MT Bike xc race race 3:36:00 [4] 45.0 km (4:48 / km)
Wombat "50" km race at Woodend.
The race director for this performs well under stress!
Firstly the event looked like being rained off, and this would have been controversial after Mont 24 hr was cancelled last week in Canberra.
They decided to go ahead, and the rain eased. They made changes to the courses to eliminate the worst of the muddy tracks, shortening them a little, and also building some diversions around deep 4WD holes.
Secondly, this morning they found that vandals had wrecked all their feed stations and moved arrows. So they had to replace things and check all the markers (100km course too). So starts held on for almost an hour while race director stood calmly waiting for the all clear from his minions out in the forest.
Then in the 50km they sent the first wave out the wrong way - luckily after 5 km they came back near the start - finish and were nabbed and taken back to start again.
However this wasn't good for us in wave 3, as the first wave was started just after us and came thru us on a horrible muddy section ...I'm talking about 150-200 riders (90% male) here...imagine the chaos! I was not happy. Some of the people I was riding with managed to merge in with the faster ones for longer sections than me. my friend Stu passed me on slippery single tk Finally I got to the halfway feed station I filled up my water bottle ...less than 2 bottles for race, and grabbed a bit of banana and cake and jumped back on the bike.
I was on a fire road and finally could utilise my fitness, so went flat chat. Had fun passing guys that had left me for dead on the single tk, though some of them repassed me on the sections of single tk in the last 25km.
Luckily there was more faster sections and I was able to get back ahead of them again. Nice to have a race within a race..
My time was about 5 mins slower than last year (and 5 km shorter) but hard to make anything of that given last year the tracks were super fast.
I ended up beating Stu by 6 mins and winning my class by the same amount. Always hard as one never knows which women are against you and people start in different waves too.
Happy enough in the end - nice to chat at the finish. Many other friends were racing there. AJ & Steve c were 7th and 9th outright, Chris J was 3rd in a sprint finish - all in elite. My friend Anna (from here) came 3rd in elite women in 100km riding 5.57 and I had advised her that I thought she would take 6hrs ..amazing! Peter C won M60 and Carolyn J won her class in 100.
850 entries .. 650 starters
30 in 18km; 325 in 50; 69 in 75km; 223 in 100km
Of 630 starters a mere 57 were women, mostly in 50km.
Then jumped in van and drove 800 kms home, with just one stop.
Had to be at work at seymour at 8.15am!
Bad news en route home when found that Geoff Mercer had died in the ACT rogaine. Feeling for family.