NSW Police & Emergency Services Games - XC

When one of my riding colleagues mentioned they wanted to compete at the Games, I was keen to join. These Games had been on and off the radar a few times due to clashes with other events but we had never managed to participate. This years event included a Cross Country (XC) race and a day of Gravity Enduro, first up was the XC.

This was our first time at Green Valleys MTB park and this was another attraction to this particular event. GV had a good name amongst the gravity crowd for its range of trails, features and shuttle back to the top. 

But first the XC event, and there were no shuttles, just pure climbing followed by a descent. We were joined by about 20 others for a one hour plus a lap format of race.

We jumped up onto the front row of the small crowd to get our best start into the singletrack. The race organisers had included a short grassy loop to filter the riders before we headed up the hill.

Our colleague got the jump on the start and we pulled into second wheel to push along the grassy section. It was pretty immediate to notice that our bunch of riders weren’t all pinners as we lead a strung out line onto the course.

We held second wheel for the majority of the climb. It was a fairly graded effort, a number of spots which pinched up and had you grabbing a couple of extra gears. The climb wound its way up a +50m vert hill and the graded efforts were connected by a series of switchbacks.

Nearing the top and before the descent we rode around to the front before the bike started to point down. The descent was fairly natural to start with, a series of dusty and blown-out corners from the The Block Party a week prior. We then skipped onto a more open section, jump a series of doubles and roll down to transition.

We almost took the extra grassy loop for a second time but got called back and they pointed us up the hill again. While climbing the switchbacks we could see my colleague had dropped back a little way and just behind him were a number of other riders.

Over the course of the next laps, only about 8-9minutes a lap, we caught a number of riders and passing through transition there was some joviality about slowing down for those behind us. 

Some of the on-course obstacles included a Butcher bird who took to buzzing the left side of your helmet if you rode alone. The bird was consistent and tapped your helmet over a number of trail sections.

Rolling through transition just before the hour mark we only had one rider left to lap, our colleague that lead us out at the start. He was a quarter of the way up the climb already so we spun up the hill after him. As we crested the hill there must have only been 10 or 20 seconds between us, we pushed the bike down the hill for a last time.

This hard push resulted in us overcooking a corner and coming down in the dust before we had left the forested descent. Back on the bike we rolled through the remaining course to finish our first Games event.

Thanks to the Games and the small team of event organisers for hosting. It was great to ride Green Valley too. We'll be sharing the images from this event on our Instagram and Facebook page when they become available.

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