Jo ....dirty girl!

Friday Morning saw us setting off to the event early, so as we could get one of the best pit areas and ensure that we could have a nice calm period prior to the event. The oval, which we cold pitch our tent upon was bare except for maybe two other groups of tents, so we promptly got the low down on where the timing tent and lap course would be, and got what would have to be the best pit area imaginable. Pleased with out position, we set up. After the initial settle in, our competition arrived, David and Kate, they also happened to be our friends, so once they had set up we decided to go for a group ride around the initial course. It would be my first introduction to Forrest, as I hadn’t ridden their before. My initial impressions were that this was some of the best MTB’ing tracks I had experienced to date. They flowed and moved seamlessly from corners to descents to ascents.

Saturday morning arrived, and I actually had a good nights rest in the tent and was feeling utterly PUMPED to get going on the ride. Haych (my partner, Hayden Chapman), was elected to go first lap.

Odyssey had plenty of mud and puddles

Prior to this event I had juggled with the idea of taking the BMC team elite hardtail. With 3000 meters of climbing, the lightweight and stiffness of a hardtail made sense, but with 100kms, some fast descents, truckloads of single-track and a expected 6 hours plus on the bike, the efficient pedalling BMC fourstroke 02 seemed to make more sense.

Just before the starting gun at 7.15 am, I lined up just behind the sign that said big ring riders. As the gun went off I realised that there were about 200 riders in front of me and so began to put the power down to get further forward in the 3kms of flat bitumen. At about the 3 km mark we took a hard left and this took us up the first climb of the day, 400m of bitumen climbing. I started off at a brisk tempo, overtook a few guys and tried to settle in with similarly speeded climbers. Plenty passed me at quite a pace, but this is a 100k race, I will see them later I told myself. There was quite a headwind so it paid to stay on someone’s wheel. I crested Moneygram fees the hill and the first timing point at 30 minutes after the start, and we then preceded along a ridgeline before accelerating down some fast gravel roads. As the speed headed up, a gust of wind took about five of us and pushed us from one side of the road to another. It was a bit sketchy unclipping at nearly 50kph, but we all managed to stay upright.