Wet Cabbage

SCUM hosted another round of their XC series on the weekend at their flat and fast track at Cabbage Tree. Cabbage gets two thumbs up from Beginner through to Elite riders for different reasons and is a great track for honing some of those single track skills. Heaps of riders turned up to the round even with the scattered showers being forecast for the day.
From the start of the race I managed to hold Josh Carlson’s (State XC Round 1 elite winner and FRS rider) wheel and it wasn’t till the third lap that he made a considerable gap. I held off any other riders for the remaining of the race.
The track conditions were described as lying water and the track is normally hard packed dirt and clay. It didn’t take much more than a lap to change the lying water to muddy sections. I had picked a set of sparsely spaced full knobby tyres to match the conditions and was a great choice keeping my power positively connected to the dirt.
The mud wasn’t the only thing I had to contend with there were two occasions, mid race, where my rear derailleur could have been eaten by sticks and I had to stop to rescue it. On my fourth lap I had another incident that hasn’t happened in quite a while. By this stage I was covered in mud including my tinted glasses and it happened during a fast flowing section. I found myself removed from my bike, briefly flying, then impacting the soft dirt beside the track. Thankfully I didn’t damage myself or the bike.
My Mongoose Canaan Team from Bikes at the Basin now has a X-Fusion Velvet R fork from DIYMTB
fitted and it was great to test out the fork. Duncan from DIYMTB internally adjusted the fork from 130mm to 100m travel to suit my bike. The Velvet is a neat looking fork and I found it’s bump eating performance just as good as high end forks. I look forward to putting the Velvet through its paces in coming races.
It was a shame there was no Dugong sighting or swimming stories. But I had quite a bit of fun returning to Cabbage Tree and reminded me of my early MTB days when Cabbage was my local track. Two muddy thumbs up!