The final stage Humans are great at forgetting pain. When we sign up for a stage race, we aren’t remembering the aching muscles, the stomach problems and nausea, the legs so swollen they barely fit into your jeans for the pasta party. We aren’t remembering that it’s not just the legs that hurt, but the […]
Appenninica MTB Stage Race 2023 – Stage Five
I think it’s probably time I admitted publicly that I completely underestimated how tough Appenninica MTB would be, but after 5 stages and an average elevation gain of 2500m per day so far, this ranks among the toughest stage races I’ve done. It also has some of the best trails. Let’s pause a moment to […]
Appenninica MTB Stage Race 2023 – Stage Three
Until just a few short hours ago, I believed that getting through the Queen stage of Appenninica MTB yesterday would leave me with smooth seas to sail right up until the end of the event. Imagine my surprise when I took a closer look at the profile for today’s stage 3 and saw that it […]
Appenninica MTB Stage Race 2023 – Stage One
The Appenninica MTB Stage Race launched in 2019 and is celebrating its 5th year now in 2023. This year rthe race lines up with 6 challenging stages in the Emilia Romagna region. After Scott Cornish raced abnd reported in 2020 and Gordon Wadsworth did the same in 2021 – it was time for Imogen Smith […]
Breck Epic Incoming
Tomorrow I’ll be racing the 2023 Breck Epic in one of the USA’s highest towns, Breckenridge, in central Colorado. Racing above 3,000m elevation for six days is a challenge I’ve been so hungry to try – but for the first time since my very first international XCM stage race ten years ago, I have no […]
Goosebumps and Gravel – The Sunday Creek Classic
On Wednesday I picked up my first ever gravel bike, a sweet little Trek Checkpoint SL 5. On Thursday I rode it up and down Mt Coot-tha. It seemed fine. So on Saturday I raced it for the first time, driving it up to the cute town of Kenilworth for The Sunday Creek Classic. The […]
Absa Cape Epic 2023 Route: full analysis
The Absa Cape Epic route reveal is one of the most hotly awaited stories of the mountain bike stage racing calendar. With its well-deserved reputation as the hardest-fought and toughtest physical challenge on two wheels, we’ve been checking and rechecking our emails in anticipation of the 2023 route release – and here it is. By […]
Day Three at the Snowies MTB Festival
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 […]