Titus 24hr

The course was set out in Canugra were they held the Dusk til Dawn earlier in the year, the race was going to start at 2pm instead of the normal 12pm start this meant that if the racing was close by day break Sunday it was going to be a case of how can survive that heat temps Saturday and Sunday were about 34 deg.

The solo field was about 50-60 approx and with Andy bell, Matt and Hubcap around I was always going to have my work cut out for me not to mention a unknown field which always seems to produce some dark horses. At 2pm the start gun went and we were off my plan for the race was to try and hang on to Andys wheel for as long as I could. First lap found myself, Andy and Matt within a couple of seconds of each other. I kept pace with Andy for afew laps but with Matt putting in little attacks along the way I decided with the heat I would drop my pace I ended up letting Andy and Matt go around lap 4 approx. and started riding my own race.

The track was 7.5 km but for such a little course it was alot of hard work as you can see by the race results, there was alot of fresh made track which smashed your legs as the race wore on. Matt took some time of the bike which ment I had a fare gap back to him and Andy kept opening the gap to me. For the rest of the race I battle my own demons that wanted me to throw the towel in buti kept trying to open the gap to third so I could get off the bike early before the heat kicked in. As the morning rocked around my lack of consistent training after the world was showing, my plan was to hold second place and not try and chase Mr Bell. 6am I stopped and had a shower put some fresh kit on and went on to hold 2nd place.

The race was good it has got me keen to start training and prepare for next year.

On a different note there were 12 people that were convinced by a mad man solo rider[ me] to get themselves sorted into two 6 man teams and take on a 24hr race when they had limited MTB experience. These guys were great not once did either team stop in the whole 24hr, I think each of them found out what endurance racing is all about. A big congrats goes out to you guys you kicked arse.

Updated

Well it's been a little bit since I have updated my blog. Following my epic fail of a ride back to Gympie a few weeks ago I didn't train as much because I didn't feel 100% and following that I caught one super charged flow for 2 weeks. This bring me up to the week before last were I raced the Delxc flow 6hr. Still not feeling great i decided before the race that it was going to be a warm up for the Titus 24hr. The track was not real technical but had a bit of climbing and overall the field was fast, I rode until 12 were I stopped and had a rest then continued on until on. I placed 10th and with my sights set on having a good race at the Titus I was pleased with my result.

On a different note the boys from KWT have hooked me up with some Onza tyres, I will punch out a review soon.

Wolrd 24hr 2010

Mt Stromlo is going to be the venue for the 2010 World 24hr....... Start Training

Late Night Rides

Well after the worlds I decided that I needed to do some longer training rides [ over 3hrs] so at the beginning of the month I rode from my home in Gympie to Brisbane [ about 196km] with this in mind on Thursday I decided that I would ride from work back to Gympie. I left at 9pm and headed north, I am finally getting use to sitting on my roadie and managed to do my first 120km in about 4hrs which brought up to around Nambour area. Everything went great until the 180km mark Kin Kin area by this time I had done 6hrs on the bike and I totally under estimated how cold it is around the hills there at this time of the morning. I had run out of food and was about 15km from home when I rang Kiri and asked her to come and get me. Kiri's dad came down the rode and picked me up. Basically I had run out of food and I couldn't even climb the smallest of hills I am not sure how cold it was but about 5 degrees would be a good guess, I was very cold it took a good couple of hrs for me too get warm again. Next time I will be a little bit better prepared.

My Ay Ups blazed a path through the night and as fare as a roadie goes my Giant Defy from Pedal pwr Plus was Great.

Later

Go smash yourself

Giant Bikes

I was lucky enough to be invited to the lauch of the Giant bike range held in Brisbane last night Bling everywhere. I got to touch and see the new carbon Anthem and thats were that will end becuase the bank says NO, the new XX sram stuff looks sick. It was good meeting all the guys from Giant and I might just get myself onto the new 29er.

http://www.giant-bicycles.com/en-AU/

Cheers Dave for picking me up and taking me along.

Cx out Crummys blog for his product reviews

Later

WHATS HAPPENING

Well its been a bit over a month since the worlds and the plan was to get back into training at the end of August but I ended up pretty crook so that didn't happen. A week ago and with alot of advice from different people I have crossed over to the dark side and bought myself a roadie at least for the long training rides. I got 2009 defy 1 from Dave shop http://www.pedalpowerplus.com/ he has a wicked special on at the moment if anyone interested.

Last week I spent cruising around Brisbane getting use to the bike and over the weekend I decided that sunday nights weather look nice to ride from my home up in Gympie to Brisbane to start work 6:30 Monday morning. After getting some sleepI started my ride at 10:30pm sunday and road my usual ride though all the back ways to Brisbane airport. The traffic was great because there wasn't any and my AyUp's blazed a path through the dark, all up it took me 6hr 40 mins to punch out 196km.

Later