Funny stuff...

I don't normally do this, but with a week with no wife (Robyn was at Deakin doing a residential unit) riding was kept to a bare minimum (about 1.5hrs). No riding news, so watch and laugh.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vn29DvMITu4

I just found these great pics from the weekends race. I was wearing AyUps new kit. Looks good hey?? Be sure to check out their new website, the newly released kit is proving to be very popular. I will give you my impressions shortly.

Great race...

Well it's all over bar the drinking session in the bar tonight. It was a great race, the rain improved to course by a long was. The atmosphere was fantastic and fun was had by all (except the two competitors that were air lifted out...ouch).

Ben finished a credible 3rd in vets and 5th out right, (Hamish Elliot won in great style) I was about 9 mins behind Ben just out of top ten. I was pretty happy with that given the little riding I do. I have been motivated to get stuck into a little more riding and will see how things go give my current time constants... It is probably a good idea with races like the Scott 24 and Kona 24 coming up.

Big thanks to Andrew from AyUp for getting us up hear to sample racing in this regon. It has been great. Be sure to stay tuned I will post a review on the newly released AyUp V4 kit very soon, it has already proven to be the must have kit for '09.

Ready, set, go...

The drive up was good, well as good as it can be anyway. The Hume dual carage way project is going to make a huge difference when finished.

We rode the full 50kn course today, there are some really good sections of single track out there. It's was a bit dry and dusty today, but it is now raining and the track should be in great condition for the 600 competitors to race on tomorrow.

As you can see from the pic, my knee is still a bit of a bother. The main issue is trying to keep it clean. It hurts a fair amount when riding also, but I won't let that slow me down.

Only 758km to go...

Love the old road trip. This one has just begun. Plenty of riding to happen this weekend (I hope) all centred around wild horizons 3 ring circus bike festival in the southern highlands NSW. Should be fun...

The poor Hei Hei need some loving last night after it's mud bath last weekend. Smooth bike again, excellent.

Final CTS...

Done. The series is over. Four races, four different courses at Lysterfield MTB Park and hundreds of happy riders. The final races ended up being a challenge just to finish. With tree destroying winds hitting Melbourne in the previous 24hrs the race start was delayed (and therefore shortened to 6 hrs) to allow race organises time to remove some of the debris off the course.

Things were looking good for a few hours, and the BAM, down came the rain. A few more changes were made to the course to make it a little more ridable. For me however, this helped little. My rear brake had become a victim to the wet sandy course (I also neglected to check pad wear in my bike prep....oops). Pulling the rear leaver to the bar did nothing. Navigating through a muddy course with only a front brake proved to be a difficult challenge, but I was determined to finish, no matter how hard it became. I needed to ditch the bike on two occasions when I had no chance if washing off enough speed to make a corner. On one of those occasions I took a nasty bash on my right knee, resulting a a messy muddy, bloody mix. Still I rolled around not totally sure where I was sitting in the field, but I wanted a good series result so I pushed on.



Ends up it was worth the pain. I finished the the day on the top of the box about one minute ahead of Scott Chancellor. And after some fortunate (or is that misfortunate) results from my competitors in the series points, I ended up taking out the series also.

Nice block of wood Ash...

Mid week muddiness

I got out on the local trails tonight with Rohin Adams. Trails were in good condition given the rain we had last night. It has been a while since I have had a mud bash on the unit.

I had a little test ride on the world record attempt bike on sunday. I will try get the pics and a story up in the next couple days.