A perfect blue sky day greeted us as we made our way South, via Cooma and the Brown Mountain to the beautiful Bermagui for the first (of what will hopefully become an annual) CORC 3hr race. It took us 3 hours to get there from Canberra, a great way to make this trip would be to follow Paul Cole's advise and check out the track at Merimbula on the way, alas, we did not have the time :(
The course has been built by the newly formed Bermagui Dirt Surfers club, and is roughly a 6 kilometer XC loop of hard packed single track. The course is awesome, very much like Tumut, but with some awesome fast sections with jumps that reminded me of Tangles in Wingello. It's located just out of town, and you even get a view of the ocean from the carpark and the while on the course! The place is lush forest, quite dense in parts, and the boys have done well putting in structures to deal with any mud that shows up when it rains.
We were lucky for race day, the track was very dry, a little tacky in places, which was ideal. 120 of the keen lined up for the start, Al and I were keen to race each other, as it spurs you on to go hard, some excellent motivation! Al took his usual start place at the front of the grid, while I hung back about 1/3, I do this so I don't get forced into going out too hard at the start and I get some sort of sick thrill trying to chase people down, which I prefer to the fear I feel when someone is behind me trying to chase me down (luckily though, that never happens, I am too slow!) :)
Right from the gun the field took off at a cracking pace, racing up the firetrail to the singletrack, the firetrail start was perfect length, with no bottle necking at the entrance to the single track and the game was on... the play, to catch Al and see what would happen... incredibly I caught him at the end of lap 1, something was up, because he is usally much faster than me for the first part of the race, it turns out he may not have fully recovered from last weekends Angry Doctor, as his back was aching badly and he felt he had nothing in the legs. I sat in with him for a lap and chatted, but by the end of lap 2, he'd had enough and pulled out :(
Left with no real goal, I made one up on the fly, to try and stay at thresh hold for rest of the race, and abitious plan which would surely end in cramps, but what the hell, with Al out I had nothing to lose ;)
The course had less than 100m of firetrail, but it did have two nice long sections of double track, still, it was hard to pass people, and I really am hopeless at overtaking, I have always just sat in behind the slower rider and waited for the firetrail, here though, that wasn't really an option (people I had overtaken would catch up to me while I was stuck behind a slow rider and when I would not go around, they were getting pretty frustrated with me, which I could understand I guess), so I forced myself to be a little more courageous and try to overtake people on the single track, going bush ;) It was fun and although I was sure it would end in a mechanical, or crash, amazingly it always worked out OK and by the end of the race I found myself trying to pass people like this without slowing down, to keep my momentum up... this didn't always work out, but it was fun to try!
The three hours went by very quickly, the lack of firetrail made it hard to drink and eat, I managed to get two bottles into me during the race, but only one gel. I wanted more, but there was no real good places to fuel on the course, and when I did get to a good spot, it was often well timed for an overtake instead. I never thought I would wish for a little more firetrail in a course, but there you go, a couple more passing/fuelling spots would have been handy, but I guess I need to lift my game to learn and ride in places like this.
I managed to hold thresh hold pace for the 3 hours, with most laps at 83-85% maxHR, which is a PB for me, I've never gone that hard before at a 3hr, and it felt awesome, I had taken the week before off the bike due to a cold, and the I think the rest did me well, it was awesome to ride and feel fit, I stayed in middle ring for the whole race, which is very unlike me (I am traditionally a granny gear grinder). I nearly cramped in the last hour a couple of times, but tried to drink as much as I could when it happened and keep them at bay, thankfully I held them off and finished intact, no cramps and even more elating, no mechanicals!!
Very happy with how I went, PB for sure. Shame about Al pulling out, but he did get to hang out with his son instead, and he did get a few laps and see the place, so it's all good.
Props to Paul Cole for dragging us all down there and the local club for building an awesome venue, one they are working with the local authorities to expand, so I look forward to seeing what they come up with...
The crew:
| Jason | Giant Trance |
| Alan | Giant Anthem |
| Justin | Spesh Stumpy |
| Dan | Ibis Mojo |
The Stats:
| Result | 19th out of 45 (42%) |
| Distance | 6.3km/lap |
| Time | 0:22/lap |
| Climb | 140vm/lap |
| Speed | 16.0km/h avg |
| Date | 10/09/07 |