Richard Paine and Stephen Davies are two middle aged men who are passionate about cycling. They combine busy work and travel schedules with sneaky training sessions. They have previously knocked off a couple of TransAlps and love the adventure of multistage mountain bike races.
Steve lives in Sydney and rides with the Tour de Cure bunch out of Neutral Bay. He is a one trick pony who can’t sprint, can’t time trial and can’t descend.
Richard has no such limitations. Rich lives in Singapore and races with the ANZA Mavericks. He is mining a rich vein of form this year which has seen him win the super masters category in the Singapore Nationals for the TT, the road race and the XC.
After the cold temperatures and heavy rain last night, today was always going to be a war of attrition. I spent last night shivering in my sleeping bag with every stitch of clothing that I own on. At 1,600m and with the change in weather it was cold.
Today’s stage consisted of 68% wet and muddy single track. Not as muddy as the last lap at this year’s Mont24, but pretty slippery all the same. We took off under leaden skies and after yesterday’s hail there was a certain nervousness in the field. A 270m vertical climb up a gravel road spread the field somewhat before we hit the single track.
The first singletrack was on a trail covered in snow, mud and ice. The predictable carnage occurred. I kept thinking of Mickey and Hec riding their mountain bikes home from the nightclub in St Anton at 4.00am 20 years ago. If they could do it then “what the hell”
The first downhill was 15km of flowing singletrack covered in deep mud. We were not racing but riding one after another in single file. Every 500m or so would be a team by the side of the trail with a mechanical or flat. We passed the Tinhorn team who were in 8th place about 15km into the stage as they fixed a flat.
The main climb of the day was a brute of 500m vertical. By this stage we were thick in mud and chain suck was the order of the day. As such we had to walk all the steep sections. While I had brought a rag and lube, that seemed to work for only 10 minutes.
The top section was so rocky that the last 400m was unridable. Rich had a fall on a technical section and hurt his thumb. What goes up must come down and we hit a long fast descent. We were still not racing just riding together and staying up.
The second half of the ride was rolling single track. Very rocky and in normal conditions it would have been fantastic. Unfortunately it was absolutely pelting down with cold rain. Rich and I rode well, heads down trying to travel fast despite the conditions. We were with the Tinhorn boys (10th position) for most of the stage until Irish had a fall in a technical section and broke his suspension.
Fortune favours the brave so about 15km from the finish I blew a side wall. Normally this would be an easy fix but it took me about 15 minutes. With cold fingers and everything covered in an inch of mud, I just could not get my act together.
10km out from the finish we hit the highway. We were on Route 66 for a long climb followed by a downhill to the finish. On the downhill we were sitting at about 65kph when a couple of deer ran onto the road. A little bit of excitement to end the day. It is great to have the Singapore Super Masters TT champion on your team and we smashed the 10km road section to pick up a couple of places.
Everyone suffered from falls and mechanicals today, we were more fortunate than most and our strategy of survival paid off with a 6th place. The teams above us mostly suffered disasters and we have moved up to 6th place.
A big thanks to Andrew and Dave at Mont who provided us with Hammerhead jackets. In a day when we had climbs in sunshine, snow, heavy rain and no shortage of mud, the jackets were perfect.
I would like to give a huge plug to Simone Mccallum & Claire Garcia-Webb of Shparkle Horsh And The Hypermonkey. A couple of girls from Perth who have been holding down second place in the open women.
Steve