RND 3 VICTORIAN MTB SERIES

Today signifies the end of a very very long week. I tried to do a heavy week of riding through a heavy week at work and I’ve discovered that the two don’t work that well together. In simple terms, I went into Round 3 of the Victorian MTB Series today tired, and it hurt me. Bendigo hosted the race out at Heritage Road, Sedgwick, providing an always rocky, hilly, challenging course, that I saw for the first time this morning. Aside from the terrain, perhaps the hardest and most unpredictable obstacle today was the severe heat on the open trails.

The hot sun led to dehydration, which caused some very sloppy technical skills, and by race end severe exhaustion! I rode my first lap as hard as I possibly could in an attempt to stay within 1 minute of Jo Wall, but come the end of lap two, Tory and I had quit alongside each other with no will or want to go on. Jo powered to a 9 minute win, and I held off Tory by a further 3 minutes. I had just the one crash, where I fell into a bush that left me with about 30 million invisible bindies in my arm! That pain wore off when the effects of four coke-zero’s post race kicked in!

In the Men’s race Murray Spink, Robbie Hucker and Jarrod all came through within 10 seconds after the first lap. Robbie punctured and relegated himself to finish second by 3 minutes, while Jarrod lost control on a tricky descent running head first into a tree! His kamikaze style crash left him sitting airy fairy on trackside for ten minutes. Then with a broken helmet, a scarred face, a grazed back and cuts to his hands, knees and elbows, he went on to complete a second that that he barely even remembers!

Results: Round 3, Victorian MTB Series XCO, Bendigo