Well the BlueDragon is done and dusted and we came out the other end in various states of ‘wellness’. Things got off to a hectic start on Wednesday night when I got the camper back on the truck and tested if our cheap bike rack I purchased was going to do the job, not sure what the plan was if it didn’t work! Thursday morning @ 6AM we did a test run with the bikes on the back and zipped up to Trevallyn for a quick ride around and systems check. Luckily it all worked OK and we were set in the transport department.

Thursday my second partner for the event pulled out with a bad knee from WildSide that did not heal and I thought I would be doing it solo. I had kept the details of a guy who came up to me at WildSide and was looking for a partner so sent him a message in the vain hope he had not found one. To my amazement he was stoked to get my SMS as he had been through several partners and been let down by others. By the afternoon and a few SMS we were a team and off to BlueDragon.

Friday night when panic really set in getting all our spares and kit together along with the required nutrition and re-hydration supplies for a couple of long days in the saddle. We had to miss a photography event on Friday night as we ran out of time getting everything ready. I told John (my latest partner) we would be meeting Leanne (Sharon’s 3rd partner) at Hoblers about 6:45 to drive down to Derby. Some how we turned up around 6:30AM and completely forgot about John chatting away and left for Derby without him.

Half way through the pass before Scottsdale an SMS popped up in a brief bit of coverage “John here at Hoblers where are you?”, oops. Luckily John has the sense to continue on and when we got back into coverage a ‘sorry’ SMS got through and we all met up at Derby well before the event start. Once we introduced ourselves and had a chat we got all the bikes prepared and all our water bottles in the transit boxes for the food stops on day 1. John explained to me his 3-2-1 system when riding in pairs, 1=doing it easy go faster, 2=in the zone, 3=slow down. This system works great on the bikes  and easy to yell to each other.

John was on his 3rd or 4th Dragon and knew what we needed to do to get a good start. The first hill starts at Derby and terminates at the Rattler Hill trig point about 19km away and 750M higher in elevation all in 30 degree heat! This hill is the real killer for the whole event and took us about 1:29 and the girls about 2:23! Just making it to the top of this hill is an achievement as quite a few didn’t or pulled out at the top. John had a bit more in the legs over the last couple of kilometres and a big over the handle bar crash didn’t help me. I got in a sandy rut and my pedal hit the edge jagging the bike side ways and me through the air into a very thorny bush. Sharon got about a dozen thorns out of me that night and all the small ones are still to fester out. I did flatten that bush going through it so that made me feel a bit better!

There were some fun bits after the climb starting with an almost vertical loose rocky decent and then into so sweet single track and downhill followed my more hills and even more hills. “Ben and Timmys Goat Track” was my next failure crashing 3 times on this very technical section. They were all small off’s but laying on the ground for the 3rd time Ross rode past and said “is that you laying down there Colin” just to make it worse. Sharon and Leanne walked most of this section. About 15km to go I had really bad cramp in my left foot and lower calf. At the last food station with about 10km to go John’s quads basically gave up in a world of cramp and we had a very slow finish with so many people re-passing us. We still managed to come in 56th in 3:40 out of 147 teams. Unfortunately the girls missed the mandatory cutoff time at the last food station and did not complete the last 12km but still road 40km and were on the bikes for 4:45, a pretty awesome effort in 30 degree heat. Ben said all the times were slower this year because of the extreme heat.

We moved camp to the Weldborough pub camp ground and got setup. I am afraid the meals on offer at the pub were not what hungry mountain bikers wanted so we ate what we had as a backup. After preping 3 bikes and eating what we could to fuel up for tomorrow you could hear a pin drop at about 9PM as everybody crashed. Up nice and early we were ready to race well before the event start but had to sit around and wait. Some cloud cover came in to make the day a bit more pleasant and kept the temperature down a bit for day 2. We convinced the girls they should give it another go and see how they do so they did.

Day 2 starts with a hill climb but nothing on the scale of yesterday then the tracks just get better and better except for the last hill that goes on for a long time, we rode down this hill yesterday. Day 2 is the best day by far but I still managed another over the handle bar episode on a high speed downhill section. This time I escaped without any problems except my pride. Once all the sweet single track was over we hit the last big hill and John’s cramp was coming back again so we had to walk a lot of this section so we could make it back ok. Once we hit the road at the top again it was all downhill to the finish hitting well over 60km/h tearing down the gravel forestry roads to the finish line.

Leanne had to pull out early due to a knee failure but Sharon soldered on to the last feed station where she got some bad advice from the marshals and decided to pull out with about 18km to go with still quite a bit of uphill left. John and I got passed by a lot of people walking on that last hill section but we still managed to come in 59th for the day. Overall we finished 58th for the event with combined times and I was pretty pleased with that in only my second MTB event. John came 84th last year so he improved as well.

I guess we both have unfinished business and will be back next year better and stronger (maybe)!