Buckets

What do you get when you combine a single speed friendly trail and eight hours? A whole bucket of fun. It was round two of the Single Track Mind Series this month hosted by SCUM at their Coondoo location. Coondoo is one of my favourite trails, however I pre-rode the course on Saturday to sort out a few smooth lines through rocky sections that are normally ridden the opposing way. For this event Coondoo offered a variety of trail, from twisting sandy single-track to open hard packed fire-trail. With the special category this round being single-speed, it wasn't just the trail that was sociable, good natured and somewhat enjoyable, it was is if every rider had that identifying nature about them. It all began with the quirky start, from what I heard about the last round a few riders missed the rider briefing and therefore the start of that round. The oddity this time was some riders were still facing the wrong way down the road and weren't quite self-seeded when the starter shouted "GO", but like most things it all works itself out and we had eight hours to do so.
My race went really well apart from the rare hic-up, there was the slippery sandy corner incident where I pushed the front end to hard, washed out and found myself flying over a log and landing softly in the bracken ferns. Also the rear derailleur jumped out and grabbed a fair size stick off the trail, luckily I heard the commotion and stopped before it became a twisted mess. After a slight manual realignment we were happily on our way.
It was an interesting race with so many fast solo riders, Wollongong’s Jamie Bailey and I rode together and passed Mr McAvoy on the first lap. Mr McAvoy must have been cruising for the first few hours because I didn’t see him again till mid race when he must have knuckled down. Jamie rode solidly away from me and was looking strong from that first lap, he may have had some issues late in the race and slumped half a dozen places towards the end. I passed Shane Taylor from Canberra on the first lap at about the 8km mark, he had punctured and dropped five minutes. Two laps later Shane caught up and went on to ride with Jamie and a few others sitting around fifth for a couple of hours. Results include 10th for Shane (40mins down from the category leader), 12th for me (9mins back from Shane) and 14th for Jamie.
I had a great time racing at Coondoo, it was fast, fun and friendly. I will be back to race with SCUM at their XC and endurance events, especially keep an eye out for their 6hr and Coolendell weekend. Having a support crew makes a difference for these type of long rides and mine was again dutiful. Bottles and food were always ready as I transitioned, all I had to do was ride, eat and drink, thank you.
My support included real food from Carman's, focused healthy energy from FRS, X-Fusion Velvet fork and Enduro Bearings through DIY MTB, Mongoose Canaan from Bikes at the Basin.