The author, obscured by watermark. Will buy the real one soon, honest.
This past weekend saw the third round of the 2013 Rocky Trail Shimano MTB GP, out at one of my favourite circuits, Ourimbah Mountain Bike Park near Sydney. I rode in the 4hr Solo Male Elite category, and here’s how my race went.
There’s generally quite a civilised feel to the start of a morning at a Rocky Trail event. The 9am race start, when compared to the 7am sharp of something like Capital Punishment, for example, is positively luxurious, so I made good use of the time, registered early and went out on a lap to check the state of the course. This was a deliberate choice – Ourimbah has many A and B line options, and a few spots of rain earlier in the week would inevitably leave a mix of hero dirt and slippery mud, so line choice could be significant. I’d also recently modded my bike with narrower handlebars, which would make some lines less of a squeeze and change my options for riding them. Finally, I hadn’t ridden the Lost Forest in a long while, and was a little unsure of how it would go.
One of my main worries for the race would be the dropoff, a fairly fierce piece of steepness quite early in the lap, but the Rocky Trail guys had thoughtfully cleared the often overgrown B-Line, and on top of that added a C option. So far so good. The climbs away from the firetrail looked good and dry, and the rain hadn’t lifted too many loose rocks. Rollercoaster looked a little more lumpy than usual, but Ewok Forest and The Boulders were much more comfortable with the new bars, Graveyard was sticky and quick, and only the Lost Forest, with its off-camber low-lying corners, offered any slight worries. I stopped to clear a couple of branches in the trail, then continued out, noting that the tricky corner marked “Heartbreak Hill” was as lumpy as ever – something that would be significant later in the race. Overall, though, the track was maybe 70% hero dirt, with just enough moisture to keep it sticky and make the corners railable. This was going to be fun.
I put down a 33 minute time for the warmup. Quicker than I thought I’d be going, but nowhere near a truly quick lap – which goes at sub-30 on a good day. I’d expected the leaders to be popping not much over 25 minutes on their fastest laps.
The start, when it arrived, was mildly chaotic. The riders at the front vying for overall honours of course got a good run, but with parked cars all the way up the initial firetrail, lots of us were left queued up and stationary. I eventually hit the singletrack a little further back than I’d been hoping to, but not in a bad place. Then a voice came from the rider behind.
“Errr, mate, you’re running a bit flat on the rear tyre there”
Indeed I was. My race wheels had taken a bit of a ding at the Convict 100, had been proving temperamental, and had clearly picked up a leak in the warmup lap, bad enough that the Stans was having trouble self-sealing. I had spare wheels in the van, but opted to whack some CO2 in and hope it’d eventually heal up. There was certainly enough latex in there to deal with minor leaks, and I was soon on my way again, though I’d lost a fair bit of ground.
Through Jurassic I was queued up behind some slower riders and was relieved when they took the B-Line to the dropoff. A little clear road would be a great thing – so I threw myself over the dropoff, dodged a few B-line riders who were seemingly ignoring the “B-line gives way to A-line” rule and set off up the Autobahn. A couple more places regained at the fireroad climb, and steady progress for a while found me up behind a rider who didn’t want to let me by and expressed the opinion that it was a four-hour race and I could just wait. Yeah mate, that’s not how it works. I’m moving faster than you, you’ve been gapped by the riders in front, and going into denial about the existence of said gap isn’t going to help you either. He was dropped at the next opportunity and remained unseen for the rest of the day.
As I’d figured, the last climb out (Heartbreak Hill) proved to be significant, with a few riders going over at the tricky bits. Yep, I was one of them, but I was up and rolling again to cross the line in just under 40 minutes
Ouch. Forty minutes.
I skipped a feed this first time around in favour of trying to make up some more places, and it was back into it. About halfway through the lap, the rear tyre started to feel loose again. I cracked out my spare CO2 cylinder and got back on it, and at the end of the second lap, stopped for a gel, a drink bottle and a fresh cylinder. It’s fair to say I was fairly worried about the rear tyre at this point.
And so it continued, another lap, another CO2 blast, another gel, another bottle refill. I got lapped by the first wave of elites at about lap 4, showing that I’d lost a good half an hour on the leaders in just half the race. My stretch goal had been to finish on the same lap as the leaders, so there went that goal. By the time we all got to the last hour of racing, though, I’d got into a better rhythm, and a lot of riders were getting tired and therefore more willing to let other riders pass, especially riders with absurdly noisy freehubs.
I did, however, notice my upper body starting to feel the pressure of running the narrower bars. I made a mental note to add some upper body work into future training.
Close to the end of what I think was my sixth lap, WHAM! Down I went at the start of Heartbreak. Again. I’d just passed a small group and had been controlling cramp in the prelude. I came into the corner a little slower than I thought, hung up the front wheel and just topped over, though I managed to drag the bike off the trail as I went over, meaning the riders behind me got a clear run. Damn it. Back on, a bit of a struggle to get settled on the bike again, a couple of wobbly moments in the following corners, including putting a pedal on the ground just inside the transition zone and nearly stacking it in front of a large mob of spectators. On the upside, the rear tyre seemed to be holding a bit better. Crossing the line, I saw I had maybe 20 minutes left in the four hours. So seven laps it would be, providing I made it back in one piece.
Bellbird was painful on the arms and Jurassic felt a little lonely, but I came up behind some guys in the Autobahn, passed (and checked on) a cramped-out rider lying prostrate on the firetrail climb and headed into the Burnt Forest, where my cornering confidence – or rather cockiness – let me down for the last time of the day. I tried to go a little too fast into an uphill hairpin, leaned a little too aggressively, clipped some roots and went down hard on my side. While I nursed my wounds, the leaders appeared to lap me for a second time – so the winner would be on nine laps and I’d be on seven. But at least now I had someone to chase.
And chase I did, though I eventually lost sight a kilometre or so further along. A few people seemed to be going hard for their last lap, with a faller in The Boulders and another on Heartbreak Hill, and a few feeling tired or cramped and losing pace, sometimes at inopportune moments, but I was soon on the last climb and rolling over the line, 18th in Elite Male GP4 Solo, 35th overall solo male and feeling tired, grimy and in need of a beer. I met up with a mate from Strava and we yarned about our day, compared results and watched the rest of the GP4s roll in.
The overall GP4 Elite was taken out by Jon Odams with James Lamb and Kyle Ward making up the podium. Nienke Oostra of MarathonMTB.com took out the womens GP4 folllowed by Belinda Diprose and Emily Cunningham. Full results can of course be found at the Rocky Trail website. I was long gone by the time the intrepid 7hr riders made it in, but big kudos goes to the Gp4 solo winner Mark Tupalski, who put in fifteen laps of Ourimbah in 7:06:39. Awesome.
What remains of course is to sum up the day. It’s my second taste of the GP4 Solo experience, and if anything it was more fun than my previous outing at Awaba (though I finished a little higher up the field there). Rocky Trail as ever put on a fantastic show, and the sponsors have to be thanked for supporting such a great day out in the woods. Congrats go to all the riders who took part, and let’s look forward to the next round, in July at Mount Annan.
