Lisa Morgan - Kiwi Mountain Biker

I had a few objectives for this race.  It was my first 2pm race, so I wanted to make sure I got my fuelling right.  I had to eat just enough and at the right time.  Too early and I’d feel hungry and underfuelled during the race, too late and, well, I’m sure you can imagine the worst case scenario.  So I’m pleased to report it seems I got it just right.  Second was hydration, particularly in the heat with some of the recent problems I’ve had.  But again I seemed to have it just right (and big thanks to Karen for feeding me too).  Another goal was to complete the race feeling like I’d given it everything, including no crashes and not getting lapped.  Another goal accomplished.  And finally, to achieve a mental state where I retained focus for the whole race - a slowly deflating rear tyre in the last lap and a half affected that slightly, but for the most part I achieved that too.

The start went well.  I hadn’t really known what to expect.  In the past in small fields like that I’ve known I’d take the lead or close to it pretty quickly, but I’m up with the big girls now and every now and then I’d have a thought that I was going to be blown away and left looking like I’d dropped my chain while they all pedalled away in big chain ring half way down the block up a steep climb!  But I managed to hold my own in the start, even getting ahead of Bob (the eventual winner) for about 40 seconds :o)

I’d already dropped to the back by the top of the start climb, but was right on the tail of the group as we hit the first pinch which saw 2 or 3 riders off.  I managed to hold my balance and get in front of Fiona while she was getting back on, but she got past me again soon after.  Up the next short grassy section I fell back again but made up some time on the first downhill and after the short climb to the next downhill was catching again, so of course used the technical sections to my advantage.  By the bottom of slimline I was back on the tail but as it turned up a hairpin there were more offs and that forced me off too.  I got back on and wasn’t able to get back on the train.  I didn’t help my cause by messing up a gear change in to the steep climb, going in to big instead of little!  I abruptly hauled to the right to ride along the hill and let off the tension so I could change down, recovered and kept pushing the pedals up the hill.  Straight after that we were in to the final downhill (Boars Nest).  It was just out of here I injured myself in 2006, but no issues this time.  The final challenge of the lap was the ‘carpety climb’.  In 06 I never got up it, but with Tama, Heather and Chris all egging me on I had no trouble.

I wasn’t too far off the pace and in laps 2, 3 and 4 made up a little bit of time.  Around half way through the 4th lap I noticed something wasn’t feeling right in my rear wheel and soon noticed I was losing pressure.  Well, I thought, the terrain isn’t too bad so I shouldn’t pinch flat and lower pressure will be good on the climbs (let’s not worry that I started with very low pressure because of the climbs anyway!).  In the 4th lap it really wasn’t a problem, and I had a really good lap.  In lap 3 I’d really started to feel it in the legs with a bit of jelly-leg feel and some good pain, and in lap 4 the pain was intense - it spurred me on to push harder and keep that pain on because as we all know, pain is your friend!

Heading in to lap 5 it was obvious I really didn’t have enough tyre pressure so I was careful to unweight the back of the bike when rolling over anything.  I could feel the rim every now and then (and I’m running light weight tubes) and it was starting to roll out on me around corners and anything that hit the side wall.  I was still riding well.  I was knackered and felt like I’d blown my legs apart, but that’s exactly what I wanted.  There were 3 pinch climbs that I thought had the potential to take me out as fatigue set in, but I rode all 3 in all 5 laps.  Unfortunately with the tyre so deflated I was off on a couple of other pinches in the final climb and I probably lost a total of about 2 minutes to that problem.

I cross the line in 2.17.  Last place, but I was elated.  I’d completed my first elite race!  I could ride expert and be winning races, or I could really test and push myself up here in elite, and I have no regrets about my decision.  It’s not about winning or losing, it’s about riding to the best of my ability.  I’ve always wanted to be able to respect myself after crossing the line, and I definitely could with this race.

Friday:

Good morning Christchurch! A pity I couldn’t be welcomed with better weather… after leaving the 30+ temperatures in the Hutt yesterday I was subjected to slightly cooler conditions in Wellington thanks to the blustery wind. By the time we landed on the mainland it was 15 degrees thanks to a southerly. It’s still rather cool this morning and it’s all wet!

No doubt the course could use the moisture so that’s all good. It seems like every time I ride the Blur lately it gets filthy. Fortunately I’ve found an amazing product that gets ano-black looking like new again - Pedros bike lust. It smells really nice too.

I’ll be putting the bike together soon, having some lunch then heading out to the course for a few laps.

I’m staying with Michelle and Slim - the place is great (even though I still don’t really know where I am) and the facilities in the garage are superb. I’ve been left with 2 maps and written directions for getting out of town so with any luck I won’t get too lost.

Saturday:

Well it turned out the rain had barely hit out on the course. The dirt is bone dry and the only evidence of any wet stuff was droplets on the grass, which I kept thinking was from the overnight dew until I remembered it was 3 o’clock in the afternoon (it’s all so different!).

The course is super demanding. I’m hoping that the grass sections will bed down somewhat today with people riding the course because they were nasty yesterday - like riding with the brakes on (brakes are bedded in and mint Scotty).

It’s still an awesome course though. Having never ridden multiple laps at race pace I’m hoping not to get tripped up on a lot of the sections that could get nasty with fatigue setting in - and that’s just on the climbs! Tight climbing switchbacks, steep pinches. I’m comfortable with the down hills and hoping to get a bit more flow on today. I really do notice the need to settle in, get my eye in and start to feel the flow over a couple of days on the dirt these days. But it’s all changing around now anyway - most days on the dirt.

The story behind this one is that 2 years ago I entered my first national series and Christchurch was my first race of the season.  We were racing on the Vulcaniser, just over an hour north of Chch, and I had a couple of practice days on the course and was loving it - techy singletrack in the forest, tricky steep climbs, stunning views from the top if you had the time to look up.  But on race day I didn’t even get through my first lap.  Just before the last climb I was hammering though an open section when my back wheel slipped off the track.  After recovering it my front wheel went and after that it was all over.  I hit the very hard dirt taking the fall mostly with my head and sternum getting some great, visible grazing down my face and sternum and giving myself a decent concussion plus damaging the joint between clavicle and sternum.

The result was no more racing.  I had concussion symptoms for 3 months even with treatment, and it took a while for the rest of the pain to subside as well.  So I didn’t race any more of the series that year, but I’d planned all the travel and accommodation so at least I got to go and support and see what it was all about.

I was gutted when there was no Chch round in 2007 as I’ve been waiting for a chance to get back down there and race on the course properly.  So even though it’s not a points round for me as I haven’t done the other two SI Cup rounds, I’m looking forward to returning to the scene of the crime and putting things right.  Makes the first objective a pretty easy one - get through the first lap!  Then I’ll focus on the rest.

I’ve been pretty busy in the last week and a bit.  The weather forced the Capitelles ride last Monday to be cancelled, so I went and got myself a kitten that I’ve called Tempo.  She’s a little grey tabby with a touch of ginger - very cool colourings - circles on her sides, spots on her little kitten belly, and egyption eye make up stripes around her eyes.  It even prompted me to finally get the camera back out - pics here.

Of course Mum and Dad were away with Sara (the Sheltie) when I got Tempo so we’ve had some fun in the last couple of days getting the two animals acquainted.  They’re doing so well.  Sa gets a bit barky sometimes (it’s the breed) but she’s been clever enough to back off when there’s a hint of a kitty hiss so her nose (which is rather long and pointy) is still intact at this stage.  Should be able to get some pics of the 2 of them together soon.

It’s been pretty nice having the luxury of training in the afternoons close to event time to try and prepare my body for the 2pm racing.  We’ve had some good weather and some not so good weather - today’s a pretty good one.  I’ll be heading out soon for my last ride before it’s all race related.

For someone who has been operating at what feels like a million miles an hour for so long it’s been nice having a break, a chance to relax and regroup and think about what other oppotunities are out there that I didn’t have time to think about before.

So, training continues as per normal - wicked hard on the hard days, smelling the roses on the easy days - and the rest of my time will be spent job hunting and making the final decision on some study this year as well.

Last summer was hot too, but my races were all done in an hour and a half so it’s fair to say I’ve never really been tested in the heat.  It’s better to find out now so we can start planning for fuelling/feeding/hydration when the key races kick in.

During pre-race on Saturday conditions were really warm and muggy.  It had also rained over night so the trails were greasy and not riding anything like they do in the dry.  I spent an hour just playing around doing little bits of the course here and there to get my eye in.  The main changes I was hoping for was a drop in humidity, and dry trails if it didn’t rain over night again.  Thankfully a sea breeze rolled in later in the afternoon which thinned the air out a bit and on Sunday morning the clouds had lifted.  Humidity and asthma don’t play well together.  It hadn’t rained either, and a quick reccy of the first part of the course for a warm up revealed nice dry trails.  Wicked!

A whole lot of the usual suspects were in the Bay for the race, in open women that included Nina, Michelle and Nik Leary.  Sonia Hill was there too, KC made the trip up and Hayley Robertson dusted off her riding shoes, Rose Johnstone capped off the line up.

We had a mass start for the 40k’er (which I joined in on this week!) which kicked up a huge cloud of dust until we got around the first bend and the field started to spread out.  I quickly hopped on Michelle’s wheel and stayed just on it in to and through the first section of singletrack.  That popped us out on to a gravel road climb where Nik passed me and I followed her and Michelle to the summit - the climb wasn’t steep, but was fairly long and energy sapping.  After the grassy ridgeline we went in to a track called ‘ledge’ - appropriately named as it was pretty narrow (this coming from someone who thinks Makara is plenty wide for passing…) and had a drop off on the side.  Following that was a fence climb and switch-backy downhill in to another short, gentle climb before Dam Canyon - a nice downhill that we’d ridden on Saturday.  It was flowing much better in the dry and had some cool little steep drops that were a bit like what you see from the top of a climb on a rollercoaster right until you start going over - way fun :o)

Following that we went in to what I felt was the toughest part of the course with climbs just long enough to take it out of you and not quite enough recovery time.  It was also really hot. This was followed by some flat track, which is definitely not a strength of mine.  On the brakes, off the brakes, shift up, shift back down, eyes open to see where the twisty track would go next… we came out of that and in to a steep climb (’Wahoo’) where I saw I was within 30-50m of Michelle and Nik who were still going wheel to wheel.  The climb was tough and some were walking parts of it but I like to back my climbing so gutsed it out before entering a nice downhill (’Switchback’) which we rode as an uphill last year - much more fun down!

This section dropped us out in to a marshal and first aid point - I didn’t hear about any major problems so hopefully they had a quiet day.  We then had a short flat road section before a short but technical climb.  I picked the wrong line and had to jump off, run a few steps up and jump back on.  The course was mostly undulating from here to the end of the lap so I was focusing on maintaining a good pace, climbing well and staying smooth on the downhill sections to retain as much momentum as possible.  There had been one guy riding either just ahead or just behind me since the long gravel climb and he’d been behind me for a long time but as we crossed in to lap 2 I eased off up the climb a little and he got past me.  I found some more energy when I caught site of Nik and Michelle again and worked my way through the singletrack.  I felt myself fading up the gravel but again saw Nik near the top but when I tried to pull something more out for the grassy ridgeline I couldn’t find the power to get any real pace. 

I was flying on the downhills by now, but losing valuable time on the climbs.  The tough section out the back felt even harder this time around.  By around 2 1/2 hours I was really feeling the heat.  I’d chosen to wear a camelback given the heat and length of the race but I was just craving water and felt reluctant to keep drinking the juice even though I knew I needed to stay hydrated - I just felt all sugared out in the heat.  After the Wahoo climb and Switchback downhill I was pretty well cooked.  I attempted the better line in the short, sharp section again but was out of gas to get up it.  After that, I felt like I was pretty much just trying to keep moving forward to get across the line to get to some water.  I lost 15 minutes on the 2nd lap, probably most of it in the second half of it, and crossed the line in 4th (Sonia had DNF’ed, Nina took the win by a few minutes over Michelle with Nik close behind) in 3 hours 7 minutes - long race eh?.

It’s funny because one minute I feel like the season is right around the corner (complete with thoughts of ‘but I’m not ready yet!’) and the next it seems like it’s never going to arrive (complete with thoughts of ‘but I’m amped now!’).  It’s different this season with the revised format of ‘nationals’.  The split in to two Island Cups has meant the races are more spread out than in the past so all the competitors are having to decide which races they’re going to do.  The obvious choice for me is the North Island Cup and it’s handy to have it followed immediately by National Champs, here at home on Mt Vic.  

The summer schedule looks like this:

16 December - Mid North Island Champs final - Napier: 2 laps of a 21km course in Eskdale Forest
28-30 December - Tour de Femme - Nelson: 3 day, 5 stage tour including Takaka hill climb TT, circuit race, road race, 14km ITT, second road race on day 3 to finish
20 January - SI Cup 3 - Waipara: 5 laps of one of NZ’s finest XC loop courses (where I have unfinished business)
27 January - NI Cup 1 - Opotiki: 2 laps of a 20km course - pre-ride is unlikely…
2 February - NI Cup 2 - Rotorua: similar course to round 4 in 2007 - Vegas single track…
10 February - NI Cup 3 and final - Palmerston North: K-loop action returns to nationals racing.
16 February - National Champs - at home on Mt Vic.
1 March - Karapoti (sub-3?)
15 March - Oceanias - Nelson. Selection is based on national champs - my goal for the season is to qualify for the NZ team.

What I can tell you is that I just managed to achieve the goal I set for myself of coming in under 5 hours, taking exactly 1 hour off my previous effort mangaging 4hrs 53minutes.  Conditions were pretty near perfect and all in all things went well.  The fuelling strategy worked well but I learnt some lessons, the first of which is that 2 bottles on the seat adds a very noticeable amount of weight, particularly when the race goes up hill for the first 5 kms.  I had an awful start and I think that may have been a factor.  So I spent a lot of the first hour trying to empty bottle number 1 (I was carrying 3) just to get the weight off the bike but still not run out of juice before meeting the feeder around the 130km mark.

Turns out I needn’t have worried as I threw out a full bottle to collect my new one (less in it but different mixture for the finish).  Next time, 2 on the bike!

So I spent the first 30-odd minutes getting passed by wave after wave of riders and trying to keep my spirits up.  Eventually a group came by and they must have had my legs with them because once I jumped on I stayed with them, cresting most of the climbs first, through to Kuratau which split things up.  I then found myself in a growing bunch heading for Hatepe, started out well but lost it after a couple of minutes and unfortunately couldn’t regain the bunch after the top.  But the legs felt good and I was able to push on through on my own to the finish for the last few k’s. 

Fast forward another week to Saturday’s race in Rotorua, round 3 of the Mid North Island Champs.  I didn’t do the first 2 rounds and am not contesting the series, but any excuse to race in the Redwoods… especially when it’s multi-lap format!

Last week I invested in a roof box for the car, something I’ve been wanting for a long time.  You can pack a lot in to a Commodore, but it’s nice when the passengers aren’t buried in luggage and gear.  Turned out it was just in time as we would have had to apply some major tetris talent to fit all the gear in otherwise!  On that note, I’d like to say a big thanks to Gary at Autostripes in Wellington for always looking after my roof/bike/rack/box needs at short notice.

We had 4 in the car for this trip - me, Gav, Jen (catching the race bug) and token Aussie Mark who was racing the downhill on Sunday.

So, boot and box full to the brim but plenty of room to move inside, we drove up to Vegas on Friday morning in time to go for a lap of the course in the afternoon and enjoy the thunder and lightening storm that passed over just to the west.

Saturday was race day and start time was an uncharacteristic 11am.  By that time a week previously I was half way around Lake Taupo!  So it may come as a shock that I have to admit that I missed the start!  Yes, again!!!  I was heading back down Longmile Road finishing my warm up when I noticed a distinct absence of people lining up on a start line.  Oooooh crap (yet according to my watch - 6 minutes fast by the way - I still had a couple of minutes… who knows?).  So I ditched my warm up bottle as I sprinted past the start and let them know I was joining the race.  A lot of the faces lining the road looked shocked, confused, surprised, even sympathetic (must have thought I’d had a mechanical). 

There’s nothing like knowing your competition are all up ahead to really get the focus dialled.  Basically I had 4 laps to catch as many people as possible, on a course similar in hurt level to the nationals course back in February.  Keep the hammer down and you’ll make time, let off for just a moment and you’ll be going backwards.  The course was really fantastic - fully rideable by all abilities but hard work if you wanted to take it fast.  It included a couple of sections I’d never raced before - one I hadn’t ridden before, and they were so much fun!

For the first couple of laps I was picking riders off regularly and getting my lines dialled.  By the 3rd lap I was flying and had worked my way up to 3rd place.  I’d passed junior girl Jesse Loe on the downhill at the end of the 2nd lap and she’d got right back on my tail by the bottom of the climb on lap 3.  She stuck to me like glue right up to a little pinch at the end of the first piece of singletrack - I held her off, but until that point I could not shake her.  It’s good to see some juniors improving so well.  She must have flown down exit trail!

By half way around the 4th and final lap I was really feeling the hurt on the climbs but felt I had my flow on in the down hills.  I haven’t had much time on the dirt this year so I’m not on it yet but there’s no doubt it’ll come back.

I finished up holding on to 3rd place a few minutes back from 2nd - too many for the late start to have made a difference.

The race was fantastic - well organised, great competition, a great course, and more great weather.  Thanks to the club for putting it on (and thanks for making a spectacle of me at prize giving - not!).

I’ve just completed 8 races in 8 weeks, so while I could go for 10 in a row, I’ve decided to take next weekend off (off racing, not training) so won’t be competing at the Makara Peak rally.  But you can be sure I’ll be there in some capacity.  Probably arriving on a wrong looking bike…  My final two races for the year are the final round of the mid north island champs in Napier, and then the Tour de Femme in Nelson between Christmas and New Year.

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!