The hub for marathon mountain biking
Lasseters Easter in the Alice starts tomorrow, with the first stage sending elite racers on a 75km singletrack-heavy loop of some of the best and some of the roughest trails in Alice Springs. Racing in Alice Springs at this event, or The Redback in August, combines a number of unique demands. The trails in Alice […]
Alice Springs is easy to spot on the map of Australia – it’s smack bang in the middle! So while it’s equidistant to every beach in Australia as some locals like to say, the mountain biking in Alice Springs is completely different to what you normally find on the east coast, where most of us […]
There is a time and a place for stages races to be long, epic stages back to back. But thankfully, that’s not what Lasseters Easter in the Alice is about. The three days of mountain bike racing in Alice Springs is a mix of a long marathon, with two shorter days filled with challenging, hand-built […]
Some places are on our personal race calendars as we have them as a major target. Others are there as you know they always draw a big field, or because you’ve arranged to try something new with friends. Some places make it just because the riding, and racing, ar exceptional. Everyone has their own choices […]
Here at MarathonMTB.com we have a soft spot for Alice Springs. With over a dozen visits between the whole Subaru-MarathonMTB.com Team over the past decade, we are repeat offenders when it comes to visiting the Red Centre to ride (and race) our mountain bikes. We often get asked what draws us back, why go again […]
Mountain Bike Australia (MTBA) have just confirmed the dates and venues for the 2018 National XCM Series. Next year the series is trimmed down to five events, including the National Championship, in a bid to have more riders attend more of the series, according to MTBA CEO Shane Coppin. “We really hope this condensed series […]
Yesterday The Redback’s sixth and final stage took in 45 kilometres of desert trails, sand traps, and rock features. We lined up just south of the Telegraph Station, the town’s trail hub, and rolled up the bike path, at a neutral pace. I hoped to catch sight of the dingo munching on a dead kangaroo […]
If you think of all the sports in all the world, from archery to zorb football, then divide all these sports into their different disciplines, so that gymnastics becomes parallel bars, pommel horse, the rings, beam, and so on, you’d have what – a couple thousand? I can lay these sports end to end on […]
I woke this morning on day two of The Redback in Alice Springs to what I thought was a truck reversing into my hotel room. Turns out the wind had blown up overnight and was roaring through the courtyard of the Mercure, shaking the ghost gums and kicking up sand. It brought cooler weather, with […]
What’s my favourite thing about mountain bike stage racing, you ask. The camaraderie? Wrong! The epic scenery? Wrong! Visiting new places and experiencing new cultures? That’s great, but wrong! Nope, it’s the buffet breakfasts. So. The Redback got off to a good start for me when I hit the buffet at the Mercure Alice Springs […]
