As part of my cunning ploy to keep riding over winter, we decided to head two and a half hours down south to check out the riding in Invercargill and enter Round 2 of the Southland MTB Club’s Winter XC Series out at Sandy Point.
I’m not quite what I was expecting but the weekend didn’t really live up to my expectations. We arrived in Invercargill, hungry, at almost 2pm on Saturday afternoon and set about finding some place for lunch. We ended up in a nearly empty café on the main street and waited half an hour for them to cook Scotty up a small bowl of wedges, while I ate my slightly under-baked savoury muffin. Hmmm not a good start. We then drove out to find our holiday park, which we have since found out is under new ownership. The new owners had done a fairly good job of doing up the inside of our “tourist flat” but the exterior of the buildings definitely needed a make-over. It’ll be interesting to see what it looks like in a year’s time when some more work has been done on the place.
We got changed and headed out to Sandy Point. We had a map printed out from the Southland MTB Club’s website, and for that I was grateful, because there were so many trails fitted into such relatively small area. We rode around for just under an hour, and covered tracks 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5 (the yellow arrows) and 14, 13, 16, 12, and 8 (the blue arrows). This gave us a wee bit of a feel for the tracks, and unfortunately for me, I just wasn’t getting enough “flow” through the tracks to enjoy them. They were on fairly flat terrain, with tree roots criss-crossing and corners galore. I’d lose my momentum going around a corner on tree roots, then have to keep pedalling around and around and around. It was a bit reminiscent of some of the easier “core” trails up in Rotorua that just wound round and around a small area and felt like they’d never end. A nice network of trails to ride at a leisurely pace, but were going to hurt at “race pace” because there were no downhills for recovery.
After a somewhat interrupted sleep on Saturday night (I could hear the guy snoring in the tourist flat next door..), we woke up to a very chilly Invercargill morning. I rugged up warm, put on my ice-breaker merino socks, and headed out to Sandy Point for the race. Looks like the cold didn’t put off the locals who arrived in numbers to race, with over 100 riders on the start line! I’d opted to do the “Expert”/three lap option, and Scotty did the more sensible “Sport”/2 lap option (albeit on his rigid 29er singlespeed). Us “three-lappers” headed out first, and it was all on.
In hindsight, I should have probably worn a vest or at least gone for a decent warm-up ride, because I didn’t warm up throughout my three laps. The legs felt a little bit on the dead side, and my feet were still numb from the cold at the end of the race. The race itself was really nothing to write home about. The course covered a few of the trails we’d ridden the day before as well as a few new ones. After this race, I’m a strong believer in “home-track advantage” (my podium placing in the final round of the PNP MTB Series at Makara Peak was my first encounter with the advantages of knowing tracks like the back of your hand). The locals knew where to accelerate, brake, cruise, etc, while I felt like I was left behind, fumbling around corners and not knowing what to expect or what lines to take. I rode a lot better when I was following someone around the trails, but it didn’t take them long to get too far ahead of me for me to catch them. I arrived at the finish line as they were packing up the course tape and beginning prize-giving. Sigh.
I was somewhat surprised to see my heart rate stats afterwards – an average heart rate of 189 bpm (max: 194). Just goes to show how high you can keep your heart rate up when there’s no chance for recovery! So although it felt like I was cruising in places, I must’ve put some effort out there. An hour and thirty something minutes of constant pedalling will do that you I suppose!
The Southland MTB Club is holding an 8 hour race in a couple of weekend’s time. I had originally planned on riding it solo but after this weekend, have decided I’d much rather ride in a team so will be hopefully teaming up with Scotty and a couple of friends. If we do head up to do the rest of the series, I think I’ll take the single-speed (it was a course very much suited for single-speeding) and opt for the 2 lap option since Scotty had a great time on his. We’ll definitely find a different place to stay though. I’m thinking the Ascot Park Hotel might be a tad nicer.
No comments:
Post a Comment