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February 24, 2014 By Arran Pearson 1 Comment

Gravel Grinding: Escape to the better Daily Grind

Ok, I’ll admit it.  I’m a child of the 70’s.  From a bicycle standpoint that means my first ‘real’ bike was a BMX – now where I lived (Port Morseby, PNG) the whole concept of a ‘BMX track’ was a bit foreign so most of our time was spent exploring tracks, making jumps and trudging […]

Filed Under: Features Tagged With: Diary, Gravel Grind, Ultra

February 15, 2014 By Arran Pearson Leave a Comment

The Rigid Stromlo Project

They say that those who forget history are doomed to repeat it… or to put it another way, you think I would have learned from the last time I was silly enough to try and ride my bike packing rig for 5 long laps of Stromlo. Last year as part of my preparations for Tour […]

Filed Under: Diaries Tagged With: AMB100, Beards, Black Sheep, marathon mountain biking, MTB, Racing, Singlespeed, Stromlo, XCM

February 5, 2014 By Arran Pearson 1 Comment

Reviewed: Specialized S-Works Trail Shoe

What with chasing poor bike shops to change their name and concept stores showing a level of sensitivity towards women matching that of Sunrise’s David Koch you’d be forgiven for thinking that as a company they are, well, evil.  But dammit, why does evil have to make such awesome shoes?! One of the most important parts of […]

Filed Under: Tech, Ultra Racing Tagged With: Hiking, MTB, Real World, S Works, Shoes, Specialized

November 11, 2013 By Arran Pearson Leave a Comment

And now for something Completely Different…

Back in ‘the day’, MTB events were few and far between in NSW – we had the Working Week series of 8hr endurance races (five 8hr races – a working week geddit), a Sydney 12hr and 24hr, the Dirtworks (now Convict 100), the Highland Fling and probably most made the annual pilgrimage to Canberra for […]

Filed Under: Diaries Tagged With: City Bike Depot, Gravel, Rapha, Road, Tour Divide

September 30, 2013 By Arran Pearson Leave a Comment

Kowalski, A Singlespeeder’s Tale…

You know, after Tour Divide its kind of hard to get worked up about 90km.  After all, when you’ve ridden more than 230km a day for 20+ days… well, 90km just doesn’t seem that hard. At least that’s what I was telling myself as I was getting organised to drive down to Canberra for the […]

Filed Under: Diaries Tagged With: Black Sheep, Kowalski, Kowen, Sparrow, Tour Divide, XCM

August 20, 2013 By Arran Pearson Leave a Comment

Racing the Tour Divide: You must climb.

Arran Pearson has just returned from the Tour Divide. This is the third part of his story. You should read part one and part two to catch up. Although there is a lot of climbing in the first 1/2 of the route, it’s in Colorado where you hit serious altitude with several passes over 10,000 […]

Filed Under: Diaries, Features Tagged With: Arran Pearson, Black Sheep, Lonely, MTB, Tour Divide

August 13, 2013 By Arran Pearson Leave a Comment

Racing the Tour Divide: Strength in Numbers

Last week, we first heard from Sydney-based rider Arran Pearson, about heading off to Banff to start the Tour Divide, and like the route, the story continues… The rest of the first week is pretty much a blur – I spent the first few days just getting used to the riding and was managing to […]

Filed Under: Diaries, Ultra Racing Tagged With: Beards, Bikepacking, Tour Divide, USA

August 7, 2013 By Arran Pearson 1 Comment

Racing the Tour Divide

Well, its been about three weeks or so since finishing the Tour Divide MTB Race, and its probably taken me about that long to process to a point where I can write about it.   Since I got back the two most common questions people have asked are ‘How was it?’ and ‘Are you going […]

Filed Under: Diaries, Ultra Racing Tagged With: Arran Pearson, Banff, Rocky Mountains, Tour Divide

June 12, 2013 By Arran Pearson Leave a Comment

What do you carry for the Tour Divide?

What? Once people get past the sheer ‘why would anyone want to do that?’ thing of an adventure like the Tour Divide Race, the next series of questions delves into a series of discussions about what sort of gear you need to carry with you in order to do it. Basically carrying gear on a […]

Filed Under: Tech

June 10, 2013 By Arran Pearson 12 Comments

Why Ride the Tour Divide?

Why? It’s a question I’ve been getting a lot lately. Closely followed by ‘are you insane?’ and not to mention my personal favourite ‘Idiot.’ See, later this month (June 14th to be exact) I along with approximately 120 other nutters will be lining up for what is often referred to as the toughest bicycle race […]

Filed Under: Features Tagged With: Banff, Bikepacking, MTB, Tour Divide

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