Lisa Morgan - Kiwi Mountain Biker

Apologies for the late update this week - things are busy just now with the day job and other things going on in the background.  And then I just finished my blog for the event and got spat out!  So this one might end up a bit stunted…

Last Saturday Wellington’s Mt Victoria played host to the inaugural Wild Wellington 6/12 hour mountain bike teams event.  Bicycle had two teams entered - team bicycle, and the bicyclettes.  The bicyclettes was made up of me, Nicole Swain, Amanda Jenkins and Raewyn Morrison.  Being made up of national and local champs we were keen to get out there and stick it to the boys while enjoying the day.  And while I couldn’t serve Cam a nice big slice of humble pie by doing a faster lap time than him, we still beat them as a team coming 23rd overall with them waaaaay back in 29th.

The weather must get a special mention - 32 degrees!!!  And it felt like 50 up the open climbs!  A perfect Wellington day, dry tracks, light breeze - couldn’t ask for more.  The course itself was a toughie.  6.2kms with 200m of climbing but because all of the downhill was open and fast it seemed to have much more climbing than descending.  Sure made the multi-lap approach a bit tougher, but it’s all good training eh.

The organisers did a fabulous job and there was a live band, flash toilets, showers, great spotties and tons of marshalls!  I entertained one by not spotting some tape on a very fast section of course where we came off a wide open down hill to cross a field.  In all the other races I’ve done there we’ve just gone straight across but it turned out we were supposed to go left and around.  On my first lap I shot straight through the tape and waved an apology, then explained myself at a much slower pace next time around - they were very good about it.

Team numbers weren’t huge but hopefully that will grow next year.  There were only 3 womens teams competing but we were still happy to take out the category with a healthy 4 lap margin.  It’s definitely a worthwhile event and I hope to see it grow in years to come and I’m sure I’ll be back for more in the future.

After a bit of a cloudy start to the day north of Wellington and driving through a patch of drizzle Gav and I were pleased to see the sun and blue sky as we rounded on to the view of the city.  Conditions were dry on the trails during the week and would obviously be dry on the day.  We set to getting ourselves set up, helping a bit with set up for the day and then of course catching up with people as they arrived.  I was to do a full warm up before this race having not done one in a long time, so headed out on the road with the good music playing. The warm up is often a good time to guage how things are feeling but all it told me was I was less than 100% but I thought stuff it, I’m just going out there and giving it everything.  By the time I got back the super-fast guys were about to head off so I ditched the sounds, swapped bottles and went to find the girls.

Sam, Laura and I lined up with the U19 boys again, taking up half of the front row, bar end to bar end.  Sam took a look at my heart rate, which admittedly was higher than normal on the start line, and started giving me grief but we quickly established that she can’t get close to my max - even though I’m 13 years her senior!  When the hooter went the pace was on.  I wanted to hit the singletrack first especially as I was conscious of not having the same down hill after the initial furious climb as we usually have at Makara and that meant less recovery time before hitting the undulating stuff that would go on for a while.  I hit my race maxHR on that first climb and was breathing extremely hard going in to the singletrack.  Sam was right on my tail and made a brilliant move to pass me on the 4wd break in to the next section of singletrack (Magic Carpet).  She opened up a small gap which I closed quickly and stayed a few metres behind her until Missing Link, where I sat right on her but didn’t call to pass.  Last time we raced this was where I passed her and didn’t see her again, but I was keen to see 2 things - 1, how her downhill had improved (it has) and 2, how I would go if we were even from the pylon.  There was plenty of traffic too and a few people crashing in front so it was debatable how much of a gap I would have put on.

Going up the next 4wd she put a gap of about 20m on me but through the singletrack I closed it a bit again and we could constantly see each other.  Heading in to Aratihi she shot a gap and got past a group which I had to work my way through - Aratihi is a long section of climbing singletrack which every grade was racing on today and it got fairly congested at times.  I hadn’t had much to drink all race so up the last 4wd to the summit I sucked back as much as I could as I’d planned to ditch the bottle from there with a mate who was marshalling.  There was no time to drink after that anyway.  I kind of knew I hadn’t taken enough on during the race but ditched it anyway and sped off down Zac’s.  Being a windy track I could see Sam every now and then and that helped me retain the focus to keep pushing.  By this stage I knew Laura was a way back and with the exception of a crash wouldn’t catch us. 

The final 4wd section was almost my undoing.  It was the last hurt and I could see Sam with a gap of maybe 35 metres but it was a steep pinch to the top and I was fast running out of legs.  I elected to run (ok walk fast) up the pinch as I was riding so slow and heading up the first sections of Ridgeline I just didn’t have the flow I normally do up there.  The lack of go-juice was taking it’s toll on such a warm day.  From the very top point it was all downhill and I had a fairly uninterrupted run.  Near the end of the track I heard a familiar voice as Ricky closed in on me.  He passed me going in to Ridgeline Extension and again we hit major traffic so he conveniently cleared the way for us both (cheers!).

To finish off we repeated Big Tom’s Wheelie and Magic Carpet before heading down Livewires and through the rather deeper than it used to be stream.  There was a nice crowd gathered at the exit before finishing up on the road.

I finished up within 2 minutes of Sam and grinning like an idiot because it had been a good hard race.  We both pushed each other and I know I felt some considerable pain at times and was happy with retaining my focus through the race.  It was fairly short at 1 hour 20 but a great course and a great day.

I then scored myself a nice new Spoke t-shirt as a spot prize before coming home to eat (and eat, and eat…) and sit in the sun and read.

So, PNP series for 2007 is wrapped up and it contained it’s usual excellent organisation, brilliant supply of spot prizes, huge variety of terrain and weather, some great competition, introduction to racing for a few lucky people, and now we get to look forward to it again next year.  This was my 3rd year competing in the series and I think probably the most competitive at the pointy end for senior women which has been great.

Coming up next week is the inaugural Wild Wellington 12 hour race on Mt Vic.  The Bicyclettes willl be out for a great day of fun in the sun (fingers crossed…).  The following week it’s 160kms of hard effort on the road around Lake Taupo.  Plenty more racing to come!

Still training on Cracker, I spent Saturday afternoon sorting out a bike to borrow for the race.  Early evening I picked up Celia’s heavenly Cannondale Synapse (in very small size for small people - perfect) then headed out to catch up with some friends and see their new house - it practically backs on to the Tunnel Gully Matterhorn - imagine that before breakfast!

What I didn’t know what that it was a bit of a girls night, so I had Ricky in tow but the boys had made themselves scarce.  Several hours of sober sing star later (!) we fired up some sparklers before heading off to get some rest.

Sunday dawned very wet, a bit windy but not too cold.  I’d been given the option of skipping the race and heading for the dirt instead but I couldn’t face the idea of getting the Blur dirty so we got on to swapping bits between the bikes to get the setup right.

The start was very casual.  We were told we would be led out by a vehicle at 35kph and a hooter would go.  But the car just started moving and everyone followed - no hooter, but we all got away safely.  The car led us to the bottom of the 1st climb up Blue Mountains - a 2.2km twisty climb known to be one of the toughest in the region.  I was pretty happy on it having ridden a PB up it in a session during the week.  The guns all took off and the rest of the field spread out.  At the summit I had no one in front and no one behind so I tried to close a gap and find some people to ride with.  Conditions were pretty miserable with the rain coming down and water flicking up from the road and I was working my way forward when a group of guys including Craig (one of my chat buddies from last weekend) came past so I jumped on.  Eventually we had a fair sized group with Craig and I leading out for the most part.

The circuit went through Whitemans Valley which is a vaguely downhill flat in the direction we were riding it, then north through to Mangaroa which included a roller-coastery section before turning off to ride up and down a small hill (small on the up - bit further down the other side) and join the main road then taking the back roads back to the start finish, all flat.  So all in all a fairly flat course with just Blueys to really test things, and the climb out of Mangaroa another spot to make a charge if you were so inclined and backed yourself on the slippery downhill.  Each lap was 33.3kms.

On the second lap I stayed at the front of the bunch up the climb wanting to stick with them to share the work on the flats.  At the top we found Ricky who had punctured so Craig pulled off to assist him leaving me to deal with the bunch on my own.  Out of about 15 or so people we had 5 or 6 putting in any real effort and the wind was starting to pick up.  For the first time I got some good practice in crosswinds from both directions and finally worked out how to ride them - though it would be a different story in a more competitive bunch but it was useful being up the front for it.

I put a fair bit of work in through the second lap wanting to get something out of the day and the others seemed fairly reluctant to do much with the exception of ‘Doug on the ‘dale’ who unfortunately blew on the 3rd climb and couldn’t come with us.  Going up Blueys for the final time the bunch pretty much blew apart.  I got to the top 2nd and after a couple of minutes had gathered 2 of the guys.  My work in the first 2 laps started to kick in so I let the guys do most of the work coming to the front to do a share when I was feeling good.  By the time we headed up Mangaroa hill for the last time my 2nd bottle cage, which had been working it’s way loose since half way through the first lap, was threatening to disembark from the bike which was mildly disconcerting but I was in no way prepared to stop and do anything about it.

We’d picked up a couple of others on our way through the valley so headed up the climb as a group of 5 and stuck with each other along the back straights heading for home.  About 3kms out, just after Ricky finally came flying past us, a cage bolt worked it’s way completely free and the bottle was tipping almost horizontally making pedalling very difficult.  I always cringe when I see people pedalling knees out and here I was having to do it myself - it’s so uncomfortable!  Very quickly it got so bad I had to make some adjustments and unfortunately in the process of doing so lost the group so I quickly emptied one pocket in to the others and put the bottle (full - dammit!) on my back then put my head down to try and catch up again.  They’d dropped one other as well and he jumped in behind me but I wasn’t able to close the gap before the line.  Legs burning after the shortest time trial in history, I crossed the line in 5th, 5 minutes behind the lead woman and hurled a tongue-in-cheek mouthful of abuse at Ricky about tightening bolts.

Having been in 2 minds about racing at all I was very happy with the day.  I held it together on the climbs really well (will now admit publicly compact cranksets have their place - but it’s limited), did a lot of work on the first 2 laps and finished strong.  The bike was absolutely mint - riding full carbon on the road is such a step up from aluminium so fingers crossed my replacement can be carbon (long story - still working on it!).

There were some real stand out features from this event:  Start/finish was over the road from home so hot showers were readily available.  The lunch - fantastic!  Even better when they don’t take your pass first time up… Really well organised and controlled.  While we had a sizeable bunch we were given a lead vehicle - nice to have something to chase.  And the other riders were really well behaved in terms of saftey keeping left and not taking silly risks - given the conditions and narrow roads this was really important to me.  The domestic season is drawing near and I have no desire to be taken out under silly circumstances.