VES Round 4: Blores Hill

Blores Hill is rad. I knew this in advance thanks to a sneaky tour a week out with a good mate Craig. The trails are fast and flowy but with plenty of technical sections; a perfect balance. The new descent in particular (not included in the race) is an absolute cracker. To top it off they drain incredibly well and track maintenance is A1. Go #VESMTB and Gippsland MTB!

A photo posted by Chris Burke (@burkesmtb) on Jul 23, 2016 at 2:20am PDT

Slapping on the layers, 'realfeel' of minus 3 according to the BOM

Me and Chris's race strategy was simple this round: keep the tyres inflated and go fast. With that decided I almost missed the start, rolling around chatting with Bret Murray of the Commonaeros; we made it to the start line  with under a minute to go! A bit flustered I picked a terrible position on the outside, missed clipping in again and then nearly got taken out by a guy who decided he wanted the inside line after all...

A video posted by Bicycle pics by Mark 🚵 📷 📹 (@ogaram) on Jul 23, 2016 at 5:21am PDT

After picking my way through the pack and getting some clear track ahead I hit #fullgas and pulled out about a one and a half minute gap on the opening lap. Tagging Chris in with clear track, he put the pedal to the metal and managed to eek out even more time; on his first ever lap of Blores Hill! As Chris came into transition the weather was going from bad to absolutely filthy. I smashed out the fasted lap of the race as wind, rain and hail lashed the field. By this stage we virtually just had to keep it upright which was no mean feat on the rapidly deteriorating track. Riders were coming through transition looking like mud people and the valley section of the track was becoming more like cyclocross than MTB.


Chris charging on the drying track. Note: He's not wearing lower leg-warmers... he's just that muddy!

At around the 5 hour mark Laura and Jess (our amazing wives/pitcrew/dietitians/timekeepers/morale-boosters) pointed out that one of the riders from the OCS team was making a dent in our lead. I pulled out the stops and restored our lead on the following lap, a move which meant we made the final lap cut by 30 seconds. This gave Chris a chance to head out on a victory lap of the rapidly drying track and also put us a lap up on the entire field.
A big thanks needs to go to Ben @benthebiketech and Thad @connectbikefit for their awesome work in getting the new #norcorevolver bikes so dialled. With great equipment and a clean run we were really able to dominate in the testing conditions


Top step again!

Congratulations also to team OCS and the Commonearos for the solid race in some proper winter conditions.

Albury: VES round 3/Evocities Round 2

Amazing trails that need to be paid a bit of respect... evidently.

The third round for us was a combined race with the NSW/ACT evocities series. This meant more depth in the feild and some serious competition with decent prizemoney on offer for the overall places. Chris and I had never ridden Albury but by all we'd heard we expected a fairly technical race!

This was also the maiden voyage for us on the new #NorcoRevolver bikes (full review to come), massive thanks to @benthebiketech. Playing around on the new rigs in the week leading up to the race, we were both blown away by the Norcos. Super light and incredibly supple yet efficient suspension. They still really feel like they can handle tough trails but are much more race ready than the bikes we were on.

After carbing up on local pizza and pasta the night before we were all set for race day. The starting lap had me line up beside the usual Vic suspects (commonaeros and stick insects) as well as some pretty serious factory teams (Merida and Norco). Tobias looked set to have a fight on his hands in the solo category as well, up against Shaun Lewis; fresh off a win against Jason English...

SBS highlights of the race can be found here:

http://www.sbs.com.au/ondemand/video/716411971548/evocities-round-2-albury

The first lap went great for me, though I did my usual trick of wasting about 20 pedal strokes before snapping my left foot in... this meant I had to charge hard to get back on the wheels of the Merida/Norco guys before the top of the climb. Charging into the technical Albury descent for the first time with your heart-rate redlining is pretty unnerving; this track is proper mountainbiking. We belted the first lap and unfortunately shocked Chris who was elswhere warming up when we came through transtion. This meant I had to keep on charging against the new riders tagged in with fresh legs. In trying to keep up I took a bit of a weird line up one of the boulders and crashed, loosing a drink bottle and spinning my levers around. I couldn't make the gap back after this and tagged Chris in with a bit of a gap to second place.

Smashing through transition

Chris's luck was out on the day, mirroring my shcocker the previous round. He was delayed coming in after his first lap and minutes later he came running into transistion limping a deflated rear tyre. I think he managed to cut one clean lap without incident the whole day. Two burped tyres and two crashes later we'd lost enough time to the leaders that there was no longer any hope of a win, especially given the brutal pace those guys were sustaining!

I admittedly went into cruise control here a little, saving a fair bit in case we managed to make the final lap and one of the teams had some sort of issue that would mean I could chase them down. Chris's second stack really put that out of the question and we were left in no mans land with no teams behind in reach of us and no one in front  we could reach, Pretty weird way to end a race.
When all was said and done, Chris and I could debrief a little and I realised how much he'd actually hurt himself. In an ideal world he definitely should have had a few stiches, not continued racing!

In the end we were happy to come away with third. The teams in front were super quick and I don't think we could have hung on even given a perfect race. The New bikes were amazing and it feels great to be wearing the kit for Ben given the support he's provided, and the fact that he's a top bloke.

Bring on round four.