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.
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