nz single speed champs

pic: Single Speed Society President Gaz is having a good time :)

the weather was pretty perfect for the event - it was raining on an off all day - it wouldn't be right to ride a single speed on a perfectly sunny day. you might ask: 'but why would you wanna ride a bike with only one gear anyway?' oh well it's just a pretty crazy, fun event and great for a laugh and makes for good spectating. and you might as well do something a little crazy every now and then.
we all had to leave our bikes at the race village and walk up the road so we could then run to the bikes to not find them in 'our' spot. the spectators had been asked to move our bikes to a different spot while we walked off just to make it more entertaining for them, and us? as soon as we found our bikes it was pretty much a normal bike race, other then the fact that there was a short cut option somewhere along the course that you could chose to take as long as you sculled a beer or eat a weetbix with peanut butter, hm yummy! i realised how much of a short cut it was after not taking it in the first lap and then finding myself behind people i had passed a long time ago - oh well that learnt me ;)
i was adamant that Anja was in front all along and i assumed she had taken the short cut on the first lap so she would have made an even bigger gap on me, so i tried to catch her up..., was chasing her the whole race - little did i know that she was behind me all along. i was chasing a phantom ;)
i only found out that i was in the lead just before crossing the line.
Tim Wilding won the men's race!

crossing the finish line while the rain is starting to get rather heavy!

if you are wondering why i am bulling a face - it's because i just sculled a fizzy drink at the short cut tent, so it's not that i am not happy about winning ;)

ps: we weren't meant to drink more then 3 times and i thought i rather not try the eating option and do i long lap, or maybe i just wanted to see the scenic spots of the long course ;)

ps2: i guess my bike was the most fun to ride - i was riding my blur lt! :) (as a single speed obviously)

found an other pic, you can see my mean ride ;) and my red knee - hm shall i blame my skills or the beer for the crash? ;)

xterra 09

I got talked into doing xterra which was my first triathlon, or to be fair ‘let myself get talked into doing it’ just less then 3 weeks out from the race, so not much time to get my head around the swimming part (and I am not a swimmer – unless you count breast stroke :)). Hm, I guess that showed.
I did look really fast in my super fancy blueseventy helix wetsuit (unfortunately they don’t come with propellers so as soon as I tried to swim I did look more like the clown, but hey, someone has to be the clown right? ). I was second to last out of the water, 6min slower then the leading girl Monique Avery and look pretty much same time as the slowest in my category. This set me up really badly for the ride as I now had to try navigate my way through the field on the bike, unfortunately the bike was not very long and due to the traffic I didn’t manage to make up any time, I actually still lost some! But I made up one place.
The run was my best part of the race, I finally managed to catch up a few girls and I felt pretty comfortable and really enjoyed that part. I had the fastest run of the girls by 2min, am pretty stoked about this.
I ended up getting 3rd, less then 30sec back from 2nd. I knew I shouldn’t have fluffed around in transitions so much or maybe should have even practiced them. But it’s better to make the mistakes now and then do better next time when it counts, I reckon.


So I have got loads to work on and I am already looking forward to next year’s one.

Mtb Marathon champs

oh well it's now been a week already and i have been meaning to update this blog right away, ... sorry!
yeah so the Highlander 75k which was also nz mtb marathon champs were on last Sunday at the Blue lake Rotorua.
it was a stunning day, not too chilly and not too hot as there was a bit of cloud hanging about and the trails were in mint condition too, so all in all > perfect! :)

the course started with quite a bit of road before hitting the first single trail and then it took us through some mint trails - like Billy T! - and along some super scenic forest roads like along lake front road were you get a stunning view of green lake (it certainly puts a smile on your face) :)

i wasn't feeling too strong and energetic but managed somehow to keep at the front of the women's field and therefore won the marathon champs title, am happy! ;)

thanks for all the support i got along the race course, it's great to see and hear people cheer you on!

wishing you happy easter riding! :)