After a great start to 2013 and a couple of months R&R its time to get excited about the next phase of racing.
Some old favourites , and some new events are on the calendar for the second half of 2013 and I am looking forward to getting amongst it.
Firstly the 3 Ring Circus, its an oldy but a goody. What better way to ease your way back into the season then with 54km of sweet Wingello singletrack. I will also be hitting the night performance this year, as well as the Sunday main event. Will be bringing the kids along too for some fun on the Saturday as well.
Unlike all the races leading up to the Convict, I was feeling mentally and physically drained from the last 5 mths of training and racing. So I knew this weekend was going to be hard, but given it is my 'local' event and the last event of this years first half of racing I knew it had to be done. On top of this, our training group had a couple of recent hit outs around the course and even though mentally I wasn't quite there I was still riding physically strong.
For those that don’t know, I raced the Australian Marathon Championships 2 weeks ago in Atherton. I had a week up there prior to just dedicate to riding and relaxing, the race was unbelievably hard taking over 7 hours to finish so I knew I had a pretty good prep coming into this race.
One week prior I did a 95km mtb ride averaging 20km/h which felt good so I just needed to avoid getting sick in the week leading up and I should be good.
Well this journey starts way back in December last year. After some disciplined training and racing in 2012 I wanted to take this a step further. To do this I had a chat to Ant Shippard, outlined what I wanted to achieve, and asked if he was willing to help me get there. My goals were quite ambitious, but Ant agreed to help and said that he would do what he could to put me into a position to achieve these goals, but all the hard work depended on me.
I'll start with wow, what a hard race. Below also includes the week before as we had a few descent rides up there in the week leading to the race.
Originally I wasn't gong to do this and just focus on the XCM series. As the XCM series announcement kept getting delayed I decided I would have a crack at this. I was already signed up for the Wombat but once they announced there was no series Wayne and I decided to pull out of the Wombat and head up a week early.
As the date came closer I was excited about the whole trip, a weeks riding and then the race.
The Capital Punishment is not one of my favourite races. Maybe it was the first years mud fest, or a combination of timed / untimed sections, or the logistical challenges involved with the event.
I had found myself entering this race again this year as it is important race as the first race in the XCM series. But with the XCM series being cancelled / put on hold this year I was lacking motivation for the event. Though after a good result last week at the Willo, I wanted to backup again and get some more race practice before the Marathon Champs next month.
This was my first race where I got to the start and had bike issues. The bike was fine Friday morning but the morning of the race I had no back brake. I tried pumping it but nothing, decided to throw a new set of pads to see if it would help just a little and nothing. Kept pumping the lever and bang, it improved. There must be a bubble somewhere but for the rest of the race it was fine
In memory of one of the great mountain bikers James Williamson the 3rd ‘Willo’ MTB race was held last weekend.
I have always wanted to ride this event, as it is for a great cause and in memory of a great rider, but have never managed to make it due to other commitments bad weather etc.
I've been training pretty hard in the last few months for this and I've actually already doubled my 2011 total kilometres in 2012 so I've really been at it all year.
This was the my last marathon for 2012 so I was keen to finish off strong and I'm pretty happy how it went today.
To follow on from Ant's report, the older constabulary of Jet Racing also had a fantastic time, great success, and the building on some new friendships that make these events something a little different then a marathon or individual event.
Our team was formed from a group of us that have over the last 12 mths come together through racing each other competitively over the marathon season. This was something different, this time all of us would be working together for a common result.
