Port Mc

On a recent trip up the NSW coast I stopped in at Port for a taste of the great trails. The 6 & 12hr is hosted here early next year, dont forget to check it out.

Also the Bottlebutt 100km is hosted from this local area too, on in MOvember!

Close up on SB-66

Will this be the Team Enduro Pulse bike for 2012? Or will it be a 29er, carbon...

Bowen Mountain

Hundreds of vertical meters later at the top of Bowen Mountain you may find the Burralow Trail. Back down the mountain on the other side, the dirt side, then cross up to Bells Line of Road. Sounds like fun, turn around back down, then up the mountain again. At the top look east across the Hawkesbury Valley, sweet. Now head down the tar side of the mountain and in doing so cut 1/4 off your travelling time, weeeeeeee!

GP Series Wrap-up

Check out the wrap-up at Banzai. Results for this series over the last three years has been good with a 1st in the inaugural series, 4th last year after missed the final round and a 3rd this year. Thanks to Rocky Trail for putting on such good events.

STM Rydal

What a day, what a great location. Just outside of Lithgow, edging on the Rydal Showground the 6th Round of the SingleTrack Mind Series made camp. Shade from the gums, real toilets, showers, BBQ, live timing and the mountain biking in the Australian bush. It was another great event by the Chocolate Foot Crew.

And this track sure took the cake for singletrack. With almost all of it being the twisty, on-camber, but mostly off-camber, flowing, but with plenty of tighter corners, SINGLETRACK. It all wrapped up on a fairly flat ridge-line and made the most of the land available.

Bring on the next round!

Vesrah XC SL Pad Review

In early September DIY MTB handed me a set of brake pads and said check these out. I was a bit dubious at first having never heard of Vesrah pads, the claimed 50% reduction in weight seemed excessive and more stopping power from my Elixir’s, I already stop on a dime. Usually you have a choice of two out of the three possibilities, durability, weight and cost, where were the Vesrah XC SL’s going to sit?
Weight was easy to test, a set of standard pads went onto the scales, then the XC SL’s. Yes they were half the weight of the standard pads and I think this is mostly due to the Alloy backing.
In the price range stakes, the Vesrah pads right across the range sit below the RRP of the OEM products and neatly with the other non OEM pads.
On the actual testing. Usually with products I do a bit of research or field-testing, to find out what I’m getting into before I set out on my own road to discovery. But not this time, out went the OEM pads, straight in went the XC SL’s and out onto the trails I headed. First impressions were mixed, the pads were noisy but the stopping power felt more direct. It took a few rides, some fine tuning and I finally had the pads running noise free. The packet the pads had arrived in claimed “motorcycle technology” and during the rides and races following it felt like I was packing more than 160mm discs as the pads gripped solidly and had me braking later before corners. All-round these pads are not excessively wearing and seem to be highly effective.

Vesrah is a division of Takara Corp which was founded in 1950, originally manufacturing brakes for Japanese bicycles. Due to market change and the popularity of motorcycles Takara moved into brakes for motorized transport and shortly after stopped their bicycle brake line all together. With the market once again changing Takara is back in the bicycle business bringing with them all they have learnt from the motorcycle industry. Vesrah are producing four different lines of pads, standard, XC, DH and XC SL, to cover all styles and rider preference. My bit of research has found the US hasn’t had much experience with them but the Kiwi’s have been riding successfully on them since ’07.
Check out the DIY MTB website and you should find a set of pads for most model brakes, find out for yourself how good these pads are.

Pacing

To link the whole paper here, http://digital.realviewtechnologies.com/?xml=defencenews_airforce.xml, and check out the sport in the back.

For my story read it here.

Scott24 Vid

There is more, this was just a cut down of over 60mins of footage!

Scott 24 - First Time Solo

I was introduced to 24hr races back in 2009 in a team of 6. I raced in the Scott 24 Hour for the first time, since then the Mont 24 has been raced a couple of times as well as the Scott 2010, which was run alongside the World 24 Hour Solo Championships. After seeing the WSC I decided to race the Scott this year, solo.

Putting a plan together for training, it included racing in the Singletrack Mind 8hr Enduro Series and trying to ride about a 1,000kms a month.

This would give me 9,000kms prior to the race, hopefully enough conditioning. I managed the 1,000kms a month only once and reached 6,500kms of the planned 9,000kms. Work just seemed to get in the way of my well laid out plans...

The big day arrives.

As the event manager for the Albatross MTB Club I had organised a team of 6 for this years Scott 24 as well as some guys to come down as my support crew.

But due to work commitments, I ended up with just the team of 6 as my support crew, not ideal. Come to the rescue Crummy who was willing to help out as support crew, mechanic and motivator.

My race plan was to take it easy from the start and see how the body survived. Being that I had not ridden for more that 8 hrs before.

First lap was the red lap and it was beautiful sunny start to the race, this was going to be fun in the sun. First transition was a nice and fast as it was straight through the transition zone and not going through the camping site until the crowd died down a bit.

With the entry for the Scott we got a nice camp site down in the transition area for the team of six so I decided to run all my transition through there, and it worked well.

With 10hrs down and keeping an average between the 2 laps to an hour each it was looking good. I then had a bit longer of a transition on this one to get some pasta in and get some warm clothes on.

I put in four more laps with some longer transitions and started to feel buggered, so I pulled the pin for a couple of hours to get the head down and try and eat some more food.

When I got out of bed I very slowly started throwing down some food and started to feel much better.

In this time Crummy was giving the Giant a clean and lube and found that I had crack in the bikes frame. I had the spare bike ready to go, hard tail 29er , but Crummy offered up the his Team Enduro Pulse Yeti ASR-C to get me through the remainder of the event. I liked the idea of ridding on a dually to finish of the race.

So at about 0700 in the morning headed out again on the Yeti to finish of the race, as I came back into transition this was the only time I looked at the score board and my lap time was 5:42 and I was in 12th place. Lap times were good for the next 5 hours averaging the 1 hour laps again.

The guys gave me some lap times in transition for the rider behind and the one in front, they told me I had 40 mins on the guy behind so keep doing what I was and finish in 12th, I was very happy with that for my first solo 24 hr.

I was lead to believe there was about 1 hr to 11th place and I was not going to make that up, in the next hour. So I just settled in to a nice rhythm towards the finish of the race, the final laps was a blue lap and enjoy the ride. I ended up crossing the line at 12:01, with no need to go back out.

I somehow managed to pick up two places in the last lap, (could have been some dodgy info from the boys in transition), so I finished in 10th position with 18 laps under the belt.

Awesome day and night of riding and I can’t wait for the next one.

Thanks to Mark for being a sport, giving us an insight to Enduro riding with his words and photos.

Good Deeds and Training Steeds

Having done quite a few commuting k's over the last couple of weeks I was doing some on-bike exploring of the local area the other day attempting to find some new routes and back-roads to link up. I had ridden around and was on my way back when I rode up beside some stopped vehicles at traffic lights, noticed a caravan-er had an open fuel door on their 4x4 ahead. I slowed and pulled up beside their open window and inquired to see if their fuel cap and door was suppose to be in an it's open state. No? I didn't want to ask how long it had been since they had filled up,but just scootered back to fit the cop and close the door with a reassuring clunk. I continued on my way down to the lights and it wasn't until two more sets of lights, a couple of kilometres later the caravan passed me with a polite wave.

Who was the mountain biker riding along the soft sand on Manly Beach and what were they training for? Could it have been the Simpson Desert Challenge or MTNs to Beach? And what techniques, the weirder the better, do you use to train?

Manly Dam

Word on the street is that Warringah Council is looking to develop further MTB trails at Manly Dam. So I headed out to the unique location to see how the trails have been holding up.

Manly Dam is just a few short k's from Manly beach and is easily accessible via the roads off Condamine St. The trail is sandstone based and is mostly hardpacked with a mixture of sandy and rocky sections. Highlights include single track and downhill sections that take some practise to smoothly ride. Over the years boardwalks have been added and rocks moved to counter natural erosion and the constant use of the trails by bikes, runners and walkers.

The trail was mostly dry but rain three days earlier had still left some puddles, a little mud and more water in the stream crossing than usual. Not much had changed climbing up from the school and it wasn't until the traverse across the top of the golf course that significant work had been carried out. Ground level boards had been replaced by a raised board walk, a great move for more sustainable trails. Further on and moving into the returning descent a nice little section of rock armoured trail has been built leading to the B-line near the massive A-line "Humvee" roll-over. With the heavy use of this trail it is good to see work being done that will last for years and years.

Of course with any public multi use trail it is a good idea to keep in mind the other users, it is not uncommon to come across walkers and runners using the trail in both directions. It will be interesting to see what the Council and local trail users come up with over the next year for Manly Dam.

Scott24 Vid Super Shorts

Scott 24 Random Pics

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You will have to wait for the highlight Vid...

Scott24 - A short write up

Great to see the turnout of MTBers at the SCOTT24. Even though I wasn't riding I still of a few butterflies at the first glimpse of Stromlo will all the tents on it.

I knew riders in the Solo category, teams in Pairs, Sporty 4's through to riders in teams of Mixed 6's. Everyone would have got a good taste of the Stromlo mud and rocky conditions.

I'm not sure anyone really warmed up to the Blue Lap but that didn't stop the smiles and "Gordo Style" grimaces through transition.

First-timers on the Red Lap just wanted to get back out for another run on Skyline and the Luge, in an instant they had forgotten the +30mins of straight climbing involved to reach the top.

The weather gods were just toying with those on the mountain, blowing up some incredibly dark clouds, bone chilling winds, little precipitation and then kicking back with some sun and a rainbow for laughs.

As darkness fell over the quietening camp the trails remained ablaze with bikes and lights, it is always a spectacle to look up the hill as lights flickered and wound their way around.

When the sun rose over Canberra many weary, muddy faces were washed with the red dawn. Slowly energy was kicked back into riders, the nights efforts now showed, in some cases the hunt was still on for that elusive position or team. In others, riding through the night had brought on a multiple lap advantage, an early shower, hot food, rest and recuperation before the presentations.

Like Bathurst, for MTBers, it was all good.

More to follow...