S.H.I.T.S Successfully Defended
Apologies for the lateness of this little write up, hopefully you can forgive us.
So the Beechworth Six Hours In The Saddle enduro was run on the weekend in the awesome Beechworth MTB park. Felt Racing sent two teams of two into battle with the hope of defending last years 1, 2 result in the same category. With Felt City set up, including a full rack of test bikes set up out the front, it was time to focus on the race. A quick warm up on some of the winding single track near the start finish area reminded me, and I'm sure anyone else doing the same, just how much fun can be had on a MTB at this race.
Due to a flat battery in a bus being used to shuttle people from the car park the race start was pushed back half an hour to 11:00pm for a 5:00pm finish, luckily daylight savings was yet to finish so we would still have plenty of light to fight for the finish. As 11:00 approached it was time to get ready for the start. The start was supposed to be a sprint up 1 to 2km of fire road climbing before starting the course proper. Somehow this idea wasn't relayed to one of the marshals who accidentally sent the whole field onto the second half of the course so that by the time we reached transition we had already done half a lap! So before the race even started there was quite a lot of hurt in the legs already.
At the end of the first one and a half laps Felt Racing 1 was in 2nd place behind the Torq team with Specialized and Felt Racing 2 not far behind. Rohin "Ginger" Adams from the Specialized team lit up the course to jump from 3rd to 1st which left Felt Racing 1 to battle Torq for 2nd place for most of the day. As the day wore on Specialized held a fairly constant lead while Felt Racing 1 was able to settle into 2nd place while Felt Racing 2 closed the gap to the 3rd placed Torq team. It was late in teh race when things started to get interesting, I was able to catch, and put time into Big George from Specialized with about 2 hours to go to give Felt Racing 1 the lead, and Felt Racing 2 was closing fast on the Torq team and was able to catch them and set their sights on the boys in pink. In the dying stages of the race Scott had a flat tire but was able to fix it fast enough to send me out on the last lap still in the lead. At the same time things where heating up in the race for 2nd place. At the start of the last lap the time gap between 2nd and 3rd was down to about 20 seconds, so it was down to Ginger Adams and the unphotographable Doogs to see what they could do. Both suffered cramping on this final lap with Mark coming off second best and finished up just behind in 3rd place.
At the end of the day it was a 1st and 3rd place for Felt Racing.
For those of you out there that haven't been up to Beechworth yet to go riding you really are missing out. The Beechworth MTB park has some great single track which will cater for almost all riders and the Beechworth Chain Gang always put on great events including the Gravity 12 hour later in the year.
The course used this year was pretty much the same as past years with the addition of a new section of single track which had a mix of super fast single track, rock gardens, rock drops, tight switch backs and a nasty tree which seemed to be missing quite a lot of bark by the end of the day, I've still got some sore bits because of it as I'm sure plenty of others do too. The course had its fair share of climbing but the single track the rocks were the perfect environment for our Virtue Team bikes. There was plenty of rock gardens that could be ridden slowly by picking a nice smooth line, or you could just ride straight over everything which is what I found myself doing quite comfortably, knowing I had 130mm of travel to play with. They really were great bikes of the course.
There should be some photos available in the next couple of days so check back then for a little bit more visual stimulation if you're that way inclined.
Next up on the Enduro calendar is the You Yangs 6 hour, and if last year is anything to go by this should be another race not to be missed.
So the Beechworth Six Hours In The Saddle enduro was run on the weekend in the awesome Beechworth MTB park. Felt Racing sent two teams of two into battle with the hope of defending last years 1, 2 result in the same category. With Felt City set up, including a full rack of test bikes set up out the front, it was time to focus on the race. A quick warm up on some of the winding single track near the start finish area reminded me, and I'm sure anyone else doing the same, just how much fun can be had on a MTB at this race.
Due to a flat battery in a bus being used to shuttle people from the car park the race start was pushed back half an hour to 11:00pm for a 5:00pm finish, luckily daylight savings was yet to finish so we would still have plenty of light to fight for the finish. As 11:00 approached it was time to get ready for the start. The start was supposed to be a sprint up 1 to 2km of fire road climbing before starting the course proper. Somehow this idea wasn't relayed to one of the marshals who accidentally sent the whole field onto the second half of the course so that by the time we reached transition we had already done half a lap! So before the race even started there was quite a lot of hurt in the legs already.
At the end of the first one and a half laps Felt Racing 1 was in 2nd place behind the Torq team with Specialized and Felt Racing 2 not far behind. Rohin "Ginger" Adams from the Specialized team lit up the course to jump from 3rd to 1st which left Felt Racing 1 to battle Torq for 2nd place for most of the day. As the day wore on Specialized held a fairly constant lead while Felt Racing 1 was able to settle into 2nd place while Felt Racing 2 closed the gap to the 3rd placed Torq team. It was late in teh race when things started to get interesting, I was able to catch, and put time into Big George from Specialized with about 2 hours to go to give Felt Racing 1 the lead, and Felt Racing 2 was closing fast on the Torq team and was able to catch them and set their sights on the boys in pink. In the dying stages of the race Scott had a flat tire but was able to fix it fast enough to send me out on the last lap still in the lead. At the same time things where heating up in the race for 2nd place. At the start of the last lap the time gap between 2nd and 3rd was down to about 20 seconds, so it was down to Ginger Adams and the unphotographable Doogs to see what they could do. Both suffered cramping on this final lap with Mark coming off second best and finished up just behind in 3rd place.
At the end of the day it was a 1st and 3rd place for Felt Racing.
For those of you out there that haven't been up to Beechworth yet to go riding you really are missing out. The Beechworth MTB park has some great single track which will cater for almost all riders and the Beechworth Chain Gang always put on great events including the Gravity 12 hour later in the year.
The course used this year was pretty much the same as past years with the addition of a new section of single track which had a mix of super fast single track, rock gardens, rock drops, tight switch backs and a nasty tree which seemed to be missing quite a lot of bark by the end of the day, I've still got some sore bits because of it as I'm sure plenty of others do too. The course had its fair share of climbing but the single track the rocks were the perfect environment for our Virtue Team bikes. There was plenty of rock gardens that could be ridden slowly by picking a nice smooth line, or you could just ride straight over everything which is what I found myself doing quite comfortably, knowing I had 130mm of travel to play with. They really were great bikes of the course.
There should be some photos available in the next couple of days so check back then for a little bit more visual stimulation if you're that way inclined.
Next up on the Enduro calendar is the You Yangs 6 hour, and if last year is anything to go by this should be another race not to be missed.
posted by Jack Lamshed at 5:52 pm
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home