Friday, February 12, 2010
Monday, February 8, 2010
Monday, January 25, 2010
Wednesday, January 13, 2010
Christchurch NZ Cup 1 Race Report
I packed up the car and all of myself and Edo's (my Italian friend) stuff on new years day, I was still rather hung over and tired from my hydration efforts on new years eve, but somehow we managed to fit all the stuff in to my car and got on the road bound for Wellington where we were catching the ferry across to the South Island.
After the 3 hour ferry trip I continued the drive on through to Christchurch I even managed to set a pretty good time from Blenhiem to Christchurch fuelled by 3 energy drinks to keep me awake as I was driving through the night, I was happy to see the end of the drive and to arrive at my friends house and get some sleep.
While in Christchurch I spent the time riding and getting my sweet new Lapierre DH920 dialed in at Vic Park which is the local Downhill area and is full of sick tracks, and also I checked out most of the skateparks in the area. I spent two solid days helping out the guys to finish the track benching out a hillside digging with a pick all day, but the end result was worth it, it had to be one of the sickest looking tracks that I had seen in a long time especially on the NZ race scene, it was so steep and technical that some named it "The Widow Maker" but I just couldn't wait to ride it!
Practice day rolled around and I got up with Sam Blenkinsop and Brook Macdonald to get a run in, but we were forced to tramp/ride another way down the hill, as we had "forgotten" our gloves and BikeNZ has a shit rule that you have to wear them to be allowed to ride, I don't wear gloves all year and I have to wear them to race NZ race's I find this a bit of a joke! So when we got down the hill and got some gloves and finally got to ride the track we were rather relieved and the track was awesome really steep and loose but as soon as you had some lines dialed it would be sick! Well thats what we thought but after many other riders complaints they decided to change the track, as apparently it was too hard for many people...I thought it was the NATIONALS! I was pretty disappointed as the track would have suited me I think and I had put a lot of hard work in to finish it.
They moved the top section of the course to what I would have called a walking track or cattle track, with a lot of pedaling it was pretty much the opposite of the original track, but it is was it is and I still was here to race so I put in a few practice runs to get it dialed before race day. Race day I awoke to another fine sunny day and headed up the hill for a couple of practice runs before getting ready for the seeding run, my seeding run went ok I didn't push too hard so that I still had some left for race run I came in 4th so I knew I had to put in a bigger effort in finals!
My final runs started off ok but then in a few of the skinny corner's I was over cautious and didn't really ride how I would of liked to, I didn't push as hard as I should of in the mid section of the course and just lost time due to holding back too much, but rode the bottom section pretty well. But it just wasn't my day 7th place .3 of a second out of the top 5, I was pretty disappointed with this result and will have to work hard to put something better together at the next race in Dunedin, anyways so Sam Blenkinsop took the win with Justin Leov in 2nd and Cam Cole taking 3rd place. Now I head down to Dunedin where I have the next NZ Cup race this coming Sunday hopefully I have a better weekend.
Finally thanks to everyone helping me out!
Wyn
Sunday, December 20, 2009
Portugal Video 2
My 2nd and final video from Portugal, more vids to come when I get back to NZ.
More Mountain Biking >>
More Mountain Biking >>
Wednesday, December 16, 2009
Lousã Avalanche Race
So the past weekend over in Portugal, the whole trail building crew packed up the van with all bikes and we headed to Lousã for the Extreme riders Avalanche race's I had heard good things about this place, so it was a perfect excuse to check it out and get some racing in.
We headed off with little idea where we were going other than a GPS that was generally used for marking out new tracks rather than driving, so a few wrong turns were in order. But I never thought it could have been that bad, after driving for about 4 hour's I started to realize we must have gone wrong somewhere, we finally arrived in Lousa which didn't seem like a place where a race would be held, as it was completely in the middle of no where and looked to be a town of around 50 people!! And after driving through it I realized it wasn't where the race was we were in Lousa and were supposed to be in Lousã! Turns out after another 2 hour's driving we had gone about 250 km the wrong way we had a van full of boy's eager to ride their bikes, I was going a bit mental myself as it was the longest 2 hour drive I had ever done finally taking 6 hours!
So after finally arriving we headed up the hill, well hill was and understatement this was a proper mountain after an hour drive in a bus up a pretty crazy road where you imagine what it would be like if the bus went off the side. The top of the track there were awesome 360 degree views of the towns and countryside around the area, there was hundreds of huge windmills as well! Myself, Kurt Lancaster and Abe Winwood hit up a run together the top section was all gravel road and had some flat sections that were tough on my little 4x bike and would be killer on a DH bike, but after a couple of mins on the gravel it was in to the single track which was sick proper DH track, real loamy soil which cut up real quick and lots of sweet off camber sections it was around 10 mins of this then a short sprint to the finish line. We only got to do one practice run on saturday due to arriving so late and the mega drive to the top, but we were all stoked with the track.
So sunday rolled around and we were up early to hit another practice run, me and Kurt did a reasonable pace run down the top gravel section and it was clear his XC bike was the ticket for this section and that would be his race plan, the rest of the track was sweet but getting real cut up with a few corners getting blown out.
So after some lunch we headed up for the race run and the bus driver thought he would show us a few of his Schumacher lines on the way up rarely letting off the throttle and on one turn he was within 10 mm from hitting the rock wall, we agreed that it was lucky this was our last run up the hill in the bus. We go to the top cranked out a bit of a warmup before getting put in to the start row's, we were 3rd row back which was going to be tough with 30 riders in front of us to get past.
I got set to go and off went the starters horn, I set off to a pretty good start despite having to stay behind a few riders as there wasn't much room for passing but I got in to a bunch of about 10 riders at the front by the time we hit the flat gravel, I was starting to wonder when Kurt was going to pass me, and then I saw him come past me in top gear and pull out and pass the whole bunch and precede to drop them with ease to take the lead before hitting the single track. I went in to the single track in around 8th and was getting sick of following the train down so I started getting "moto" on it and making some pretty rough but legit passes at the same time yelling at the guys in front till they started feeling the pressure and made mistakes or took themselves out, I was loving it! I made a mega block pass to get in to 3rd and then started pushing pretty hard to try to get up to Kurt and the leader and then my back brake started losing power big time and to the point where I had to hold it on the whole time! I came in to a turn a bit hot and went straight off it in to a little gully and my bike got stuck on a branch so once I got up going again heaps of guys had past me included Abe Winwood, I got going again but was pretty tired and got block passed myself but then sprinted and past the guy back giving him a bit of a scare at the same time. So after that it wasn't far to the finish and my race was over for the day I took 8th place with another "checkers or wreckers" day and a big lack of rear brake.
Kurt ended up 2nd after having a bit of a digger on the single track pretty sick result on the XC bike though! The guy that won expressed his thought's in Portuguese and we could make out that he thought Kurt was a bit crazy! Abe Winwood took a solid 6th place too so it was a good showing for the kiwi boys, could of been better but we all had a sick time so thats all that matters.
Anyways now I got some more trails to build, I am back in the land of the long white cloud next week in time for xmas, and should be getting my new bike together for NZ Cup Series more news on that soon.
Merry Xmas everyone!
Wyn
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