I rode in my first competitive mountain bike race today (Sunday 12th). I entered in the Sprung 2hr Super Sprint Series – Round 2 for my first racing try out. You complete as many laps of the 7.2km course as you can in 2 hours. Any laps started before the 2 hours ends are counted and you must cross the line after 2 hours has elapsed to be placed. Sharon is planning to try one of the shorter twilight series races next week for something a tad easier.

Sharon and Emily left an hour before we did to see how far they could ride out before we picked them up. I left home an hour latter and picked Maurice up along the way. Sharon got 25km from home at White Hills before we picked her up and put her bike in the back and continued out to Ben Lomond. Emily had to ride back to town solo from here.

After registration where I got number 67 we went for a warm-up ride before the race breifing. The race start was interesting being mid pack and a big climb straight up sorted everybody out. I managed to latch onto some one I knew for the first lap as there was a section of the course I had not ridden before and followed them through the first time. Sharon and Paul yelled some encouragement as I went through the transition each time. A lot of the course was very technical and lots of sharp turns followed by plenty of hills. Only a couple of minor offs for the whole race.

I managed to push out 4 laps coming in 18th in my age category (40-49) and 35th overall out of 70 riders, not to bad for ‘the old guy’ in his first race! Maurice was 5 minutes ahead of me in 14th place in our age category. My Strava GPS log of the race showed 31.2km and 1,106m of climbing. The top guys did 5 laps and I got passed by a few riders on the last lap at various stages. It was very dusty and my throat got full of dust all the time.

You can find the results here for overall and here for laps / age groups or link to them here. Looking forward to the next one in a few weeks time at Penguin mountain bike park that Sharon and I have visited before and had heaps of fun, well I had heaps of fun and Sharon had ‘some fun’ till she crashed.

I even one a spot prize (thanks to Ian at Sprung) and covered my entry for the day plus some.

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