Rockhop 09

The date: 23^rd June

The venue: Upper Beaconsfield

The length: 6 hours

The Felt Sram contingent: Team one: Paul vdP and Jason J

Team two: Scott L and Neil vdP

Team three (slightly more casual): Nic Eagle and James M

Support team: Gerald and Rich

Most popular bike of choice: Virtue team

And so the scene is set for another day of mountain bike action. Going into the race we suspected that the orange fellas of the torque team could be real contenders in the male pairs’ category, but we were wrong. They had the leg power, but decided to use it against each other entering three teams in the mixed pairs’ category. After lap one in the male pairs’ it was felt in first and second positions with total rush in third. Perfect! However at some point near around midway through the race both felt teams pulled out a double lap, meanwhile total rush capitalized on the opportunity and ran singles. While we were starting to slow down total rush seemed to be speeding up, chopping down the time gaps to both felt teams. While Jason, who has come out of retirement for this race, headed out for his double the gap to total rush was getting a little anorexic. Somewhere out on the course Jason was overcome by one of the pink jerseys and from then it was a matter of holding third place, sub-optimal but only just.

And so the race was on for first! Scott and I had about a 4 minute lead with aroun an hour and a half to go but the gap was consistently coming down. We needed to rally ourselves and with the help of a few cans of coke we succeeded, in the end even adding to our lead. Good job Scotty!

And so there you have it! A strong field of women and particularly men riders which is clearly evident in the fastest lap time sheets. Tight racing on a tight course with plenty of hills to test the fitness out. Challenging but worthwhile, singletrack almost all the way around. A big thanks to Gerald and Rich for the team support, Jason Jackson for coming out of retirement to help out and finally team sponsors Felt, Sram, Panaracer, Echowell bike computers, Fulcrum wheels and Night Lightning.

*NOTE* Photos of event are to follow. the uploading is not working from this computer.