It’s nearly April, but for XCM racing, the year is just beginning. Overseas, a lot of the top pros (plus a couple of thousand amateurs) have started their season with the ABSA Cape Epic, the world’s biggest, toughest, most helicoptered mountain bike stage race. Here at home, our XCO national season is over, and those […]
Swiss dreaming – memories of the 2015 Swiss Epic
Related Event: Perskindol Swiss Epic
The mountain bike year has well and truly begun. Unlike riders in the north, in Australia we receive little respite over the holiday period. We don’t go skiing, we don’t escape to summer climes. We live in the perfect training haven, more or less. So while our whole National XCO Series has been wrapped up, […]
XCO club racing – the heart of mountain biking!
Many of us who have taken to the sport of bike racing, be it in the discipline of road, track or any of the various mountain bike variations now available will likely always remember their first ever race. For most of us; from Julien Absalon to your regular club B grade racer this was likely a local […]
How hard can the Cape Epic be?
How hard can the Absa Cape Epic be? Let’s just chuck that out there so you can all roll around on the floor laughing with that ‘oh he is so dead’ hilarity that comes from knowing the answer. No, I’m not trying to be provocative, that is a genuine question. It’s a question that I’ve […]
XCM revisited- A return to the Otway Odyssey!
Related Event: Giant Odyssey
After a 3 year break from XCM racing and an 18 month hiatus from racing in general, I was excited to get back the ‘eye of the tiger’ at one of my favourite events on the Australian MTB calendar- The Otway Odyssey. I always had painful yet fond memories of this race and the 2016 […]
On patience
I turned 35 last week. This unwanted birthday coincided with a periodontal abscess, a round of tortuous self-interrogation about my lack of (ahem) job or even employment prospects, and inevitably pressing questions about when I was going to start a family. From my mother. Mostly for me, my birthday brought home a pretty unfortunate biological […]
The Pioneer: Celebrating routine
Related Event: The Pioneer
Cycling, or success in cycling, is about routine. Your training routine is assisted by your recovery routine, married to your nutrition routine, and of course your off the bike fitness routine. Your bike itself has a maintenance routine, and there’s a good chance that events and races you take part in have their own routine. What you […]
Hellfire Cup: The best race I’ve never done
I’ve heard a lot of stories about the Hellfire Cup – I’ve edited or published many of them. I’ve also heard a lot of asides from riders about the Hellfire Cup. I heard the first year was pretty hard going, as the near biblical volumes of rain tore the event site apart, and much of […]
Cape to Cape 2015 stage 4 – Ward and Mullens victorious
Related Event: Cape to Cape
At last the weather was kind to Cape to Cape racers, with a mild, sunny start to the final stage of the 2015 race at the Colonial Brewery. It was a quick start through a long road stretch, which soon turned to gravel, then rougher double track as riders headed towards the first superb singletrack […]
Cape to Cape 2015 stage 3 sets up exciting finale for the elite men
Related Event: Cape to Cape
We’re three-quarters of the way through Cape to Cape 2015, around the time in any stage race, no matter how long, when cracks begin to appear. There was clearly less concern for things like warm-ups this morning at the race start, some tired faces, and a few racers sporting badly laundered kit shadowed with Margaret […]