National Round 4-Living Springs

Home Turf! - This had to mean a good perfomance, with knowing the track off the back of my hand and knowing how demanding the climbs will be this venue always has a welcoming touch! After an easy warm up with the legs feeling rather average, I did a couple of race starts to get the blood pumping. With a late line up call and a bit of mucking around before the start it was time to turn on the race face and get ready to start making the legs hurt!
Up the first climb there was about 5 of us and we all kept together with no mis-hapes on the fast tight flowing tracks that the talented Single Track Club members have built to accommodate a National quality race course. On the second lap it was a starting to become a different story - the legs just weren't going to perform as well as what they should have and I was starting to slip back however each time on lap 2 and 3 I caught back up each time on the downhill. The rest of the race on lap 4 split everyone up and this left me with a solo mission to complete my race with the last couple of laps to get around.
At the end after feeling I was in the 'box' the whole race I came in 3rd postion in the Elite Men, first Under 23 rider. A would like to thank Craig and Rebekah and the members of the Christchurch Single Track club for creating an amazing track!
Looking forward to National Champs this weekend in Dunedin, here's hoping for an excellent performance - time to really feel the pain!

National Round 3-Nelson

The Nelson National course had a good feeling about it and with UCI rules creating shorter laps the course was put back to the 2008 National Champs track where I had competed in my first National Championship back in the day! So this meant a very fast course with a good climb at the start but a very quick mid-section of track going right through back to the start/finish.
Race day was a good one and with racing in dry conditions I was ready to head to the start line after a solid warm up was completed. Before I knew it we were off smacking it up the first hill, I had a fantastic start being up the front but got swarmed by riders at the top of the hill (just didn't give it death!). This meant I got held up by the slower riders on the first lap putting me around 1 minute behind the leaders. I came through the first lap of six in 11th position and then started to make ground on the second and third lap catching up to Stu Houltham and then Mike Northcott and Carl jones. On the fifth lap Stu started to fade on the single track and as I was stuck behind Stu, Carl (4th at finish) and Mikey (3rd at finish) gapped it and I was left to wait for open ground to pass!
My final lap came around and I had Kyle Wood hot on my tail. With noticing that he was starting to fade (just like myself) I pushed that little bit extra out up the climbs and stood up as much as possible. With a clean downhill run to the finish I came in 5th position very happy with my race especially after my first lap!

Malvern Lions Great Alpine Challenge

New event on the calender this year - The Great Alpine Challenge consisting of 46km of rideable mountain bike terrain, little did I know this was going to be one of the toughest climbing races I have done so far this season...
After a good solid warm up done during the fine, yet windy morning up in Springfield it was off to the start line to begin the 46km journey through the hilly ranges that Springfield land owners had to offer. A fast start through nailing it off the line I broke the bunch up so that Brent Miller, an unknown rider and myself lead the front of the race. After about 8km or so we came off the gravel road and came onto the farm track. Through venturing along this for a couple of kms we hit the first climb. Right at the bottom the unknown rider turned around (think he broke his chain) and Brent and I took off. The first hill was very steep and after the first 50 metres I started getting away from Brent and by the top of the hill had a good lead made (after the race I found out that the hill had gained around 400 metres vertical height over roughly 1.5km). This then took me along the side of the hill and onto an awesome downhill on steep, sketchy and rocky ground and to an extremely fast open section where I got tapped out on my 29'er-serious speed!
Once at the bottom, the course made its way around the lower part of the valley and started another long and steep climb. Once at the top of this, the Sport category shot down right to the finish and for us Elite category riders it was across the long, steep and windy ridgeline to eventually meet up on the original first down hill to complete our second lap down the hill, along the undulating lower valley and up the steep narly final climb.
By this time I certainly had felt like I had done alot of climbing and was very ready to find the finish line finally coming in around 2hour 34mins, 11mins ahead of second place!
After the race through talking to other competitors who had Garmins I found out that over 46km there was around 1760 metres of verticle climbing - can't complain about that for a solid training day!