2009 South Island XC Cup - Round 1

The first round of the South Island XC Cup series was held in Dunedin yesterday, and acted as a kind of homecoming of sorts. It was held in conjunction with the Otago Peninsula Challenge, a 43km point to point race on the Otago Peninsula in it's third year running. In it's first year, the race was run in the opposite direction (from north to south), and Scotty and I tail-end charlied for the first 20km of the course. We even had time to take photos back then!


The Otago Peninsula also has a bit of sentimental importance to us - after we tail-end charlied the event in 2007, we were driving back into town on the peninsula and spotted the Pukehiki church up there and decided that was where we wanted to get married..


.. and we also got some wedding photos taken up on the peninsula. So yeah, we like it up there!


But enough background stuff. Let's get on with the race report!

The race started with all the South Island Cup riders together in the first wave (68 riders) followed by Otago Peninsula Challenge riders two minutes later. It began with a lap around a dirt track on the perimeter of a horse paddock. Unfortunately, I got a pretty crappy start position to the right of the main track in the grass, and ended up riding along the grass waiting for most of the riders to head past before I could hop on the dirt track. Ooops.

Next, the course headed up a 300-odd metre vertical climb up a 4wd track and I could see the riders ahead of me disappear off into the distance. Towards the top of the climb, the faster guys and girls who started in the wave behind me also began passing me.


On the first descent, I found out exactly how slippery the boardwalks were from the overnight rain - I managed to slide off the edge but luckily managed to somehow tripod my way around almost 360 degrees and regain my balance somewhat! Whew. I took the rest of the downhill somewhat conservatively after that!

No point in describing every part of the 43km course (course map and profile below for those who are interested), but basically it consisted of a lot of grassy paddocks (where we followed the markerposts around), 4wd tracks across private farmland, steep climbs which required some pushing, and a few longer flat gravelled sections around some inlets. But by far, the most memorable factor about the whole course was the wind - a very strong south-westerly which assisted on some uphills and blew me sideways on others. More than once I had to get off my bike as the wind blew me offtrack or into the gravel on downhill corner. It was a bit scary in places to be honest.


How did the race go for me? Well, my legs didn't feel particularly good or warmed up for the first hour or so (even though I did do a 20-odd minute warm-up - obviously not long enough!). They had that slightly dead feeling where they weren't quite pushing as big a gear as I would have liked, but that happens I suppose. I think I'm learning that I'm probably more suited to longer events, because by around the 1.5-2 hour mark, my legs were finally feeling good as I pushed the biggest gear I had around the inlets (the flat sections on the course profile). In fact, that was where I felt the strongest on the whole course - riding on flat gravel roads into a head/cross wind bore a striking similarity to all the road riding I did around Wellington! And although the final few climbs HURT, I managed to stay on my bike and ride up pretty much all of them, while most people around me were pushing. In the last half hour or so, I even managed to pass a few people who had passed me in the first half hour, so that was nice to feel a bit stronger towards the end of the race.


I had set an arbitrary time of 3 hours to complete the course (the fastest woman last year did it in 2:21), and at 2:30, I only had around 6 or 7 or so km to go so I thought I was well on target. However, the last 5 km of the race contained a large amount of uphill. In fact, the "5km to go" and "1km to go" signs were placed conveniently (or not so!) somewhere along the steeper climbs. Urgh! Coming to the "500m to go" sign, I could see a 4wd stretch upwards towards the top of the final hill and thought surely we don't have to go up there?!! Luckily, the climb flattened out and down a very short gravel road to the finish. Phew.

I crossed the line in 3h:03m:10s, so pretty close to the 3 hour target and am relatively happy with that. Second in Senior Women (out of three.. ), and 125th out of all 269 competitors (male and female, including the Elite men and women) who entered the 43km South Island Cup/Otago Peninsula Challenge. While I'm somewhat happy with my mid-pack position overall, it sort of makes me wonder how seriously I should be taking my training - is the effort required to follow a structured programme really worth it for results I'm obtaining?

With that in mind, I think I'll be taking a more relaxed approach to "training" after the South Island Cup series is over. More social rides (both road and MTB) and maybe a bit of gym work over winter. I'm coming to the end of my "season" as such, so I'll be looking for other events to participate in over the autumn/winter months. So far, I'm thinking maybe 12 hour solo at the 12 Hour Naseby Challenge (speaking of which, I'm on the promo poster!)..


.. and maybe a few events in Christchurch also (the South Island Singlespeed Champs and the 2009 Super Double D Cup for instance). There's also a off-road duathlon that I'm pondering too (13km MTB, 7km run) for a big of a change. Come next season, I might even give track cycling a proper go!

The fact that I'm looking forward to the end of serious XC training and racing (for now..) makes me think that I'm making the right decision at this point of things. I mean, I enjoy racing and I love riding my bikes. I'm hoping that a slightly different approach where I'm riding my bikes where/when I feel like it and participating in events that take my fancy won't be too detrimental performance-wise in the long run. I'm probably still at the stage where I'm building up my base fitness (and strength and endurance) since I've come straight into mountainbiking with no prior training in any other sport (well, apart from gymnastics when I was 8-10 years old) so perhaps I'm being a bit unneccesarily harsh on myself in terms of results and expectations at the moment. Also, I'm typing this at 11pm at night, so this blog post is probably a bit more rambly and reflective than usual, so I'll think I'll stop it here and head to bed. Thanks for reading, and tune in next week for my race report for the second round of the South Island XC Cup :)