Well Mt Perry has been run and won. Let me tell you, Queensland can get mighty cold—especially in a little valley beside a mountain 10km from Mt Perry (which is 500km from anywhere).
We left bright and early (ish) on Saturday morning to make the 'epic' trip up to Perry. However, due to perhaps a few too many coffees, Google Maps on iPhone (infinitely more helpful with directions than Google Mao's) and a sneaky back-route, the whole drive took us around 4-hours, with a stop in the sleepy little town of Biggendden and some very dodgy Gympie bakery coffee.
Alas, we arrived at our accomodation around lunchtime, and drove out to the race site for a bit of a lookie-see soon after that. There would be no camping for us non-camping types! But we did get payed out for not camping by some certain individuals in a campervan...fully decked out...
I decided to ride in my Enduro jersey just so I remebered what format the race was (not so I'm like—"oh shit, I though this was XC, it's been two hours and i'm DONE!")
Anyway, hitting the course, on my awesome new Cannondale Flash (called Gordon)—was fun. I finally stopped binning it and staretd riding it properly now! I rode around the practice lap in the 'dog the whole way and felt great. Though Aido was telling me to stop being so excited and ride an easier gear. But it didn't feel hard—I felt awesome. Which may be part of the reason that the next day's 6-hour race was so damn painful.
The track profile is like so:
I really liked the second climb, but the first peaty, grainy steep bit became quite a drain after about three hours.
Naomi started super strong, I managed to keep her up ahead for half a lap, then I decided that it's probably better to settle into a rhythm and ride strong rather than put all my eggs in one basket and blow up. Lap two and three I rode with Jodie, who had a more conservative start and rode up to me, and this was good. Good to have someone to ride with, even if only for a small portion of a long race.
From then I was on my lonesome. I managed to keep lapping around again and again, feeling like I was absolutely creeping—but I was still managing to pass most people so I can't have been going that slowly I suppose. I wasn't even bombarded with Elite Men's Solo riders lapping me, which was nice. It was infrequent and maybe happened twice throughout the race, once with Aaron Benson and once with Andy Fellows.
Perhaps the best part of the course was following the tricky, loose descent and the 'Giant Erection', down the Carpet Muncher, into some berms, and whoop-de-doo's down the Big Ring Fling and back home it was so good that you forgot all about the tough climbing that was at you from the get-go of the next lap.
A deceptive trick, but one that had me going out lap after lap with minimal angst. On my second-last lap, I saw Jodie pinning it up the last climb while I was riding up the first one, which was about 12 minutes ahead of where I was at. Hooray—this meant I wasn't going to get lapped by the 'big girls'. The very small, 'big girls', to clarify.
For lap ten, I just held on. The first part of the lap was horrendous. I was still trying to ride in the big ring where I had for the whole race, and only shift down for the dirty steep bits, but it was taking it's toll. I was glad for running a 2x9 setup with 44/29, because I would have certainley girled-it up if I had the wee-ring option. But then again, singlespeeding makes you strong so I knew that I could get through it!
The best part, though, was the guys hanging out near the top of the first climb—the 'Hilltop Hooligans', who fed me most of a beer (though it was Fourex—yuk!) on my last lap. I felt SO much better with that beer in me—I was ready to take on the world.
I cruised quite happily through the rest of the lap, Aiden passed me up the very final climb and he said he would wait for me at the finish—I said "with beer please".
The final two laps, I ended up tripod-ing and walking down the (now) super rutted sketchy switchbacks, this is because on lap nine, I was talking to the SES blokes about how easy it was, when I promptly stacked it, with my bike over my head. I was lying in the dust and my back cramped. Who knew you even had muscles in your back to cramp? Apparentely you do! I rushed to get up...it was bloody hard!
Serves you right for talking AND riding a tricky section at the same time. The last couple of laps I lost time falling and running it, but I felt so cross-eyed by that stage that I really didn't care.
Crossing the line I had not a lot left. It was a hard day, but it was supposed to be! I am not great at these enduro things, so I was happy to be 15 or so minutes behind Jodie, who took the lead from Naomi in the final stages. I've been 15mins behind the winners of XC races at the National series in the past! No longer I hope!
Ten laps, 2600m of climbing, over 110km of singletrack, 8 gels, a couple of apricot bars and some coke got me through.
Thanks to my Sweetpea and Whitepants for feeding me, Matt 'n Kathy for letting me borrow just about everything (I am forgetful), Helen for her cake (but not for dropping my bottle on lap three! hehe—JOKE—it's all good!), all the people keeping it real on the track, the organisers and officials for their time and effort, and of course, RLC Sport, Cyclinic, Aerozine and Project 321 for their (self) sponsorship!