Yarrabilba Photo shoot

Sunday I managed to drag a couple of mates out for a spin at Yarrabilba. None of us was up for a big ride so we decided to do a photo shoot instead.

Halfway up a single track Craig spotted an obstacle we had to have a go at getting over.

Don't know why but I like this piccie

Up the top of the hill we found some fun drops amongst the boulders. I didn't realise I wasn't wearing my helmet for this one.

Another big rock Craig had to tackle. Doesn't look it but the rock is about 5 foot high. He was using all 150mm of travel so I wasn't having a go with only 100mm of travel.

This is probably the best shot of Yarrabilba I've seen. Captures the mood of the place perfectly. Rocky and side by side riding. Choose your own adventure.

And one of my dodgy Pics This track is really steep and now has the nickname os S.A.B.I.P. Steering and braking is pointless.

Hope you enjoy the pics. All the good ones are Gav's. More here More Pictures Here.

Update for the Epic. Only for those that read this. Shhhhhhhhhhhh

Duck Creek Rd Kerry

Sunday saw a group of us heading up Duck Creek rd Kerry. After a foggy drive down this is the view which waited us as we headed off.

The first few climbs are quite a battle. With a 1000m of climbing over around 14km with road adding a further 4km to get to Oreilly's

 Andrew aka Hootsman ( All shots courtesy of him)enjoying the friendly and persistant birds at the Cafe at the top. Pancakes were the order of the day but the milkshake is not advisable when you've got 18km to go back down.

 A Beautiful shot of one of the trees at the lookout halfway up.

 The sign at the main lookout which spells the end of the main climbing sections.

 Troy doing his Superman inpersonation at the lookout.

 The view from the top over Oreilly's farm.

 The crew at the bottom. After the high speed decent, we decided to have an impromptu road race. Which really hurt the legs averaging over 35km/hr for the last 10 minutes immitating roadies.

Thanks to Jason for putting it together always a good ride and challenging ride. And to Andrew for the use of his piccies. I was on Video duty. And to everyne else for an enjoyable ride.

Last thoughts- BRING ON NZ!!!!! After a 60km ride Friday and then Duck creek rd Sunday I finally feel ready for NZ and The Southside Epic.

The week so far

It appears that I have done some real damage to my ribs after the Explore ride. Don't think they are cracked or broken just badly bruised. So that's making life farken hard.
So didn't get a lot of riding in last week.
Did a 25km explore /night ride at Scribbly gum. About 3km of which was repeats over a set of jumps, a natural bowl we found and a really technical log roll over ( nearly 4 foot high).
Some really cool little tracks in there. Little being the word, at night they are quite hard to follow because they are quite fast and narrow. This was almost my last ride as the chain slipped on the way back home at around 35km/hr I got up to give it some and came very close to coming off straight into a park bench. That would have really hurt.

I finished off the routing for "The Southside Epic" on Sunday with a 32km explore ride between West Mt Cotton Rd and Mt Cotton rd. Turns out the road that is meant to be "isn't". Ended up getting lost and found my way thru to Karingal where I got abused by some old guy for tresspassing. Sorry I didn't mean to get here and I didn't pass a gate or any signs so BLAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!

Then went up Wodlands drive to Thornlands and thru the tracks and bike path back home. There's a really cool track thru to the path I am taking everyone on. The epic is now around 85km long and around 1400m of climbing!

We are having a pump track competition afterwards to crown "The Pump Daddy" Trophy winner. If I lose on home soil I'll never live it down.

Now scarily enough I've started thinking of the next big ride and it will be HUGE!!!!!. More details next year.

Only 4 and a bit weeks to go till NZ. CAN'T WAIT!!!!!

Thought of the week... Apparently trying to shoulder barge big thick trees out of the way while riding can be painful.....Might be better to try and avoid them in future I'm thinking...

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

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.

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.

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!!!!!!!!!!!