Riders woke today to a perfect Snowy Mountain dawn – still mountains, pink glowing eucalypts, and bright sunshine. Much of the water that came down from the enormous ranges had washed away overnight, as had the wind, leaving the mountains brightly-scrubbed and the trails in mint condition. After an early shuttle to Friday Flat at […]
Day Two at the Snowies MTB Festival
Rain delays and flooded trails The adventures of today actually started at about 5pm yesterday when the rain started to fall. A sprinkle at first became a howling mountain gale that raged through the night. The stiff wind blew the clouds eastward by morning, but the system had dropped over 100mm of water on the […]
Day One at the Snowies MTB Festival
Thanks to a lot of hard work from a lot of people, the 2021 Snowies MTB Festival is ON. It is tempting – so tempting – to draw some inspo from that poem (all the tried and noted riders… loved hard riding… hidden ground full of wombat holes…etc. etc.) but someone’s probably done that already […]
Cape Epic 2020 – we need more than luck
Everyone wishing me well for the Cape Epic has reminded me to be safe, and wished me luck. It’s no accident that these two things come up time and again in conversations about the great untamed African race. In 2018, my team-mate Briony managed to get food poisoning, have all her money stolen by an […]
Sizing up the Absa Cape Epic 2020
The Cape Epic is coming, and I am going to be there. The world’s most televised mountain bike event. The untamed, the big one, the Tour de France of mountain biking. Call it what you will, I’ve seen the routes, seen the GoPro vision, seen the helicopters, and I am smart enough to know that […]
Swiss Epic 2019 Stage 3
Every race has one, and today was the Swiss Epic’s Queen Stage. The most demanding, most emotional, hardest stage of the race. Today took in 80km and 2,200m of climbing, and while on paper this may look easier than other stages (think stage 1, with 3,000m climbing), the technicality of today’s trails, and the repeated, […]
Swiss Epic 2019 Stage 2
The Swiss Epic’s second stage presented us with a grand tour of St Moritz, the iconic ski town of luxury shops and private jets. So it was kindof a shame to see two hundred bikers tramp through reception in filthy gear yesterday and pretty much ruin the carpet at our lovely hotel, but nobody seemed […]
Swiss Epic 2019 Stage 1
Last time I came to the Swiss Epic was in 2015 and the event was based in the Valais region, with the route taking us from Verbier to Zermatt. This year, the fifth year of the race, the Swiss Epic roadshow has left the Valais region for the first time and headed to Graubuenden – […]
On test: Camelbak Ultra 10 Vest
The world of marathon and stage racing has some unique demands on equipment, especially when weather, nutrition and self-sufficiency come into play. After Mike raved about the Camelbak Octane 10, it was time to find a large but light pack for myself. The Camelbak Ultra 10 is superlight at just 280g for the bag, and […]
Remembering why at The Willo
Everyone in the MTB community looks forward to The Willo. It’s a cool track, it’s close to home for lots of us, and it’s a chance to stop and remember a really, really great person. James Williamson was the guy at races who always had time to stop and say hi, and smile, and chat, […]