Paul wins Mitta to Mt Beauty

In what seems to be becoming a fantastic tradition, I'm stoked to bring you another successful race report from rising star Paul Van Der Ploeg, who aboard his RXC Pro has notched up yet another win this season, with a victory in the Mitta to Mt Beauty MTB race. It makes a nice change for regular viewers to see something other than Jack and Ash banging bars each week at the Dirt Crits up here in writing, although Jack smashed around for an awesome 5th place in the handicap last week. 5th for an A grader is exceptional in the handicap races, as Dubba does such a great job that the racing is all about equal, making it very hard to get the upper hand, and with triple points on offer...!

Anyway, Paul wrote up a race report with some photos (which will be up tommorrow night) so relax and have a read, and when you are finished, check out the review of the Felt F1C over at Cyclingnews.com- Ash.

"The Mitta to Mount Beauty is a 55km mountain bike race. The race starts in the Mitta valley on bitumen and then climbs over Trappers gap on winding dirt road, it then shoots down the hill and into the Kiewa valley, finishing up with a 20km road slog. The race has 840m of vertical climbing and 740m of descending. This year there was 150 riders, some serious and some out for a bit of fun.

The race started at the golf course, on a big open grass field then channels into a small farm gate wide opening, we rolled out onto the road, with a big guy leading the pack, my brother Neil in second wheel and I was third. It was around 5km of bitumen road then onto the dirt, Neil and I were doing most of the work but generally the pace wasn’t that fast. Into the first climb the pack quickly was broken up into a group of around five. I was riding on the front, until I stepped it up a gear and rode off the front leaving the others to chase. In hope that Neil was going to work me back I just maintained speed until the first shorter downhill where I opened it up. There were two climbs, one around 20min and the other 30min. So I tried to open the lead on the first descent with the Hutchinson Piranhas pumped up to 50psi, it was a rough one.

Into the next climb I was feeling good and could no longer see the chasing riders, this climb being a little longer needed a bit of pacing so I had some legs left for the 20km road section that was awaiting me. Over the top still feeling good, into a screaming dirt road decent, with the lead moto in front I was getting sick of eating its dust. Finally onto the road and pushing the pedals as hard as I could to maintain speed over the rolling hills. The final climb of the day is called Chookies hill which last year I suffered major cramping. Not this year, I kept it in the big dog and used any energy left to push it over the top. Coming down into Mt. Beauty I was running on empty but pushed it to the line.

Finishing in a time of 1:52:33 I was four minutes off the record time set by Garth Hennessy back in 2000. My time was also 26 and a half minutes quicker then last time I did it. It really just showed me how much I’ve improved over the last 12 months."

-Paul.