Time waits for no man (or woman), and this seems increasingly true as every year passes. The pressures of work, rest and play can actually add up quite a lot. Seeing an Australian summer as an ‘off season’ is odd – even though there are plenty of pro’s who do just that. The sun is shining (usually), the days are long and people have time off. Surely this is the perfect recipe for plenty of great mountain biking.
Instead, I end up getting mired down in work and planning for the next Euro 20XX trip. It’s a fantastically enjoyable and exciting process – but the planning involved can take away from the preparations required. Cramming can be a problem.
But now, February starts and the first Subaru-MarathonMTB.com Team objective is a fortnight away. The Kona Odyssey will be a huge event as always, and I’m pretty stoked that the whole Team will be there meeting up for the first time. The Odyssey is a hard event. The countries top riders are on form, the course is selective, the conditions can be decisive and the level of organization is top notch.
The Otway is like a Euro season wake up call. Harking back to 2007, I was happy enough with 15th. I had only done a couple of Marathon Mountain Bike races before, but I knew I liked them. Later that year I had the chance to do a couple of the UCI Marathon World Cups of that era, with legends such as Tim and Jo Bennett, Struan Lamont and Dave Wood.
2010 was my next Odyssey. After living overseas and racing as much as possible in the northern summers for most of the time since the 2007 edition, I was confident enough heading in to finish the event. But finishing respectably? Unlikely. The day was hot, the climbs unrelenting, and I think I barely made it inside the top 30. With plans to head back overseas in the middle of the year for just a bit more Stage Racing and Marathon racing, I headed off into the Snowy Mountains Wilderness after that Odyssey with a map and a big compass to go and find some form.
2011 and things had changed. The MarathonMTB.com Team was born, and I was lining up with a couple of road powerhouses on the roster, Sam Moorehouse and Justin ‘Maddog’ Morris. The stakes felt higher, but in the end it’s still just a hard bike race. No hiding. Everyone hurts at the Odyssey, no matter how fit you are. The mud of 2011 left plenty of scars, and showed me that although some things were ok, plenty of work needed to be done before the next big things on the agenda.
So here I sit. With a stunning and diverse group of riders on the Subaru-MarathonMTB.com Team, the 2012 Kona Odyssey will be an exciting affair. Again, it kicks off a long block for me personally, running into Rocky Trails MTB Cruise the next weekend, then some training in the Snowies, Willo’s Memorial Race, Capital Punishment (maybe – got an entry?) the ABSA Cape Epic, and a UCI Marathon Series round in Laissac, France. As Nick Both would say: “Sleep when you’re dead.”
DeadMau5 and black coffee - long haul companions
There’s so much racing ahead, and its close enough to taste. With that comes anxiety, excitement, a little paranoia, but in general a widening grin that I can’t suppress. The long hours at work, the middling hours on the bike, and all the extra hours at the laptop are about to be redeemed for miles of smiles, grimaces, and generally all that is good about traveling to race your mountain bike.