2007 Urban Polaris

The pain of a torn groin muscle haunted me for the days leading up to the Urban and on the night before the race I SMS’d my team mate, Adam, that there was a chance I wouldn’t be able to come along, but some anti inflammatories and a great night sleep later (it’s amazing how well you sleep when there is no pressure to race an event!) and I felt pretty good and decided to roll up to the start.

Due to Adam’s knees and my leg, we decided to stay well clear of racing this one and just take it easy, ride with some matey’s and have some fun. If our injuries got the better of us, we could just quit early.

A perfect sunny day greeted us at the start and after rego we had to mark up the maps. Neither Adam or I had any idea of how to do this, so it was a bit daunting, and frustrating! Luckily mapping guru Neil was there to save the day and tell us how to do it, so we roughed in the checkpoints and headed to the start. With no route plan or any idea of where would head…

Neil and Sime were heading out to the Cottor, so we thought we’d go do that point, then head back to Stromlo and pick up Dan and Mary Claire who were starting an hour after us.

Neil was putting in some serious effort on the road and pulling me way out of my comfort zone though, so I backed right off and let them go, these guys were on a mission to do well and we were more keen to chill and cruise it out, so we bid them farewell and rolled up into Stromlo for some single track fun.

After a hoot around and a blast down the DH course we found Dan and MC who had just started, they wanted to head through Weston to Mt Taylor, which horrified me, no way did I want to go up that mountain! The crew was keen and I was keen to ride with the crew, so what’s a guy to do?! We cruised through Duffy and onto Cooleman ridge, where many a mono competition was won by Adam and many a rock was being flicked about in rear tyre hockey, the burn out competition was probably taking things a little too far but all this mucking around was like being 12 years old again, it was great fun!

At Mt Taylor Adam and I decided to see if we could ride up the thing, I had tried and failed last week, so doubted I would make it, but what the hell ;) To our amazement we both made it, and at the summit we met up with the McAlisters and the Carrolls for a catch up chat and some much need munchies, and of course, some tourist photos.

Dan and MC were keen for Tuggeranong lake next, I was dubious about that too, it sounded too far South, but what the hell, Adam decided we could catch the bus back afterwards and I thought that was a great plan! Adam and I bombed down Taylor and flew through the insano drains beside the parkway and were at Lake Tugg before we noticed adrenalin had kicked in, hard, we were flying and had dropped the crew.

We grabbed a the moving checkpoint from the kayak here and decided to do the one at Pine Island and perhaps ride back and get the bus with the others, the point was at Stranger Pond and the single track to Point Hut was merely a few hundred meters away, so I talked Adam into hammering that fun section and before we knew it we were at Point Hut and our previous casual pace had become somewhat race like ;)

I was keen to head back for the bus to the city, but Adam spotted a pair of roadies in the event and being the pit bull that he his, decided we should try and chase them to the Hyperdome, surely we could keep up… wrong. I was struggling and Adam was off the front leaving me for dead. He was on fire!

The roadies went straight past the turn off to the Hyperdome, so we followed them some more and ended up at Tuggers Pines, where they finally dropped us, heading North, we followed, aiming for lunch in Kingston.

Rolling into the bakery at Kingston was heavenly, we were buzzing with adrenalin from the 40km/h cruise along the Monaro Highway, I’d never ridden up there before and was amazed what sorts of speeds we could hold. Time to ditch the bikes and helmet and have a sit down lunch, pies, ginger bread men, finger buns, cinnamon scrolls, bring it all on :)

We chatted with a couple having lunch at the table next to us who noted by our relaxed attitude that were not “taking the race very seriously”, race, what race?! :D haha!

We popped back onto the bikes with no real plan of where to go, the rubber shark checkpoint sounded cool, and we knew there we ice creams for sale at the Ferry, so we decided that way sounded fun, and headed off.

At the shark there were at least 10 teams queued up for the two paddle boats, having just had a nice big stomach filling stop, I was keen to keep moving and volunteered to swim out, it was, well, refreshing (read: bloody cold!)! Worthwhile though, it was cool to visit the shark :)

Then we headed over to the Ferry terminal for an ice cream, and clipped the checkpoint there as a secondary concern, and then headed back to Stromlo, on the way we stumbled upon a huge group of people standing around “something”, turns out it was another checkpoint, so we clipped that one too and headed to the finish, 15 minutes early, but not fussed enough to get anymore points, especially after we learned beer was on sale!

Cokes, powerades, beers and hot chips later we were left two happy campers with ear to ear smiles. The interim results showed us in 3rd place!!! Haha, what a gag, we took a photo, knowing there were many teams to finish yet and our placing would become more realistic as other came in a beat us.

In the end we came 11th which is amazing considering the half arsed approach to say the least, obviously we fluked some good points along the way, a game of chance that played well to us I guess.

Good friends of ours, Al and Garret who were racing properly, pulled in 4th, so props to them for an amazing effort!

It's a terrible shame this maybe the last Urban Polaris, I had a great time and hope there are more in the future...