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.