave up half way into the forest…

My BB was making really awful grinding noises so too fix that I put the MP3 player in my pocket and turned the punk rock up loud…

My next lap came around all too quickly, so I cranked up the volume and took a nice slow ride up the first climb, passed a group of 5 solos just before hitting the single track and had a fairly steady climb, surprisingly I passed a few people on the way up. I held off a guy behind me most the way through the top single track though he finally got me just before the top of the Cookie trail, I kept him well in site as we worked through the next couple of kms, pushing the pace a bit to try and pass as many of the slower riders as I could before the tight decent – mainly because it is way more fun at speed. I got behind the guy who passed me just as we hit the steepest section and he went sideways off the side of the track allowing me to shoot past and down to the bottom of Granny Hill. I kept a fairly static pace up the climb, passing a few walkers !!! (this early in the race) on the way up, then down through the last section of forest and back to the tent site. 30 minute lap. I thought I was faster than the first but had dropped a minute.

At this point in the race we were 1st out of 20 in our category of open 4/5 person team – this actually showed how bad the field was as we would normally expect to come around half way through the field. Especially as we were on single speeds. Though we did realise we had 17 minute lap when we were averaging 29 minutes. We went and told the organisers so they could pull the lap from our results, which would add to the challenge, but this still left us in 3rd place.

In between laps I had a quick feed of some homemade chicken pasta, a couple of bars and a lot of water, it was quite warm considering it is still winter, I was in a short sleeve riding shirt and still sweating.

Lap 3 I started out slowly again, aiming to pace myself for the expected 6 laps and allow plenty of room to hammer the top trails. The field was quite spread out so I did not really see anyone on the road climb and passed a group of 5 slow riders in the forest section of the climb. The top section passed by in a blur of old school punk rock and I was soon passing the odd slow rider prior to hitting the descent again. Got most of the way down the descent, till the steep sandy section where 2 riders had got themselves a bit tangled up , 1 managed to clear himself off to the side and the other started to tripod his way down before running off the side of the track, I don’t think I had to slow down at all and I am wondering if I scared them off a bit… Got to grant hill, took the right hand line and it was so much smoother than the left, managed to get most of the way up sitting down. Saw a group of riders ahead that were struggling a bit and knew I had to pass them before the next downhill section as they would be too slow and would ruin the enjoyment of riding down hills. I managed to catch them before the single track but could not pass them before the descent. I picked off 1 on a bit of single track and as we approached the final steepish and very sandy section I saw a new line had been made high up on the left bank, I shot up their past 2 of the slow people, hopefully not cutting them off as I got back onto the main line. The last 2 held me up on the final very short ascent, I was going so slowly I had to struggle to maintain balance – so much harder on a single speed. Into tent city and off the bike in 31 minutes. Dropping a minute a lap – damn. I thought that last run was good.

When I got back to our site I had a few missed calls on my mobile, including 1 from my wife. After calling her I ended up having to go home half way through the event for a family situation – fortunately not as serious as it could have been. Luckily there was a friend lurking about with his SS looking for a ride so he stepped into my place in the team and did my remaining 3 laps. Bummer of a way to end what was a good morning and should have been a good evening.

Apparently the rest of the event went well, the weather stayed good and lap times dropped a little bit as night set in and the course got a bit cut up in places.

Next event for me could be the 35km N-duro race in 4 weeks, will do it on the SS if I can get the BB replaced in time.