Christina and Aust-NZ Vet winner Dianne Michels have also entered the Australian MTBO Champs to be held near Canberra on 29-30th Nov.
Great fun, although a tad on the scary side.
The weather was beautiful on the start line and really warm so we all started in the thin bike shirts and shorts, didnt bother carrying jackets and things. Saw one guy in a sleeveless top even. Brrrr... Half way around the course the clouds rolled in, torrential rain, pelting hail, thunder and lightning like gun shots right next to my head and the course turned into a river!! It was great fun and quite an adventure until I got cold beyond saving on the hill climbs. Started making forgivable mistakes then because my brain was too busy trying to pretend I was warm!!
Not much route choice at the beginning, but a couple of really good legs that made me work. I have scanned in the Course Two map. (Download 550kb PDF file.) Course One is on the Australian MTBO website with Anthony Darr's winning line on it. (It's a dynamic display with a moving line and comments - worth a visit.) He had a locater on his back so they were able to trace his course over the map. Must remember though that Anthony rode the whole course in the sunshine. He was one of the organisers so left at 7.30am to ride. He had it fast all the way round while the rest of us had to push water and mud out of the way on the end of the front end loader bucket!!
Hoping to increase my skill level to make me more competitive. I was just under 10 minutes off the pace but did not go out to ride hard. Just didnt want to make any map mistakes. Ended up with a few of those as well, but on the whole I felt relaxed and made what I thought were reasonable decisions.