July 2008 - Killingworth and Yellowmundee (Whisperer)

Hi Guys

Thought I’d send through a ride report for the last month. It’s been a busy time with lots of riding and racing with the NobMob bunch. Three of us put together a ‘masters’ team to contest the BMC working week 8hr series. Steve Knight who has ridden with us a few times on the ONR and local rides, and John Evans from Woodford, another keen distance rider and regular on the mtb race circuit. Both are part of NobMob http://nobmob.com/

The last races have been at Killingworth, up near Newcastle, and the Yellowmundee Course at Yarramundi, out near Richmond.

The format is an 8hr race, and you can go solo, pairs, threes and fours. We put together a three man team and entered mixed masters (mixed team with one or more over 40s).

Both courses were about 9km, fast flowing single track, not too much climbing, but enough to have some good descents, and a bit of testing technical stuff thrown in for good measure. We worked with the strategy of go-hard for one lap and hand over to the next rider, and repeat! We peeled off ~32 minute laps, had an hour in between and did it again for the 8 hours. We got a bit of a surprise in the first race when 4 hours had passed and we were in second place (out of about 16 mixed masters 3’s teams). This gave us some real incentive and we really pushed for the remainder of the race, but a record-keeping glitch by the organisers had us in third place at the end. Another team ‘magically’ appeared in the results and displaced us.

Given we were one of the only teams with a genuine masters makeup (all over 40’s) we were still very happy. Both the teams that beat us had two riders in their early thirties and a single master (hence the mixed master format). For our efforts we ‘won’ a set of grips and a gear cable in the prize giving presentation. No one is going to get rich in Australian MTB racing!

Second race was out at Yellomundee. We were pumped and out for a better result this time. The course was fantastic, technical, dry, lots of flowing corners, some nicely bermed from years of use, and open ones where you could drift with confidence (is there such a thing?), anyway we had ear to ear grins in between a bit of ‘hurt’ in the legs, riding pretty loose and getting more confidence and familiarity with each lap. We were pretty much within a minute of each other in our lap times, and at the end of it we had made second place!

The team format is really fun. There were a number of other NobMob teams racing too, and we set up a huge tarp for out pit area and much friendly banter was had by all. Looking ahead, the next 8hr round is at Canberra on the Mt Stromlo course, 24th August. Both John and I are going to do it solo as a prep for the Scott 24 hr on October the 12/13. For that we are both going to do an attempt at 24hrs solo. John has done a couple before and done quite well, and for me it’s my first time, but I thought I should give one a go and see if I can keep it all together and finish!

Will keep you posted, and look forward to an ONR ride sometime!

Whisperer


Fairly average Google earth view of the Yellowmundee track with my GPS plot: