Tuesday 29 November 2011

Video from the Explore ride

Heres a cool video that one of the riders from last Sundays exploration ride has put together.
Nice work Dave
http://youtu.be/i7ttlvsuj6E

Sunday 27 November 2011

Training has begun

So training has begun properly this week.
Schedule this week was-
Tuesday- 20km road ride to Daisy and back and 1 hour pump track
Wednesday- 17km group ride around Daisy hill
Thursday- Just weights at night
Friday-20km Explore ride to Scribbly gum
Saturday- 27km Explore again of Scribbly via a road loop to enter from the south entrance
Sunday- 51.5km EPIC ride.
Total for the week- 138km and I'm stuffed now.

So today's ride was all about working out the link routes between the different mtb tracks around the place. We started at cornubia and then over to Bayview. Steep dam hills there. Then over to Mt View rd at Mt Cotton where the hills turned into MOUNTAINS!!!!!!!!!!!
We then did a loop of Karingal XC course, Yet MORE DAM climbing hills.
Then over to Daisy where we went straight for the exit up Red hill and back over to Cornubia.
Where I had a gumby stack, Chain slipped as I gave it some welly and straight over the top and flat on my face. Bit scratched up but the worst part was the buckle on the backpack jammed itself into my ribs and am now quite sore.

Then we headed down resurrection in Cornubia forest and back to the cars and a much needed swim.
Ended up doing 51.5km and over 1000m of climbing over a period of 6.5 hours in the heat.

Day off tommorrow and back into again on Tuesday.

Tuesday 22 November 2011

Update time

Well Sunday was an ABSOLUTE BLAST!
Imagine going for a ride with 90 mates. Al feeling the pain of the climb to the top of Mt Joyce, then one by one SCREAMING down it as fast as possible. Was such an amazing event. It fits in between the Serious Down Hill events and the Cross country events and combines a mixture of the two. A lot of riding skill is needed to decend quickly but a lot of  fitness was also needed to be able to get down Quick!
i came in at 10th in C-grade which I was reasonably happy with. I can go a lot faster which annoyed me, but my legs just weren't 100% which really Pissed me off. Anyway was a great Event and I hpe they can get the series off the ground next year.

Alrighty Decided yesterday that I really need to get fitter so proper training for Otago has begun. Did a 20km road ride this morning with the dualie and Knobbly tyres.  Was quite amusing chasing down the roadies. Then did a 1 hour Pump track session.

Pump Track Update
AWESOME. I can now average 10km/hr around it consistently both ways with ZERO pedalling ALL PUMP BABY!. Got a top speed tonight of 16.8 which is about max speed for the track and my bike.
Really got the hang f it now and am at the point where I'm accellerating out of the bottom berm going up hill.
Anyways thats it for now. Planning on doing a ride in the morning at Daisy and a Biggy on Sunday all over the redlands, about 40km.

Tuesday 15 November 2011

The weeks Riding

So this week , well last week I managed a few different rides.
Did a 20km night ride at Nerang. Great fun the place has some serious hills which suck going up but fun going down. There's also a heap of Trail features there, bridges, log rolovers, drop offs etc etc. The beauty of going at night is you don't have time to think about it just hit it and hope. Which is great cause you don't second guess yourself.
Saturday I did a 20km Daisy ride nothing special just testing out my Toy a RockShox Reverb Seat dropper post. Means I can press a button on my handlebars and drop or raise the seat hieght on the fly. Works FANTASTIC!!!!!
Sunday we Hit up Mt Joyce again This time we did Bovine then Sergeants then Bovine again. Starting to really get the hang of bvine now which is a really fast track with a heap of tech stuff. But after 11 minutes you are absolutely Buggered!
Bikes going in for a good service Tomorrow arvo ( better get it back Friday or I'll be pissed) Then taking on my first Down Hill Race event on Sunday. Still very wary of Sergeants but I'll take my time on it to get down safely then PING it down Bovine and Black rock to try make up some time.

54 or something like that Sleeps till Otago!!!!!!!!!!!

Sunday 6 November 2011

Mount Joyce

So went out for a spin at Mount Joyce today with a mate Craig. We talked ourselves into havng a crack at this http://www.eventmanagementsolutions.com.au/the-team/escape-enduro.
Basically its a 3 stage downhill race where you at 45 minutes between stages which means you start at track 1 and get 45 minutes to complete it and get to track 2 etc. Sounds easy enough but at Mount Joyce that means 200-300 metres of climbing between each stage.

So we went out today to see if we could ride the Downhill tracks. First stop Seargeants WOW!!!!!!!!!!!! What a rush!!!!!!!! What an amazing ride! Full on rock gardens, BIG drops, sweeping corners and HUGE jumps!. ( Thank godness for B-lines LOL) So whats better than doing Seargeants for the first time?? DOING IT AGAIN!
First run was around 5:50mins but we stopped to scope the line a few times and run 2 was around 3:40. The real Downhill Boys do it aaround 2:30.
Finished the day off with a run down Black Rock which is another Down hill track but around 10 minutes long. Some really fast and flowy sections combined with some serious Drops.
Video from last time we went there.
http://vimeo.com/27506081
Can't wait to hit Seargents again. What a rush!

Thursday 3 November 2011

Update time

Righto so lots to tell. On the weekend Saturday I headed out on a group ride from Cabolture train station to Mooloola Train station. The idea to cover lots of km's ride lots of dirt and get the train back.
Was a hell of a ride totalling 78KM! My first ever ride over 40km and surprisingly i actually felt pretty good at the end.
Heres a great blog with pics and a better story from the guy who organised the ride. Thanks again  Neil.
http://blog.neilennis.com/index.php/mooloolah-xc/
And more pics from another rider http://s260.photobucket.com/albums/ii34/hootsmon_album/2011-10-29_Caboolture_Mooloola/?albumview=slideshow
Geeze I need a shave :P

Then went out riding on Sunday as well. Took Michelle on her first MTBO event at Scribbly guym reserve. Some nice tracks thru there and quite a nice little course for a CATI event.
Think Michelle enjoyed herself so hope to drag along to a few races next year.
So the km's are back on track and the weightloss is starting to happen.

PUMP TRACK UPDATE:
It's SO dam close. Problem we've been having is that the bottom berm which is the most important part to maintaining speed for a continuous loop. The problem was that the exit tightened which caused the bike to either float out of the berm ( hard to explain) or shoot you off into the trees. Most of the time I would be dabbing the brakes to be able to take the corner. So after much debate we opened up the exit got rid of the end roller and steepened the face of the berm.

Result:
HELL YEAH!!!!!!!!!!!! we have full loops!!! Now can take at full speed most of the time without any issues and maintain the speed u to the tabletop and the top half of the track. Tabletop has also been chopped and changed now has a new roller on the side wall to allow pumping to the top half.

Next trick will be to work out what we need to do to get more speed. Track is GREAT FUN! with a few pedals thrown in can really whip around it. Hoping to get dirty tomorrow arvo and make some of the rollers BIGGER and LONGER. Theory being that flat ground is bad.

Quote for the day: " If I learnt form My mistakes , I'd be a f@#ken Genius"