Rob Parbery should need little introduction for those who live and breathe Mountain Biking in Australia’s South East. He was racing single speed (what else?) at the recent Wild Side MTB Stage Race. His updates from Day One and Day Two make a great read. Here’s the rest of the two wheeled tour.
Day 3
Stage 5 – Spray Tunnel TT
The time trial is often described as the race of truth – just you against the clock, but the two up format at Wildside brings in a few tactics – do you work with your rival, try gap him or just sit in. Up against Theo Adcock an under 23 rider from WA, the only strategy was to sit in for as long as I could. Heavy rain overnight and again when we were lined up for the start had made the course very muddy.
The time trial is often described as the race of truth – just you against the clock, but the two up format at Wildside brings in a few tactics – do you work with your rival, try gap him or just sit in. Up against Theo Adcock an under 23 rider from WA, the only strategy was to sit in for as long as I could. Heavy rain overnight and again when we were lined up for the start had made the course very muddy.
Dropped by the motocross track I caught back up in the single track again where he struggled in the unfamiliar mud before kindly letting me through into the next singletrack section just before the tunnel. Not my kind of stage but being so short not much time was lost on the category classification, I finished 7th but still sat in 6th in the SS Class.
Stage 6 Granville Harbour.
My second favourite stage, technical riding mixing lose rocks, sand, creek crossings with sandstone so grippy even in the wet you could climb up out of just about anything (if you had the legs). With the first 5 groups starting together this was the first time since stage 1 I was racing against another singlespeeder with Al Gribble being seeded in the group ahead of me. Just like the finish of stage one the first half of the races had Al dropping me up the climbs while I’d catch up on the next descent. It took a particularly difficult descent around half way through the stage for me to turn this around.
With 3 km to go Al was still catching me up the climbs and with an up hill finished I thought he would come past me at the end for sure. The two last descents I rode out of my skin and smashed the climbs, the first of which was also technical and managed to hang on in front of him by just 5 seconds.Stage Results
Day 4
Stage 7 – Hell’s Gate
Overnight we got a taste of how this place got it’s name, the rain was pouring and winds was gusting over 70km/hr. By morning the rain had gone but the wind was still blowing around 30km/hr so there was great relief by the vast majority of the field when it was announced that the course was being run the other way to avoid the ride up the beach being into the wind. The few of the singlespeeders that had remained on the same gear all race were the only ones who were disappointed, downwind on the hard fast sand was going to be a spinfest.
Fortunately the flat section out of town was neutral and keeping up the bunch was not too hard, but once we hit the race section they took off and I was off the back again. Caught back up as we hit the sand but again could not spin anywhere near fast enough to hold on through the fire roads to the beach and I could see two groups formed up ahead disappearing ahead of me and no one coming through behind. At the start of the stage sitting in 6th in the Category I had 4 minutes on Al and with the taller gear he was running I thought he was in the lead group. Each time it went past a car on the beach I’d count the time it was taking, he was going to get that 4 minutes back pretty quick. I got a big surprise when he rolled up beside me, having suffered a broken chain earlier. 5th on stage and fast enough not only to hold onto 6th but made up time to get 5th.Stage Results
Post race it was time to get stuck into the beers, then the BBQ, then local seafood and then more beers, swap stories on the heroics & pain
of the last few days.
Final GC by Category
Going into the race I was hoping to make sure I didn’t finish last in the singlespeed blokes and make the top half of the overall field so I was pretty stoked to get 5th in class and a time that would have put me in the top 30 masters.
See you in 2 years? Maybe…