Auckland MTB XC Chapionship - Race 3

On Sunday November 13, I did race 3 of the Auckland MTB club's XC championship. Unfortunately I didn't do race 1 or 2, so I wont get anywhere in the series, but it seemed like a good fun day out. The race was at Woodhill MTB park which is easily the best MTB park I have ridden in. The surface is sandy - so a little rain is nice - and the tracks are 90% single track and technical as they twist around the trees. My embarrasing results are here...

Here are some photos that Yoshiko took.

What's the last one? That green bike? Well, I finally bit the bullet and bought a new bike. It's a Specialized Epic Comp - though this particular bike was built for a tradeshow (to show the new 2006 lineup) so it's not exactly the same as what you can buy in the shops. In fact, it hasn't even got a serial number - so I hope no-one steals it! It has Fox F100RL forks, and a Brain Lite on the back. The group set is a strange mix of LX (shifters, cranks), XT (disk brakes, front mech) , and XTR (rear mech). The colour is GREEN (in case you didn't notice...)

Rodney Coast Challenge

I did the Rodney Coast Challenge last weekend, but I forgot to take a camera so I can't show you what it looked like.

It was a short multisport event with 10km run, 30 km road bike, 24 km MTB, and 8km paddle. The run and MTB were on gravel roads (so not that challenging or interesting) and the paddle was on the totally flat Puhoi river. The road bike was probably the most fun of the event, with reasonably flat roads (except for a BIG hill at the end) and a gentle tail wind. The speeds were really high, and I greatly enjoyed my new aerobars.

Results: I ended up 11th in the open men division in a time of 3:49:20 - which I was pretty pleased with. One of the guys I paddle with - James Peacock - got 3rd - which was an awesome result.

I can't wait until next year! :-)