Bushlove Racing

Karingal 4hr Enduro - Dave Nearly Killed By Dinosaur

2011-11-18T16:03:00.005+13:00

Sneaky dinosaur eats my chippies and nearly devours me.

My first event in Aussie was the Karingal 4hr Enduro. I entered the SS class and hoped to not embarrass myself too much and had a goal of riding consistently and finishing. Lofty goals for my extra light riding regimen.

There were quite a lot of people. About 140 entrants, a mixture of teams and solos. I did a pre-ride of the 7km course which was a bit tiring. It was good dry singletrack with no real climbs. Just regular pinches and short efforts. Nothing where you had to settle in. I thought I would go fairly quick at the start and see how I got on.

I took off quick and joined in with the shaved racerboys, sitting in about 12th overall. I was swinging along pretty well and was leading the SS class by a few minutes after 3 laps. One of the pinch climbs was steep and out in the open. It was baking me every time. I kept chanting "I am a solar panel, I am a solar panel" in an effort to convert the heat to energy. Didn't work.

I wiped out in a fast rocky corner on lap four and rolled into the scrub where in my mind, 1000 snakes and spiders were looking for a meal. I cut the sidewall of my tire on a rock in the process. So I sat at the side of the track with sweat dripping off my ears, nose, elbows, knees etc fixing a puncture and trying to patch the cut with tree bark and gum leaves, so the inner tube wouldn't poke out and flat again. I got going after a few long minutes and three nasty bites from inch long red ants (more near death per the title) I called them the c-word very loudly. It still hurt a lap later. At least it wasn't a crocodile.

Entirely predictable breakdown of my organic tire reinforcement. Fortunately the cut never let the tube through anyway.

I joked that 84 was my lucky number at rego. The lady asked if it was because it was my birth year. I love her.

I got going again and went quickly through a lot of riders who had passed me. I eased up a little to deal with the heat. Then I flatted again. Bad luck for sure. Two flats are quite rare. I've not flatted twice in a row for years. I was out. No more tubes. Very hot hike back in from the back of the course. Bugger.

Still a good outing and an opportunity to meet new people and ride some good trails. Next year if I get the chance, I will do a bit of training for it and try and smash the whole 4hrs and win my class. The course suited me. It was a shame to have the problems.

I hung out with the team from Fortheriders, which is a very good shop here who are involved in all the races. Their mechanic, Shaun, is also the Yeti World team mechanic and as his team mate, he had Jared Graves, former UCI 4X World Champ. It was interesting talking to him. He was superfast XC too. Those guys are not just good at jumps. Apparently 4X is not a UCI event now, so he is focusing on DH.

Not sure when I will next be racing. I am quite keen to try a bit of surfing. When in Rome...

Looking forward to getting a trail ride in at Daisy Hill tomorrow. To get it done before our trip to the Gold Coast I have to head out at 4am. I'll be first into the trails and will clear the cobwebs for the rest of the day's riders. I look forward to hastily scraping them off my face and trying not to imagine what is attached. No doubt more near death blogging to follow.

Cheers
Dave

Tigs new Tiger ride and the PNP MTB rap!!!

2011-11-16T09:39:00.028+13:00

Wood is the new Carbon Baby!!!

Well as Angry has pointed out the Elite course in the PNP race in the weekend was "mean as!!!!" Mamoth Climbs, Fast descents and schweeeet single track.

Now I could babble on about what KWs of power I was putting out to the rear wheel while chatting to the likes of Brendan Sharratt (Legendary Tour Of Southland KOM podium roadie), monitoring my calorie uptake and internal temperature... but I am not going to (because I would not know any of these stats :)
NB: For stats similar to these, please speak to our resident Elite rider Clive Bushlove Bennett.

Seeing as I ended any possibilities of a podium in the elite category about half way through my race with a flat tyre, I thought I would write about the perfect day and beers after the race. Was great to have a big turn out of Bushlove and Clan with Nick K making the trip up from Christchurch with Wife Sarah, Mono Sifty Dave Sharpe (Just there for a sifty ride...Yeah Right), Angry Bennett (Full time Elite rider), Wonny Jaghorn and better half Belinda The Burglar and Ed (riding his lazyboy).

Right so to tie off loose ends, thanks to all the support from friends and family (Especially my fantastically supportive wife and 2 wonderful kids Tyler & Logan who allow me to get out on the dreaded bikes). Massif ups to On Yer Bike for tinkering with my rides and supporting me (No rude at all that sentence). Niner Bikes for putting me in the cockpit of the quickest bike I have ever ridden, the Niner Air 9 Carbon (pity the pilot is a little old and slow :)

Stoked to have the Masters 1 category sewn up before race 5, giving me the chance to race the big boys in the final round. Cheers to all those in the Masters 1 cat who kept me honest Karl Paterson (side kick burglar) and Hiskey (ole fella and thorn in my side ;)

OK cereal now... PNP 2011 out of the way and I'm in "ok" form for the Taupo Huka XL race next weekend. Not sure if I am more excited about the beers after or getting out on the Niner again Mmmmm

While this is the hottest and under some motors fastest hardtail 29er on the market, there is one small fail in this photo... Those in the know will have already realized I failed in my photography/elite class, where you should NEVER take a photo of a bike while it is NOT in the Dawg...:( (Big chain ring up front)

Compulsory Bushlove graphics - Mint!

Mmmmm Carbon purity

Keep an eye out there for the Bushlove colors in the odd Triathon and definitely the Xterra (Offroad Triathlon) next April. Swimming is going great, running too but am just a little concerned about my riding ability :)

Cheers
Tigs

No country for old men.

2011-11-14T09:23:00.012+13:00

Heres the blow by blow from Pro Elite Round 5 of the most excellent PNP Race series in Wellington,

Hardout race start up from Mud Cycles in Karori, was myself (after putting in my usual stupid smash it till you blow race start) followed by Sharrit, Tiger and Fitzwell into Landsdowne, Sharrit and Tiger passed me and I entered into Salvation followed by Fitzwell.

Picture stolen without permission from Dave Grahame

Around rollercoaster some close racing with Sharrit and Tiger out front followed by myself Fitzwell and McCarthy making a show.

Up the big road climbs to top of Tip Track was Tiger, Sharrit then about 100m back myself followed by Fitzwell and McCarthy, Fitzwell put in a big move and screamed past me with an actual scream.

Tiger took the lead from Sharrit till the gate barrier down to red rocks where Sharrit flatted, McCarthy passed me just before the gate and beat me into the new singletrack to redrocks, however I took advantage of local knowledge and line choice and past McCarthy pulling out about a decent gap as there are a couple of tricky sections through there requiring careful pre gear selection to avoid walking, namely the bridge.

From Red Rocks and around the coast I could see Fitzwell who had caught Tiger about 50m ahead of me, Tiger also politely flatted, I threw him my pump and carried on in 2nd place after Fitzwell.

Onto Tip Track , Fitzwell had about 50m lead, still at that sort of distance where you think you can pull someone in, but alas, Fitzwell is a Tip Track specialist and quickly started climbing away from me, hitting Tip Track at race pace was tough and I struggled a bit and McCarthy caught me about midway.

Picture stolen without permission from Shane Wetzel

Into Barking emu I was running 3rd with new comer to the pointy end Murphy hot on my tail, Barking emu was running sweet as a nut, but excessive speed caused me to overcook a corner and I took a dive over the edge, luckily a not soo soft gorse bush broke my fall.

Into CarParts I was nervously looking back knowing I was being hunted down, my riding went haywire and I messed up a few times resulting with some off the bike moments, then some cramping, at the end of Carparts and onto RollerCoaster Murphy was about 20m behind me.

Time to pull out the big guns so I took a swig of my Raro and Cement Dust drink and gassed up the steep pinches around the coaster, ignoring the twinges of further oncoming cramp, as I wanted (needed) to hit Deliverance with a decent lead as im about as gracefull down there as a blind man in a wheelchair would be.

Into Deliverence I had a good lead over Murphy and had the best run down there I have ever had, it was slippy but the Niner asserts confidence, falsely or not I didnt care, but zero crashes and I was happy.

Onto the road I kept a nervous eye behind and could see Murphy and apparently Kennedy who materialised from nowhere leading Murphy up the road in good roadie style.
However being a tarmac specialist with a good lead I was home and hosed for 3rd place Pro Elite Men.

I look forward to boring my grandchildren in years too come of this day, (actual events may change,be enhanced or entirely left out).

Massive thanks too Niner bikes for making one of the sweetest race machines I have ever ridden!, and Burkes Cycles for their support and many last minute repairs/maintenance to my bikes.

Also special mention to Tristan from Wheelworks, for squeezing in a last minute spoke repair despite his huge workload.

Its been a great race series, PNP have put a huge amount of effort in this year and its much appreciated.

G'day Cobbers !

2011-11-07T13:50:00.005+13:00

Greetings from Brisbane me ole Kiwi cobbers!

Just got broadband finally so i wanted to get on and say hi. Everything going great here in ever-sunny Brisbane. A balmy 29deg today as I sit here supping my iced coffee. We are living about 6km out of the city in Coorparoo. Nice place. Ella is at school down the road and loving it. I am a stay at home Dad until we get a place for little George at kindy. Probably back at work in January.

We've done heaps and have seen a lot of cool places like Movieworld, Seaworld and are heading to Wet & Wild this weekend. We have VIP tickets and can go whenever we like. It was easy to get them - I told them I rolled with Bushlove, and they handed them over gratis. There is also an amazing park called South Bank which is a real jewel in the crown for families. We've made several new friends including the awesome families of mates of mine from when I was living in the states. Funny how things work out, but two of the legends I lived and traveled with both now live in Brisbane!

I have done a few rides including some great outings with new mate, Andy Macfarlane, who is also ex-Wellington and a good friend of The Editor's. He also helped train epic scooter rider, Angry Bennett, to get his first sub 3. The trails here are different to Wellington's. They lack hills, so any downhill is fairly short lived, and there is no 'bush', mostly dry scrub and gum trees. But that not to say there is no good riding at all. The singletracks I have ridden at the Gap and Daisy Hill have all been great and have been well maintained by the local 'trail care' groups. I wish there was a lot more altitude, rock, roots and wetness. But on the upside the weather is almost always outstanding, so you never get rides called off, and you never bring a spare layer (or ten).

We also hit the trails early. Not Wellington early. But Queensland early. Standard sift is a trailhead meet at 5.30am. and if I am riding out its a 4am get up. By evening I am falling asleep same time as the kids! Thing about early starts is if you are first down the trail you might be clearing cobwebs. I thrash about a lot imagining some harbinger of death is crawling down my collar whenever I hit a web, but the more common nasty is the golden orb, which although not poisonous, is still an evil chunky s.o.b and Andrew assures me I don't want to be chasing one around my jersey

What about that Six Pack ride eh?! It was an awesome outing to cap a fantastic five years of trail riding in Wellington. It was so good to see so many great people enjoying each others company, the amazing trails and a few beers. I wish we had done it more often. I hope to hear about it happening again over the summer! Sharing lulz and trail time with my buddies was certainly one of the highlights of my time in Wellington. I hope I am lucky enough to build up such a great group of friends here.

Shame about the audio track. Shambolic quick Picasa job.

I have just checked the BLR Farcebook for the first time in a couple of months and found that the lovely Rachel and Liam Drew have had their baby boy Sherlock. I was not expecting that news till December. I guess that like his father, he was a bit premature. Congratulations Rachel and Liam!!

I have my first race against the Aussies on Sunday. A popular 4 hour Enduro in which i am entering the SS class. I wonder how it will go? I think the course is not hilly and mostly has climbs we'd just think of as pinches, so I might be ok on the usual prep of no riding and too much chocolate and beer. Certainly the local trail hounds I have been riding with from the excellent shop , For The Riders, are very good and made me feel old. Fingers crossed I won't bring too much embarrassment upon the pink and black. I will report back next week. But I am sure that my race report will be beaten to publication by all the other race reports from the events I know the team have been attending!

Time to go and start marinading my kangaroo steaks for dinner. No shit. I really am. Yum.

Cheers
Dave

Bushlove Quasi elites beaten

2011-10-09T19:29:00.002+13:00

Quick News bulletin.......
Bushloves XC Vet Whippets get outclimbed by Karl "Weasel" Patterson. Then as an Ex Pro-elite dh'er should he rides away from them on the descents. Shame on the "elite" xc whippets of Bushlove lore, for they have been diminished by a fast talking hyperactive ex downhiller, shame!!!!!

The Spartan shower scene they never showed...

2011-09-19T19:56:00.020+12:00

After a dirty/muddy day of racing around Mt Vic in the PNP Champs, we were all pleased to find they had showers to clean off in:

Seriously though. Bushlove have been together now for ~3 yrs and are more like a family than an over rated bunch of lazy bikers. When ever anyone of us is in need of some pick me up or good old banter, the team is there for them. I mean just the other day I mentioned to my fellow BL'ers that I had this annoying Copacabana song in my head, when suddenly out of the kindness of their hearts, Waggers and Belinda made new lyrics to this song to ensure it was PERMANENTLY etched into my brain... and am sure this will most likely pop back into my head at the most inopportune moment (about half way through Taupo Huka Challenge or even worse... date night) Thanks guys... &*!!!#%&*@*^#%

So it Was PNP Mountain Bike race #2:
Mt Vic has to be one of my favorite race locations for many a reason. But most of all the fact that it is such a good spectators course. Every time I rode through the velodrome I would hear the roar of friends or even better Lil T (Daughter Tyler), Big L (Son Logan) and my Lovely Wife cheering me on "Go Daddy Go, Go Daddy Go" Sometimes up to 10 people chanting this out... Huh!!! am sure last time I checked I had only fathered 2 children...

In typical Veledrome style and missing the usual Slacky, someone had to race off the front only to be rolled on the first up hill. This time it was Angry Hundy Bennett off like a rotten egg. As the race went on the course got slipperier and slipperiririer. Giving me more and more excuses for a lay down in the bushes. 5 in total I counted, that's more lays than a George Michael pajama party.
Thanks to Trent Bellingham for the pic:

I won't go into full detail, but the essence of the Masters category went something like this. Tiger to the top of the hill, Angry close behind, Palmy Burglar (Weasel - Karl Paterson) chasing hard but in podium still. Tiger down the hill, Weasel close on his heels, Angry stopping to pick daisies. Tiger to the top again, Angry finished picking daisies and steamed up behind with Weasel watching from a distance . Lap after lap this went on till the finishing order was sorted. Tiger, Angry and then Weasel.

Was great to see out of towners coming down from the likes of Palmy for a bit of mud slinging and to keep us locals on our toes.

Big thanks to all the organisers and marshals for getting out on this wet glorious day to make this event happen, special thanks to Marco for bringing along his hose. Never have there been so many men and the odd women flailing the God Fathers Hose around.

Thanks to Trent Bellingham for the pic:

To top my weekend off, Ozzy had bean beaten in the Rugby the day before and I was nicely wine'd up and tiddly sitting in front of France Vs Canada Rugby.

Till the next race :)
Tigs

"His name was Tiger" sing-a-long

2011-09-18T20:12:00.000+12:00

His name was Tiger, he was a biker
With pink panelled shorts and matching shirt cut down to there
He would pedal, and do a wheelie
And while he tried to be a star, Hundy always set the bar
Along a muddy trail, they biked from 8 till 4
They were young(ish) and they had each other
Who could ask for more?

At the Mountain (Mount!), Mount Victor-i-a (Victor-i-a)
The hottest spot north of Makara (here)
At the Mountain (Mount!), Mount Victor-i-a
Peddling and skidding were always the bidding
At the Mountain....they had some lols

(Mount Victor-i-a)

His name was Lynskey, he wore a tutu
He was escorted to the trail, he saw Tiger bikin' there
And when he finished, he called him over
But Lynskey went a bit too far, Hundy sailed across the bar
And then the crank bolts flew and egos were smashed in two
There was blood and sweat and tears
But just who roosted who?

At the Mountain (Mount!), Mount Victor-i-a (Victor-i-a)
The hottest spot north of Makara (here)
At the Mountain (Mount!), Mount Victor-i-a
Peddling and skidding were always the bidding
At the Mountain....they had some lols

(Mount. . Victor-i-a)
(Mount Victor-i-a) (Victor-i-a, ahh ahh ahh ahh)
(Ahh ahh ahh ahh Mount Victor-i-a)
(Talking Makara have a banana)
(Peddling and skidding... always the bid--ding)

His name is Tiger, he was a biker
But that was many years ago, when they used to rule a show
Now it's a bike race, but not for tiger
Still in the shirt he used to wear, and faded pink shorts with a tear
He sits there so refined, and he drinks to unwind
He lost his youth and he lost his Hundy
Now he's lost his mind!

At the Mountain (Mount!), Mount Victor-i-a (Victor-i-a)
The hottest spot north of Makara (here)
At the Mountain (Mount!), Mount Victor-i-a
Peddling and skidding were always the bidding
At the Mountain....don't fall over

(Mountain) don't fall over
Victor-i-a
Victor-i-a

Baggy Sifter Wins Wainui PNP!

2011-09-01T12:51:00.007+12:00

Thanks Nigel Sanders

Thanks Andy Woodwark

Rather than the traditional Makara Peak location, the first round of the 2011 PNP R&R Sport Spring Series was held as the fabulous Wainuiomata trails last Sunday.

It was a good sized field and a great day. The trails were running superbly. The new Towhai Traverse was an excellent addition, requiring some good flow (Floe?) to navigate at speed. 491 and Beeline were also running really well, and everyone was raving afterwards about the fun they had. Apart from the large contingent of Snr Men who didn’t read the directions or signs and missed a loop and DNF’d. Lulz.
Thanks Nigel Sanders

Bushlove had a stormer day. Summary of results for us as follows:

Elite – Ed ‘Fastest Man’ Crossling. Turned up to sift. But won. First Elite win in baggy shorts to our knowledge.

Snr Women – Wonderwoman Burgess in 2nd

Snr Men – Win by Whacko Jacko. SS Style

M1 Women – Belinda “Lustinator” De Mayo – 3rd

M1 – Win from Tiger in a sprint. Davo 3rd, SS Style.

M2 – Totally unexpected domination from the gun by The Hundernator, Angry Clive. Wonny.J in 5th

Some commentary from the BLR contingent. They each had 20 word. Where not supplied they may or may not be fake:

Tiger Keith:

Karl tried to burgle a burglar. Kept me honest for the last lap. The roadie in me won sprint finish.

Thanks Andy Woodwark

[Ed - Outside his 20 word limit, but will include anyway] Full credit to wives, children and butlers for their support.

Crossling Jnr:

After month eating crap in UK, worked it all off with good hit out on some sweet single track.

Clive ‘Always has a hundy’ Bennett:

Usual smash from start race plan. Will unlock fork for downhills next time. An unexpected win for me.

Thanks Andy Woodwark

Wonny Jaghorn:

Good work team. I was off my game today. I'll be back.

Ashley:

My humps, my humps, my humps, my humps, my lovely lady lumps, check em out.

Thanks Nigel Sanders

Belinda:

I could have won, but I dropped back to help pace Wonny up the Rollercoaster climb. He’s so slack.

Thanks Andy Woodwark

Davo:

Got beaten up climb by M3s! Dealt to them in the trees. Same time as Clive!

Thanks Andy Woodwark

Whacko Jacko Master of the Stacko:

I took the lead using a Whacko Stacko and surfed Spoonhill on my low friction head. I shave my palms.

File shot from Bareback.com

Thanks to the PNP MTB Crew and the WTP trail builders for their dedication and attention to detail. What a magnificent venue. See you at Mt Vic.

Thanks Trent Bellingham

The Munter

2011-08-23T18:56:00.011+12:00

The course, a 29km showcase of some of Wellingtons best scenery.

For those unfamiliar with the Mukamuka Munter, it is a trail run, and I use the word "run" in my case to mean a slightly faster then walking and slower then a jog. If you want to know more about the event visit the excellent better than TV site.

Statz

Attending: Big Al, Sam and 50 odd other folk

Max Altitude: 550m

Temperature: It's the middle of freaking winter out the back of the nui, cold, with a side serving of cold.

Mandatory Gear list: Extensive

A chilly start followed by a pleasurable trot for 12km round the coast. Running over some pretty awe inspiring vistas. Very sorry I did not take some pictures. At that point I was shivering and worrying.

Al had stormed off into the far distance, so I settled back to chat with a couple of folk while we ambled towards the Mukamuka entrance. I was in concentration mode, as this is a one way event you really do not want to slip and injure. I have borrowed a photo from race organizer Shane Ross.

Once we got into the valley things got serious! Boulder jumping became the sport of choice. And after the 40th river crossing, keeping on my feet was the main aim. The valley had taken a battering with all the water that had come down. Again another photo from Shanes excellent pre race briefing information. The organization behind this was excellent.

Heading up the the saddle became more about finding a route then running. However once the saddle was obtained… The view was awesome. I took the time to take a few pics, and by that point I had finally caught Al and we got to have a chat.

And eat some snow....

Before heading off to finish the climb.

After losing a few places we headed for the high spot and the joys of the extremely steep decent. I wish I had taken photos. Running through knee deep snow in places. It was stunning. A real winter wonderland. However, it did not do to lose focus. Check out the elevation chart in the first image and you can see how quick we got to the bottom! Slippy fun.

Heading out onto the Orongorongo river, I was by myself, and wishing I wasn't. Keen direction sense is not my strong point. I got a little lost in the scale of the river basin, trotting along, figuring down was good. It came as a mighty relief to see another one of the fine marshals standing at the trail head.

The Orongorongo trail is certainly a fine bit of single track. But after 20+km of hip/knee smashing terrain I was not in the frame of mind to appreciate it fully. The knowledge of my thermos of hot chocolate in my car was burning a hole in my brain.

However the body held up and I even managed to claim a few extra places on the way to the finish.

I would rate this run above the Tararua Traverse for sheer beauty now I have finally done both.

Al did a sterling job on finishing. Not bad for a first time effort with the largest trail run to date only being half the distance we completed today. I had the advantage on Al having completed a few of these kinds of events before. Knowing what you are in for is a big help.

The marshals were incredible. Sterling effort for them to have been out there. I tried my best to thanks them, but I am sure at times it came out like some drunken slur.

Amazing day, I would recommend it to anyone.

Sam (aka the now rooted Rammer)

Welly Six Pack Ride - Sun 4 Sept

2011-08-16T15:08:00.004+12:00

Attention Nutsacks

Six great Wellington Peaks, Six lagers in your pack. Lots of lulz.

Sifty, social mtb ride on Sunday 4th September.

Meeting at the Evan's Bay Wind Needle at 10am.

Miramar for Mt Crawford, pump track lulz and a lager.
Mt Vic for steep roots, city views, and a lager.
Mt Albert for views across the Straight, maybe 4X lulz and a lager.
Hawkins Hill for no lulz as it involves riding the Tip Track or maybe up Long Gully... and a lager.
Wrights Hill for a WW2 bunker lager to lube us up for Deliverance.
Makara Peak for the quintessential Wellington peak experience, and a lager.

Regular trail builders in attendance will have their beers covered by Bushlove. Email me with your preferred lager brand (which comes in cans) and it will be at the Wind Needle for you ;o)

Open to everyone. Moar the merrier. If you only feel up to certain peaks or even just one, bring the appropriate number of lagers and stay in touch on the mobile to arrange collection on route.

If drinking lager and mtbing doesn't fit your profile you can always bring alternative beverages or low alcohol lager and just do the number of press ups at the summits pre-determined by the real men in attendance.

Will consider a back up date of following weekend should weather be ridiculous.

I wonder who we'll see?

Maybe Moses?

Random chubby guy off sitcoms?

Elite Tony?

Harry Potter?

Thanks
Dave

PS - This is likely to be one of the last rides both me and Big Al Crossling get to do before we move overseas (me Brisbane, Al Vancouver) and it would be great to see some friendly faces and have a good day on the trails.

PPS - Will place this on Vorb and BLR Farcebook also as I don't have everyone's email address.

The Perfect Sift

2011-08-14T16:44:00.006+12:00

Wonny Jaghorn, Rammer, Elite Tony, Hundy Bennett, Lynsky, Davo, and a token asian had a drizzly rendezvous at the Wainui hill car park at 7am this morning. And after calling each other ballbags, nutsacks and other misc mocking, they headed down Beeline.

Now acclimatised with a fresh coating of trail all over our legs, backs, faces and horses, they sifted gently along to the mighty rollercoaster to remind ourselves just how awful the PNP XC start up it is. Then we slid into the Towai Traverse to admire the hard labours and handiwork of the Wainui Trail Project. Its a great trail. We thought the tight twisty character was great. And there is an inspired little bit where you can hop up a large root step or go around the tree on a track formed using a big lateral root. You'll know it when you see it. Minty. It had plenty of roots and stones which hopefully can be left in for a natural surface if it wears well enough.

Tigs dabbed his feet a few times because he spends too much time on the rod. Sorry, the road. Dave slipped past him every time as he doesn't distill his masculinity with frequent tarmac outings. Although in Tigs defense, he does race the road in mtb shoes and a peaked helmet to annoy the roadies in Scratch/A Grade.

We had to make a few pauses for banter and to wait for Rammer and Kah, who judging by the yelps of both pain and satisfaction coming from the bush, were working through some dry entries. After some entertaining gossiping along the singletrack line, we whipped down Labyrinth. It is a cracking trail in its downward guise and you can really load up the pace until you pinball between a couple of trees and take yourself out - Good job Bony Tony.

Another Beeline and everyone was well into the flow of the day and really sank their teeth into it. Great traction for such a wet day. The climb up Jungles was fast. Tones on the front. Clive reckoned he was sifting, but Tones maintained he wasn't. But Davo hung on grimly to the wheels, so it can't have been that quick.

Tony used to attend an elite school for young gifted athletes in his youth. We'll call it the ESGA. In that school was the top Elite class. In the class there was some separation to four groups. And within the most Elite group in the most Elite class in the ESGA was a secret Elite society of the most Elite athletes ever seen. Tony was the captain of that group. We can't see Tones doing well in M1 this year though.

While Dave hung on for Jungles, he got dispatched up Labyrinth along with everyone else struggling to sift while Elite Tones and Hundy Clive rode race pace + up the hill.

The rain was still holding off and after a little more jawboning, the intrepid adventurers hurled their sodden selves down 491. A little slippy across the roots and Dave took a spill, knocking the same arm as Tiger did on Labyrinth. Now they will have to do some sort of Dutch Rudder work around for their Subway lunch meets. A few dry-entry yelps heralded the arrival of Rammer and Kah and the gang sifted on throgh to the family loop.

While waiting for Sam and Kah in the waste ground (they had actually gone the right way) Dave fixed a flat (slowly) while Tony offered pineapple lumps around. Davo had his muddy hands full with the fix so Tony offered to push one into his mouth. Tones was also kind enough to offer him a pineapple lump... Wonny Jaghorn serenaded the chaps with some didgeridoo on his handlebar and then everyone sifted back up to the car park. On the way the Lynskinator proved his metal with some aggressive passing and dropping the hammer to move away. The gents let him go. He needs a win. Have you seen his clothes? He looks better without them anyway. Phwoooooaaarrrrrrrr!!!!

The heavens opened as the men were packing the cars and it was off to Macdonalds just in time for last orders on the breakfast hungerbusters. More banter, cheap laughs and a thoroughly soiled imitation leather couch, then home.

There nothing quite so magnificent as getting out on the trails with your mates.

Bushlove at the BP races

2011-08-04T11:03:00.000+12:00

As soon as the weather starts getting warmer, the first tests to see who was hibernating over winter, and who has been following Rules #5 and #9 are starting to rolls in. Following the always fun Kapiti series is the upcoming Balfour Pennington series.

This long running Wellington road fixture is made even better this year as it is sponsored by the good sorts at Wheelworks (their euro-roadie-style already filtering down in the new posters). An even bigger bonus to race (and to marshall) is the end of series prize of a brand new set of the Flite 01 wheels.

Rumors have it that Tony "Sandbags McTiger" Keith will be shedding his moniker and racing with the big boys. Clive "Angry Faced but Cuddly" Bennett has been spotted practicing his grimace in reflective car windows while coasting to work. Sam "Sammy Rammer Sanchez" Dungey might make a guest appearance by riding in his stealth commuter gear - complete with rear mudguard.

With the dynamic BLR duo definitely ready to out-camp all the roadies out there, it will be a good show. What will you tell your grandkids when they ask you, "Where were you when Tony finally came out?".

More racing less modelling photo shoots.

2011-07-23T21:59:00.010+12:00

Haven't done a lot of mountain bike racing of late, been too busy with press interviews and glamour modelling photo shoots, so decided to sort all that and get dirty and enter a round of the NDuro, so packed up Trudi and the kids under the guise of a "family holiday" and put the trusty Anthem into the boot.

After a quick stop to take in the view of the magnificent Mount Ruapehu on a stunning morning,

we arrived at the Alpin motel in Rotorua a truely great motel where the owner appreciates the needs of mountain bikers , with his fine hot pools and friendly service, hes even installed a MTB Wash pit and always invites us back after the race for a hot shower before we head home.

Jonny Waghorn/ Wonny Jaghorn can never remember which also decided to rip up the vegas trails on his single speed, so he and the lovely Belinda also stayed at the Alpin, for dinner we went to a wonderful rotorua restaurant and enjoyed the local bugers from the childerns menu.

Actually we didn't, the place looked shit, so went next door for a nice Thai meal.

Race day arrived and it was freezing cold, -1 on the mercury but the sun was shining, was going to be a awesome day. At the race start there was a large contingent from Wellington, presumably all coming up to score the free PNP entry, damn I thought I would be a shoe in for that.

Race starts and I got off to my usual poor start, about 20th into the first long climb, but felt strong so reached into the suitcase and pulled out a large serving of "Joels Tempo tm". I kept passing riders until I came into free air and up ahead all I could see was Garth, T-Rex, and Anton, I passed Garth rolling 8rpm in probably a 42/11 and scampered off up the track to the summit and into the first single track, however my lack of skill and local knowledge soon saw Garth steaming up from behind. I thought great I will stick with him for a bit and I did for 10 seconds before he steamed off into the distance never to be seen again. A couple other riders passed before we hit some more fire road where I could again use some more "Joel Tempo tm" and pulled a couple of riders back with some big ring action on the flat and rolling sections.

I sifted by myself until we hit Big Chevy and again, not knowing the track came across a huge drop off, I barely had time to consider the merits of Tubular vs Clincher tyres for my wheelchair before I was dropping vertically down the face of it, over I might add a large missing chunk, a quick undie check and a look over my shoulder at the cliff face saw a wee smile appear.

I head a panting from behind, no not the usual Bushlove kind, but I had been caught by someone who sat in for about 10 mins before passing when I monged up a small section, it was one of Wellingtons best and NZ Juniors Rep Tom Bradshaw, what a stormer.

Myself and Tom worked very well together for the next hour or so, hitting up the flat sections, I noted a top speed of 60kph on one occasion, until we came into the recently logged trail with a very slick base to it, I monged around a few times with my well choosen summer race tyres and had a couple of small crashes and lost track of Tom and got caught by another rider which pushed me back to 7th place overall, but importantly 1st Masters by about 13mins which I managed to hold till the finish. The 16yr old and the Dinosaur took out 1st and 2nd, with the World Champion SS Legend Garth in 3rd.

On the way home my lovely wife had booked a bach on Himatangi beach for a couple of days, very lovely,
We made shapes on the beach...

and swung on a swing (Yes the kids did have to queue up for a turn).

A nice ending to a smashing long weekend.

Lycra Lovers.. Beat em' Join em' or Both???

2011-07-20T16:27:00.018+12:00

It was that time of year again when everyone walks around complaining of the cold wet weather and not being able to get out to do any training. WTF, get your woolies on and get out in the cold. My favorite would have to be Tom (Nana Kitted Arm Warmers) Lynsky.

Tom you sure are a unique man, we love ya and your different dress sense.

So about 2 months back Angry Bennett drove the hard word home that we need to get back into some of these lunchtime "Smashfests" we used to have (Nothing like Aldred Manor date night) more like Man on Man Grinding... Errrr Ummmm ok similar to Aldred Manor Date night. I digress, so we started up the lunchtime road rides which are in essences 1hr 30mins of mashing pedals while evil eying the rider next to you. Points were given for King Of The Mountain and Sprint points. The usual suspect would turn up (Angry, Tigs and Joel "Dirty Filthy Roadie") with the odd piece of fresh meat thrown in for the pack ravaging. After the first month we all decided this was once again the way to improve our races, so the ride was back on the weekly calendar.

Which brings me to my first race of the season the Kapiti Road Winter Series Lycra Lovers, Race #3. After a little convincing from fellow Smashfest colleagues I decided to step up to A Grade, putting my own meat on the block as lycra fodder. A perfect day dawned and we set off at a leisurely canter. Thinking if we continued at this pace, Tom's Nana could have knitted a whole rugby team some of those snazzy arm warmers before we crossed the finish line. Lap 1 of three and I was enjoying the odd bit of banter going on at the front of the pack. Lap 2 saw Stu Holtham and Silas Cullen steam off the front never to be seen again, closely followed by Daniel Waluszewski (Which sounds like some Swedish massage maneuver), and the way he rode off the front left the rest of the bunch feeling like we have been Swedish Massaged with a rotary hoe.Lap 3 and I was finally learning the courtesy of riding in a bunch, which included being told to go easy on the braking at the back and to slow down when I hit the front... What The....?!?!?!? I'm confused. Brake but don't brake, right got it...! Feeling strong coming into the last few corners I pulled the brainless Mountain Bike maneuver and ripped off the front, 50mtrs clear I sat their waiting for the sprint to start... and start it did. As the Lycra Vacuum Cleaner started up and sucked me in, I held on as best I could to only get past by 2 other riders, Stoked!!! Not sure what happened to Silas Cullen but I'll take the 5th in A Grade and a big smile on my face.

Was great to catch up with some of the usual suspects Ashley "The Media Whore" Burgess, Kane "Good Cop/Bad Cop" McCollum & Rae Rae "The Huck Legend and Tattoo'd Beauti" Morrison (Down from Jafa Land to burgle C Grade)

Great day out by all, looking forward to the BP Road series in just over a week.

Cheers
Tigs

Kicking Sand In Your Face

2011-07-07T20:06:00.004+12:00

Sandbagging.

From Wikipedia:

Deceiving someone by pretending to be weak.

Sandbagging (racing), a driver deliberately drag races or qualifies slower than what the car can actually perform

Sandbagging (budgeting), a manager deliberately overstates financial requirements with the intent of coming in under-budget, thus being praised.

Sandbagging (golfing), a player deliberately plays poorly until establishing a handicap and then raises his money bets, using the established handicap to unfairly win

Sandbagging (climbing), a climber describes a route as being easier than it actually is

Sandbagging (chess, Go, billiards or other such games), a player who deliberately lowers his competitive rating, in order to play in a future event with a lower rating and consequently have a better chance to win.

Slow play (poker), deceptive play in poker

Sandbagging (fantasy sports), a manager intentionally talks down certain players to trade at a discounted "price".

Basically sandbagging is bullshitting about and downplaying one's ability. In biking it is generally applied to downplaying one's ability prior to a race. Classic sandstorm material might include:

"I've got a cold/flu/std/one lung and I shouldn't really even be here. No result from me today"

"I haven't been doing any riding. I'm too busy with work"

"I've put on heaps of weight and my brakes are dragging. I'll just bring up the rear"

"Save me some view from the top. It'll probably all be gone by the time I get there"

And perennial favourite:

"I'll just be happy with a top 10"

There are many masters of the art of sandbagging practicing around Wellington. And many of them have a camp pink BLR jersey in their wardrobe. Probably the worst offender is Tony Keith.

Its no secret that Tony trains. Hard. Has a coach (albeit a lanky camp roadie one), shaves his legs and can beat a lot of the fellas racing Elite. Tones has, in his youth, actually attended a school for gifted elite athletes.

Tones to Clive earlier today:

"Angry you are now the Top Dawg, Elite is where it is at for you. I'll stick to losing Master 1 this year"

We nearly chocked on the sand and couldn't see for the swirling storm of graininess.

Bennett isn't much of a sandbagger. He posts his (record) time on the Makara Road Hill Climb Board, does sub 4hrs round Taupo and knocked out 230km on Sunday, casually racing at Kapiti in the middle of it.

Yet races M2.

He is getting away with it as he is older than Tigs. Maybe there is an unwritten rule saying that once you are over 40 you can't be peer pressured into racing Elite. Still we can try. Although it will be hard for his kids to see him come away from a race without the customary winner's medal.

So, what will August bring. More epic monthly sandstorms as the boys talk about how badly they will suffer in age grade, only to demolish everyone, then feign disbelief at the result? Or will we see some genuine, hearty, competitiveness. Fighting for position in the top grade? We'll see!

Wainui Six - Trip' Flip - Pool Fool - Wet The Bed

2011-06-04T18:10:00.010+12:00

Thanks Jono Baddiley for most viewed pic on Facebook

Thanks Jordan Moss for great pic!

A couple of weeks ago I had the sweet annual pleasure of beasting myself on the Wainuiomata tracks for 6 hours. It was the second running of the Wainui 6 Hour Wurldz and was once again a splendid day out on magnificent trails and ran safely and like clockwork thanks to the wonderful event team, especially Paula, Geoff & Riley Acethorp, Shane Wetzl and all the cool cats of the Wainui Trail Project.

We had a few Bushies in the mix. Ashley was riding in the intensely spectated, "Ladies Who Lunch" with Revolvers, Leigh, MJ and Amanda 'Bicycle' Jenkins. Fastest Man was riding with big brother Al, as the Santa Cruz Syndicate. Sammo was soloing on a singlespeed. His first ever ride on a singlespeed!! I was on one cog too, as otherwise I get lazy in long races and granny around.

Thanks Jono Baddiley for pic

I won't go on or long about the race as I need to get to more important matters.

I aired up an old tire the night before so naturally it was leaking. I pumped it up using Ben Murphy's attractive Lezyne pump on the start line with 2 minutes to go. But the screw on adaptor removed my valve core upon removal. Stink. The gravity of a flat tire with 40secs to go was not lost on anyone and no-one really took the piss! I got a track pump and aired it up quickly. With ten secs to go I was back on the line. But when the gun went I was so emotionally exhausted I just dropped back and rode up the track in about 300th place.

Thanks Pete Marshall for pic

I stopped after a couple of laps to put a tube in a swap my cowboy hatmet for my new fancy Bell Variant. The cowboy hat was flapping in front of my eyes whenever I shravled the gnar. Other than that my race was the usual mix of joy, purgatory and day dreams. For once I didn't crash. I loved Snail Trail and Beeline on al my laps. Great trails, and you get smoother and smoother until at about 4 hours or so you get sloppier and sloppier! I also enjoyed hitting the step-up jump at the marqueee every lap. The Lynskinator followed me over it without realising what he was doing once. Great way to nail your first jump, blindfolded.

Thanks Jono Baddiley for pic illustrating my suffering

I was really out of condition so couldn't hope to hold on to the fast boys, but had a great ride and was fortunate enough to sneak 3rd SS behind epic rigid restroom raider Beardie Sharpe, Nearly Sharrat and a few mins ahead of the Lynskinator.

Thanks Jordan Moss for pic of random Coronation St extra

Sammo did a magnificent ride on his first SS outing. Everyone was gobsmacked that it was his first time on it. Several hours in I passed him on Jungles and he was still out of the saddle chewing the bars like a seasoned SS pro. Rigid too.

Thanks Jono Baddiley for pic

It was a great race. It was so cool to see so many friendly faces and great costumes, particularly Sifter and Simon as Little John and Robin Hood, Paul's BA Baracus, the Chips Cops and of course the delectable Ladies Who Lunch (in the PM ;o).

But in other news:

This week a keen kiwi lad called Jed Middleton made the world's first ever triple backflip. The video must have been played so many times around the world. It beggars belief. The lad must have stones like church bells.

But that wasn't the only physical feat of enormous prestige completed recently. In the bizarre world of shallow diving, a new record was set at 11m drop into a 30cm deep paddling pool. Yes. 11m and 30cm.

This chap did hold the record. His record setter in this video is magnificent. But I can't help but notice how he appears to be less than confident and even enters the small amount of water with poor form, bending a leg.

Enter Leonidas Of Sparta, reincarnated as a mad American professor, who whilst in Norway nails the same, but from 11m. Perfect form, outrageous, victory battle cry. Fabulous. That is how it is done. Celebrate your victories like you mean it.

This will be the new planking, mark my words.

And to conclude this evenings rambling; My lovely wife recently 'purchased from the internet' the new album by that Chris Brown. The sub-man who gave Rihanna a piece of his temper. The little worm has a song called "Wet The Bed". Now I am unsure if this is supposed to be a joke or some sort of parody, but the lyrics are out of this world. Are these the kind of songs our youth are getting down to? This presentation of his non-Spartan credentials seems to suggest that this is indeed a serious song. Brilliant. What a worm.

Person most likely to cry with laughter watching this - Trudi Bennett.
Person most likely to sing this to his wife on date night - Tony Keith.
Person least likely to ever sing this, ever - Manly John Randal.
Person most likely to sing this song to John Randal - Oli Brooke White.

"I'm gonna make you drip, drip, drip...."

Mt Isobel Challenge

2011-05-30T18:44:00.004+12:00

After months of inactivity I was in desperate need of a hit out before winter. With not much happening on the mountain bike front I had to widen the search to a bit of multisport. With my bike skills and a love of rainbow thermals it's a natural fit. After all Bushlovers are always keen to try new things although unlike Davo I decided to pick running over nipple clamps and lead acid batteries.

So Mt Isobel challenge it was. Put on by the good folks at Hanmer events it was sure to be good. It involved a short canter up Mt Isobel then a bike to try claw back the inevitable humiliation. The run was only 8.6km so how hard could it be? Looking at the topography bloody hard was the answer as it climbed to 1316m in under 6km. I hadn't touched my running shoes in a year and wasn't even sure they were worn in as I can count the times I've used them on one hand. The bike on the other hand looked a cakewalk with 24km of gravel road with lots of downhill but almost no climbing.

Being well and truly sick of the study I should be doing we busted up to Hanmer after work on Friday to make a weekend of it. Carbo loaded with a few curries then an early night. It can be a little nippy this time of year so I was glad the morning was pretty mild with no frost and not a sign of snow on the mountain. Dropping my bike up to the transition pre race it was pretty windy at Jacks pass but otherwise conditions were ideal.

Lining up on the start line I had no idea how fast to go. I had a few km of road to sort myself out then it was on to the climb proper. This is when the pain began...

At first the track was runnable but as it progressed (and I became more knackered) a quick walk was the best I could manage at times. Some bits were proper steep requiring a little climbing on all fours. Looking at my watch I'd been going 20min and I had never been in such pain. Maybe I'm doing it wrong but I've never been in such a state on a bike. Running is proper hard.

To counter the pain was some fabulous views over the Huranui. As I continued to climb the track changed from native bush to sub alpine tussock to barren scree.

After nearly an hour (or to be precise 56:18) the summit finally came. I was too tired to celebrate it in bushlove fashion. (and wasn't wearing incredibly gay shorts and an action man survival belt)

If I thought running up was hard running down proved to be even worse. Within 10m I'd turned my ankle and soon was suffering from some nasty stitch. In the space of 2km and a drop of nearly 500m I'd managed to fall a number of times and lose over 4 min on the leaders. Downhill runnings a skill I sorely lack.

I was well stoked to reach transition at all. In the time it takes most people to get ready in the morning I was off on my bike. I knew I would have to push hard to save some face so put it in the big ring and got to work. While 24km long the bike was all gravel road with almost no climbing so there was little chance to impress. In the end I reeled in 14 people and put in a semi respectable 5th place for the ride in 1:01:09

So 14th overall and 9th in open men in a time of 2:14:41. Would have been nice to have been able to trim a minute or so off to get up in 5th but my run and in particular the downhill was to big a deficit to recover from. It was really good to give something different a crack rather than the usual xc jeyboi action. While I don't think I'll trade the lycra for rainbow polypros anytime soon you might see me lining up for the occasional race. The St James Challange in particular looks good.

The Accounts for the year ended 31 March 2011

2011-05-17T18:09:00.006+12:00

Accounts for the year ended 31 March 2011

The auditors have been through and are happy to sign the accounts off containing the following result.

Income: Minta
Expenses: Meh
Profit for the year: Winning
Tax: Dodged
Net profit after Tax: Charlie Sheen.

The Team found a great income opportunity in FY11 with the leasing out of Slackmeister to the Monster energy DH Team. In exchange for a paltry $9,990 (excl GST) per event, Monster gets a racer who has extensive palmares including the Masters Games XC and DH titles and performs botty grinders upon request.

Monster also benefit from his exceptional wrenching skills at a gift of a rate of $4,990 (excl GST) per day. Their gain is Wellington’s loss as Slackshanks is the go-to guy for a lot of riders. But screw them, as the yield on our arrangements is gigantic as we only pay Slacky enough to keep him in Family Buckets of the Colonel’s finest and a small selection of the more risqué naturist website subscriptions he holds.

Slackattack did brilliantly in the FY11 racing season and is in line for a portion of the $49,990 (excl GST) performance bonus we wrote into his Monster contracts.
Granted it is a pretty shit and demeaning portion, at a venomously insulting $19.00 (excl GST), but it gets him another bucket and a couple of hours sniffing around the pension-drawing lasses on his favourite sites. But all revenues go into the Team’s bullion dealing account and everyone in the team benefits after Clive has drawn his 70% management fee and the other team members (excl those on Monster secondments) have deducted their various administrative fees to the tune of 29.98%.

Another valuable line of revenue has been in Kah’s product endorsements. We are reaping a splendid $8.75HKD for every frame sold in Australasia.

Via the BLR wholly owned subsidiary, “Nick_K Looks Like Harry Potter NZ Ltd”, a total of $35,350.00 (excl GST) was received from hapless wand-waving look-a-like appearances at children’s parties, themed civil unions and the Armageddon festival in Wellington. All feedback suggests the $353.50 per appearance is cheap considering the incredible likeness and the commitment with which Kennedy does his Quiddich routine and flirts provocatively with any Ron Weasley types attending the event. So a lift to $375 per gig doesn’t seem out of the question.

Harry caught napping whilst eating at a Mexican Potter themed civil union in Feb.
Although too late to include in the FY11 accounts, the Team will also realize considerable revenue from Tony’s appearances as Tony the Tiger at key events like Singlespeed races, team relays and bar mitzvahs.

Kellogg’s are coming to the party with a valuable 199GBP per appearance, which we are taking in multiple sets of $11.99NZD disc brake pads ex CRC so we duck GST on import. Kosher.

Extensive media whoring is adding to the bottom line. Ashley even got on the TV. Wonny Jaghorn and Hundy Bennett made appearances in global publications like the Wellingtonian and Hutt News and Davo found himself on the cover of NZMTBR, although this proved to be an expense due to the bottomless coffee tab provided to Mr Patton in exchange.

The blog is trying to capture as many cool kiwi rider blogs as we can find and this will prove to be a valuable income stream once we start invoicing their owners. We reckon a good completely fair scheme is to charge based on the number of posts they do and will therefore be indicative of their position in the blogroll, driving traffic. So Oli can expect to have his accounts hit hard. Hiskey’s invoice will probably just get lost in number rounding. If we are missing any cool blog, especially from Wellingtonians, please let us know on workbanterATbushloveracing.com.

Cheers
Leonidas - Press Sec.

The Wainui 6hr Wurldz - Miss it at your peril! - 22nd May

2011-05-07T09:41:00.006+12:00

It is just over two weeks till the Wainui 6hr Wurldz race in the minta Wainuiomata Trail Park.

Rise from the couch, cast down your boyish computer game handle thing, log out from the Farcebook, throw back a glass of skim milk, pull on your bonedome and roll out.

Feel the potential in your shanks. Effortlessly stomping the inclines. You are a Trail God! Carve those corners. Fly that drop. The world slows down as you manual long through the puddle.

Endo turn 180 and roll backwards into the garage. Toss helmet across garage. It does a Bond onto the hatstand. Yes, you have a hatstand.

Throw your glory splattered garments into the machine and surf to www.bicycle.co.nz and enter the Wainui 6hr Wurldz. Do it now. The entries close on Thursday 19 May and entries are limited. There are not many left. Last year it sold out. Do it.

Get a buddy and race the duo. Or entice more buddies and race a four buddy posse. Or come and have a go if you think you’re hard enough, and go solo. Eat some nails – go solo singlespeed.

The Wainui 6hr Wurldz has a great vibe and is not to be missed. It’s low cost ($25-35) with loads of spot prizes, including some from local legends Floe and Bicycle. You ride some of the region’s best trails with some great people. There is even a $100 cash prize for best costume. So don’t be shy. Sometimes less is more – last year Lynsky would have won it with his pasty birthday suit.

You might not be used to riding for so long, but fear not. The excellent trails built by the fantastic supporters of the Wainuiomata Trail Park (www.wtp.org.nz) , such as Snail Trail, with its swooping, pumpy, radness and Beeline, with its character building challenges (the significant of which have ‘chicken routes’) will keep you entertained. And a little extra motivation can always be found on course, regardless of your persuasion.

Now you have entered online, boil the jug for a coffee and knock out a few press-ups. Press-ups make all the difference. I can now do ten in a row (on my knees). The best training you can do with two weeks to go is Jedi mind training. Imagine how you are going to feel during the event, imagine the challenges and how you will deal with them. Lots of carefully planned physical training can come undone if the day throws a few challenges your way you were not prepared for. Do a Hendrix; chop the mountain down with the edge of your hand.

See you there Trail Gods!

The Sheriff Of Bushlove County

Hogsback express

2011-05-04T18:11:00.012+12:00

I've been keen to czech out the new Castlehill tracks for sometime but due to the evils of the FRACP have only just got round to it this weekend. For those not in the know the Hogsback track is a brilliant new project by the residents of the tiny town of Castlehill. Over the last year they've built around ten km of track linking the town to Dracophyllum flat then onto the classic Craigieburn loop. This gives the possibility of a 40-50km loop of prime Canterbury's subalpine riding.

Chch was grim and dreary but by the time I had got to the Craigburn valley (via an epic steak and cheese pie in Sheffield) it was a cracking day. Its one of my favourite bits of Canterbury with some great riding, epic vistas and 5 ski fields. If was planning on hanging around I'd love to build a place up there. Due to a lack of time and probably fitness I only had time to squeeze in the Hogback and Dracophyllum flat so will have to leave the full loop for another day. Was great to out on the bike before winter sets in proper.

I won't faff on anymore so here's some pics.

A huge thanks is owed to everyone who's been involved in the project. I think they're created an iconic bit of track which is a real sampler of the best riding Canterbury has to offer. It's got great views, tussock land, beech forest, a bit of climbing, some fun downhills all in a package easily assessable to anyone with a bike and a little fitness.

Link here: http://www.castlehill.net.nz/castlehill/mtb/hogsback_mtb.htm for more information and how to get involved.

The Genderpretender & the Handjob

2011-04-28T21:31:00.007+12:00

A while back I got my grubby hands on a beautiful Ibis Mojo. My Mojo really opened up my riding and allowed me to get into much more trouble than I had previously been able to on hardtails. Everything just got easy. I became both an Ibis and a carbon fan.

But I still love hardtails. Singlespeed ones especially. The lustiest I’d ever lusted after was Tim ‘Adonis’ Wildman’s Ibis Tranny which he’d won the SS Nats on. When he gave me the whisper that it was looking for a new owner, I sold everything that wasn’t nailed down at Aldred Mansions and grabbed it. After buying the Mojo it was tough to find things that were not nailed down which could be sold. The two highest value items in the house had heartbeats and I didn’t think I could get away with that, but I got there in the end.

The Tranny is Ibis’ hardtail/singlespeed/travel bike. I’ll probably never use the travel bike feature, which is where the back end comes off to enable fitting into a normal suitcase. But the singlespeed functionality I use pretty much all the time. There is a joint acting as a pivot below the seat collar on the seatstay. Then behind the bottom bracket there is a “Slot Machine” which is where the action happens. You loosen one bolt, gently push down on the bike, which extends the chainstays via the Slot Machine. Check chain tension. Tighten bolt. By far the easiest SS tensioning I’ve come across. Totally creak free too and no loosening.

The frame is awesome. Big fat carbon tubes and smooth lines, a lot like the Mojo. It has neat removable cable stops to clean it up when not running gears and the SS dropout (which I am yet to get) has a bottle opener, because we all know from the plethora of bottle openers on SS bikes, that all SS riders take glass beer bottles into the hills and crack them open on their bikes.

I built it up with a shortish stem for an ‘XC’ bike – a 70mm Thomson, and it keeps the steering nice and nippy and is great on the steep stuff. Its got a nice wide Sunline flat bar too. I think hardtails look more business-like with flat bars. Its got some Hope hubs with Flows. People scoffed at my heavy rims, but I wanted bomber strong and uber stiff wheels which could jump and get thrown about a bit. The Flows are not heavy anyway. They just look heavy next to very light Stans rims like Crests and wotnot. I am not even allowed on some of the lad's wheels as I weigh over 80kg. That is just wrong.

She/he has a straight 2:1 gear. Its is sometimes a little tall around Wellington, but making it easier would mean tossing in a man card and I don’t want to do that. So it’s a strong build, not a weight weenie build, although the light frame would certainly enable a low weight build if it was my thing.

I banged some gears on it the other day for the Porirua Grand Traverse and it was the fastest bike I’ve ever raced. Although the only other decent hardtail I’ve raced was a 1999 S-Works, so things have come quite a way! I looked forward to taking the gears off though to reveal its true beauty again. Although no sooner than I did so, Boner Toner whisked it off to Keith Manor, put stripes on it and raced it at the SS Nats in Napier. Tones got a fine 5th place which was fantastic.
Credit - BluedogSS Facebook. Thanks

She/he is a mint ride. Its hard to say if She/he is my favourite over the Mojo. It depends on the day. I love how stiff the Tranny is when giving it the beans. I stamp and she goes and goes.

Is owning two Ibis bikes enough? Haha, I lol at you – of course it is not enough. So what is it I want now? An HD? The new SL-R? Maybe a Hakkaluggi for the Crosstafarian's Wellington CX series?

No. I want Simon Kennett’s early 90’s Ibis steel tandem.

Simon and I ended up on the same initiative/workshop the other day around the relationship between buses and cyclists in Wellington. The wily, wiry fellow bought along an extremely rare Ibis tandem. I made my starting bid at an insulting $500, hoping maybe Simon didn’t actually know anything about bikes. But it turned out that Simon has some knowledge of these maters and he lolled at my offer. By the end of the session I had upped my offer to about $1,500 for this ancient iron horse, but he was still not budging.

If I come into any money I will be straight round to Kennett Mansions with my next offer. I need that bike and it needs a good restoration and Simon is too much of a hippy to do it. He would probably cover it with something sustainable like hemp paste and bits of vegetable.

Just look at the wonderful handjob. Snakes alive – it is too marvellous to even bear witness to without weeping.

After all this lyrical waxing you could be mistaken for thinking I was sponsored by Ibis or something. But alas no. Ibis (and Santa Cruz) bikes are bought into NZ by Mike at Hyperformance Hardware, and he mostly supports athletes rather than Whopper scoffing, chubby weekend warriors. Mike is an excellent ambassador for his brands and has been brilliant at dishing out all the right advice to me on many occasions. Thanks, Mike!

See you on the trails (every few weeks when I get a chance).

Cheers
Dave

Where are the frickin' keys? : Porirua Grand Traverse 2011

2011-04-16T11:39:00.010+12:00

The PGT mtb ride is an awesome, non-technical XC smash from Battle Hill, across Belmont into Porirua. Nowadays most courses have a good amount of technical riding and people pull away and drop back as their technical skills come into play - but the PGT is just a drag race where shanks of steel, massive hearts and lungs like bin bags rule over the ability to pop wheelies.

It clashed with the Super-D on Mount Vic this year which was a real shame. But Tiger, Dave and NCX2 decided to spare the downhillers the competition and race the duathlon. We bought in some excellent ring-ins with the goal of doing well in the Team Duo and the Mixed Team Duo.

We had:

The Elites [NCX2 and Stephen Day]
The Sifters [Tigs and Glen Hughes]
Fatman & Robin [Davo and Jo Doherty]

>> Banter and warm up for 8am start. Plenty of friendly faces.

>> Davo drops chain off line but gets back to the front asap and tells T-Rex to pull his head in and get in behind so Dave can cross stream in lead pulling epic bedroom face, to reinforce to his spectating wife that he is not as washed up as everyone says.

>> Timmo also pulls a face depicting his usual role in the bedroom.

>> Davo quickly gets overtaken by Tim, Clive, Tigs, Nick Waring, Marcel, Trevor, their neighbours, tennis partners, some old people and some cats.

>> Gaps appear and get stretched. Timmo, Clive and Nick control the front.

>> Super loose gravel logging road downhills threaten hardcore skin loss, but take no victims.

>> Dave catches Trevor, Trevor drops Dave.

>> Clive goes wrong way and maintains he now has to ride with 'slower riders' in order to stay on course. Still at front of race though.

>> Nick Waring drops T-Rex and takes the mtb win.

>> Tigs and Marcel, dsitracted by each other's impressive calves and gate jumping skillz, head the wrong way in Bothamly Park to spend 5 minutes alone together.

>> Trevor, closely followed by Dave, steal Tigs and Marcel's positions.

>> Transition - The runners take off across the park and up Colonial Knob.

>> The boys return to the car. One of the runners have the keys. But which one?

>> The boys sift to the Titahi Bay beach to bromance on the sand and cheer on the runners. Stephen comes through first, with Glen hot on his heels. Tigs runs along side "Have you got the car keys?.. Tell me where they are and you can have some water..."

>> Marcel and Tim come past. Clive and Dave cheer and nod respectfully. Tiger drools and jibbers on about what amazing specimens of manhood they both are.

Marcel

Tim

Tony Keith

>> Jo is not far behind and comes through fresh and pissed off for going the wrong way for a few minutes. She looks strong though. And little.

>> Glen pulls Stephen in and holds the lead to the finish. Bushlove Sifters win the duathlon for the seond time, narrowly missing out on their record time.

>> Stephen comes in second. Bushlove Elites are the first losers.

>> Jo holds off Penny from the wife swapping Drew/Stewart A-Team, to take the mixed duathlon win.

>> Good free BBQ and Jo and Davo get massages from Cindy from "Muscles Knead Therapy". Thanks Cindy! Tigs gets pummelled by the "Proactive Physio" dude.

Another awesome day out. We'll definitely be back. The drag race mtb and brutal run are fantastic fixtures on the local calendar. Now will any of us try a kayak to do the full thing next time?

The next outing like this is the Crazyman in May. Not sure about anyone else, But Davo and Jo are back in action with Liam 'Vin Diesel' Drew kayaking, as the fairy tale team, "Beauty & the Beasts".

Regards
Leonidas of Sparta
BLR Press Sec & Manscaper

White Man Can't Jump

2011-04-04T20:57:00.007+12:00

1 second! 1 small but critical second is all that stood between me and the win at the inaugural Mt Victoria Super D. Don’t get me wrong I’m happy with race, but if there is one famous phrase to explain where that second was on the race track: White man can’t jump!

After being drummed up for a few months, Sunday April 3rd rolled around (along with an extra hours sleep) and the first of hopefully many Mt Vic Super D’s was on. As I mentioned Super D takes the nice bits of XC, combines them with the fun of DH and throws up a short but sweet mostly downhill race. Mt Vic is traditionally the home of many XC races including nationals, so instead of burying myself for 2 hours in the Mt Vic pines, a quick 5 min sprint was a nicer way to zoom through the trees. If Makara had a great turnout for its Super D, Mt Vic’s would have to be outstanding for it’s first effort; somewhere around 150 riders!

Onto the race. To say I hadn’t practiced the course that much is an understatement; I had been hammering it all week. After throwing on a brand new Bicycle DH top (complete with Amanda Jenkins name on the back to confuse a few people), off I launched into the track knowing every stone, root and corner that was going to greet me over the next 5mins, but what didn’t help was my lack of affection for the time I would spend in the air on each jump; terrifying for an ex-roadie like me. Even so, they all had to be hit if I was keen on a shot at the win.

The first section was a nice fresh track built just in time for the race with oh yes, a nice decent jump in the middle of it. After scrubbing a bit of speed on the approach I cleaned it smoothly, released my death grip on the bars, rolled the next two bumps, then did what a XC gimp does best; turn my pedals hard! The next section is basically what we use often in XC races, just in the opposite direction. Apart from almost shoulder charging a tree, this went by all smoothly. Next up the Bomb drop which had been causing all sort of talk for the last week on Vorb.

Great pic by Jordan Moss, made my jump look madcore!

Unfortunately after some great track work on this section during the week by the Wellington MTB crew, the quicker line was to just ride around it to set up the next rooty section; if that hot line had been blocked off it would have made for a wilder ride. After a smooth run through the roots and ruts around the Bomb drop section, the middle section beckoned; this where I had to make my time up as it was a solid minute of pedalling much to the DH’ers dislike.

With my heart in my hand and fire spreading in the legs I just buried myself over the knoll, along with a motivational cheer from my friend Adrian who reminded me how much money I was racing for: $500! A quick descent back down the other side followed, including a testing roll-over into the football field and more cheers this time from fellow Bushlovers and the girlfriend. Even though I had only been racing for 3 mins I was absolutely smashed by this stage, but luckily it was completely downhill now.

I can remember many a crash on the water tower track, rain or shine. Not this time, just a clean run including the shortcut to bypass Ricky’s punter long line (he’ll do anything to make a track easier). Straight across the road that on a normal day would involve a bit of car dodging (thanks Marco and his crew for holding the traffic up) and yes, I have seen people play chicken on that corner. Through the rooty hill section and onto the jump that proves I suck at jumps.

Another top pic Jordan, too bad I'm not smooth like Hadley

Not that it was a big jump but rather the speed you could get into it was the scary thing. Hadley showed me how cool it could look whipping it in practice, but I took the XC line strolling around the side (at least I hit it on my race run). After breathing a sigh of relief and negotiating another set of roots it was onto the part where everyone wanted to look their best; past all the spectators down the chute off the road, heading down to the skills field (at full noise to look cool of course). Through the final 100 meters of trees, quick jump/dip into the very bottom field and across the line; 4mins and 26sec of Super D action!

Instead of finding out how I did the organisers were crafty and hid the results from everyone until prize giving. After a clean run down the hill I was hoping for a top 5, but when Marcus (N-Duro races, did the timing) dropped a hint that I did a good ride hopes raised that I did in fact get a top placing. 5 min’s later and I found out that my run was good enough for 2nd place, 8 tenths of a second too slow for the $500 prize! I’m not going to lie, I’m gutted I didn’t quite do it after coming so close, but to beat a rider like Kurt Lancaster down a hill involves a perfect run that also requires jumping better then a punter XC jey boy.

Will the Mt Vic Super D be on next year? I hope! Will I do more Super D races? Of course! Will I do DH races? Um, think I’ll give that a bit more time.
I really have to thank all the crew involved in the 2011 Mt Vic Super D, from what I saw it was a roaring success. The tracks were mint, the weather was spot on, the organisation was second to none and everyone that rode looked to be enjoying themselves.

Time to go buy a jumps video!
(Ricky, you still need to beat me in DH/Super D race)

Credit to the anonymous photographer, great pic's.

Sisters Are Doing It For Themselves - Revolve XC1

2011-03-27T13:52:00.012+13:00

The wonderful Revolve girls, Marjolien and Ashley, held the first round of their three race series today at Makara Peak. It is the second year running for them, and once again heaps of keen Wellington women signed on to experience the fabulous singletracks of the Peak and ogle local 7ft studs, Ranger Steve and John Randal.

Amongst them were Bushlove babes, Belinda and Amie, being eagerly supported by their lucky Spartan men, Jonny and Dave, plus kids, Lucy, Sophie, Ella and George.

First race for Amie and nearly first race for Belinda. Both were very nervous but naturally feeling many times stronger than they had ever previously experienced, due to their natural choices of BLR Power Tunics.

Both Belinda and Amie had gamely entered the Queen of the Mountains class, which required them to do a full tour of the park, climbing Aratihi to the summit before dropping back in via North Face, JFK, Smokin, Swigg and Starfish; all some of the girl's favourite tracks.

The gun (Ashley's devastating Arizona yell) went and they were off, charging (momentarily) up Allington Road to the Rimu trail. After some woots, whistles and shouts of encouragement they disappeared up the road to battle the course while Dave, Waghorn and their offspring returned to the school for some epic basketball, scooter tailwhips and jandal sport.

See Waghorn attempt to get the ball from the hall light fitting with nothing but a regular 'off the shelf' jandal. He took it on his fourth attempt. Excellent work.

The girls returned looking every bit as dirty as Dave and Jonny like to imagine them to be. The tracks had clearly seen a bit of rain the week before. Everyone got into the traditional telling of tales about their race.

Belinda showed us how she rides the downhils:

Everyone had a great time and there were heaps of great spot prizes. The Revolve girls had an inspiring quote to read before the race started which was a really cool idea. Plenty of baking had been done. Most of which got massacred by Waghorn and Davo while the ladies were racing, and they were shooting jandals. They remit their apologies to anyone who failed to get a cookie. They were apparently delicious.

A fantastic effort from Amie, Belinda and all the women out there today. And as ever, a magificent morning's willy-free racing from Revolve.

Next races are 10 April in Wainui, and 1 May at Polhill in the city.

Czech it out: http://revolvetraining.co.nz/involve/womens-mtb-series-2011/

Leonidas of Sparta
Bushlove Press Sec.

Super D - Best of Both Worlds

2011-03-22T21:47:00.003+13:00

Some days you just can’t be bothered going for a ride! Crawling up a hill, sweat running into your eyes and a chain that keeps reminding you it needs some TLC. But on Sunday I still wanted to go for a ride, just without a hill in it. Answer = Makara Peak Super D.

The Super D format of racing is really gathering strength at the moment. It takes the best from DH and XC race formats, combining them in a format where lycra clad riders might have a chance of keeping up with the groms when the track points down. If us sifters in Bushlove can’t actually win a proper DH race (save for the almighty ‘DH God’ Ricky), I think a Super D win will be satisfying enough.

Rocking up at lunchtime after a lazy Sunday morning, it was nice to chat with my fellow XC racers who did the rally in the morning, especially when I haven’t even raised a sweat and they had been through 2hrs of pain riding UP and down tracks around the Peak. After signing on the dotted line and passing over my race fee/ donation to the good folks at Makara Peak Supports Club, it was off to the summit for the afternoons entertainment (damn it, no shuttle).
I must admit I pooh poohed the course a bit during the week, thinking it was too easy and not gravity orientated enough; how wrong I was, it turns out it was the most enjoyable 15mins on a bike!

For those who know the Makara tracks, here is brief rundown of the course:
Zac’s – NorthFace – JFK – Smokin – Ridgeline Ext – BigTomsWheelie – 4wd – Magic Carpet – SkillsArea – Koru – Livewires – FINISH
If there is one stand out feature of these fundraiser events that would have to be the support; from what I could tell there were 50 odd people keen on a smash down the Peak. The choice of course was the best as it brought out everyone, including recreational as well elite riders. After a bit of shooting the breeze at the summit, everyone took their place which included me reluctantly being chased by the dodgy Davo Aldred. After a quick warm up on Zac’s it was into the real part of the descent starting with NF.
Earlier in Jan I treated myself to a nice new SantaCruz Heckler from the good sorts at Bicycle and for the first time I was riding it as fast as I could down NF. After winding through the few preciously placed trees at the top, it was into the many corners that make NF so popular amongst all sorts of riders. The unusually good run of weather had made many of the corners drifty but this didn’t phase the bike sticking to every corner and reacting exactly as told. Much like the famous 80’s Mullet haircut I love to keep the front tires in business while the back end can get carried away with the party; this combo proved perfect in the many hairpins that NF has to offer, sliding the backend Steve Peat styles (I wish).

JFK is a new addition to the Peak, but already it had a nice flow to it, including a few nice big berms. The only problem I had was going around blind corners and continuing to turn long after the corner ran out; led to some close calls with the hillside! Across a 4wd and into Smokin (like NF this track popped up a year ago); similar to JFK, Smokin flows really well with a few trees to mix things up.
With Smokin dusted in about a minute, it was onto Ridgeline Extension with direction from Oli of Roadworks (who had to tell some juniors to move off the track while I zoomed through, cheers mate). More of the same along Ridgeline Ext and Big Toms Wheelie, this leading to a quick sprint along the 4wd and into Magic Carpet where I managed to catch my minute man.
Being on my Heckler with 6 inches of travel to play with, hitting one of the jumps into the skills area was a must; seeing as my skills when it comes to air time are rather lacking, the safer option of the medium drop kept me happy without breaking another bone. With a quick loop of the skills bowl it was onto Koru, which for the first time involved it being ridden in reverse. No I didn’t steam into any trees, but I was by all means making a meal of the easiest track on course, though it sounded like most did.
The last part of the course involved a sprint down Livewires. While a lot of the surrounding tracks have been groomed of late, Livewires still has a good rough element to it, with the odd jump and berm thrown in. With a smooth run and no lie down moments (unlike Davo I hear ;-)), I just cruised onwards to the finish.

Being the first to finish you can never be too sure how you’ll down; you set the time to beat. One thing really struck me about this race, that being just how much you can push yourself on a downhill; only a solid 5 minutes after finishing did I actually get my breath back. After about the first dozen riders crossing the line it was promising to hear I was leading and unlike an XC race which I actually know how I’ve done as I cross the line, I had to wait until the very last rider to see if I had done it. Thankfully about an hour after starting my run it was awesome to hear I won.

So Super D’s, what do I really think? Two things: HEAPS of fun and surely going to be the race of choice for most shortly.
Next on the radar (next weekend in fact) is the Mt Vic Super D on Sunday April 3rd. Like Makara, everyone can enter, even if you don’t have a downhill specific bike. Hop on over to Bicycle.co.nz now and sign up for what will be an awesome day of riding tracks Super D style.

See you all at Mt Vic.

(apoligies for lack of photography, better luck at Mt Vic)

Karapoti, the swimming race

2011-03-10T13:30:00.007+13:00

Well thought it about time I did Poti for fun... Fun you say... how can 50km of hill drills and Bone Jarring Rock Smashing be fun??? let me elaborate little. Karapoti has this infamous ora of being one of New Zealand's longest running and punishing races. You could say a must "Add To Cart". Well that is true in a sense, but stepping back to look at it, fun does not come to mind... 3 seemingly never ending climbs, 4WD track 80% of the way and river crossings to make sure your feet never actually dry out. But this year was to be different with what event organizer Michael Jacques described as "Certainly the worse conditions I have ever seen," WOOT! Recipe for fun = Take any preconception of times and throw that out the window, Any training you have done on the flat smooth stuff "Remove From Cart", pre-laps of previous Poti races (worthless). Now add Rivers running down the trails like the dribbling mess Slacky was at the PNP Champs, Bogs the size of Dave Aldred's Ego, Braaaap! Rock Garden to steam down all bundled together on one of the BEST Full Suspension XC bikes you have ever ridden the Turner Flux. What a Riot!!!!

Short break down of my race: Yawn!!!
The gun went and I managed to smoke the river crossing 3rd out, only to find later if I had Nana stepped it like some...;) I would have got my mug shot in the local rag.

Started off with some Roadie styling leading into the gorge when the fun began, uncontrollable puddle hopping and eye piercing mud flicks. As we started "Warmup Climb" I found myself in the happy position next to fellow Turner Lover John Randal (Sifter) as we climbed tit for tat, heckling one an others "One Yer Right" "Turner coming through". Top of the warm up climb and Angry Clive Bennett was back looking after his fellow zimmer frame riders (Such a gentleman).

By this point I was loving the technical climbs and just working on not dabbing down. The first downhill and I opened up the taps passing a few good roadies to enter the stream at the bottom (that was now more like a river). More climbing was to be had but I still had energy in the tank to enjoy these. ROCK GARDEN ROAAAAR!!!! On Ya Right, Excuse me, Coming through... I let the Turner churn up the Garden and sail down the water soaked rocks like a glider gently lifted by a warm up draft. Next was probably the most un-exciting section of the race the Devils Staircase. Hicking my not so scrawny runners legs up Devils deemed to be a soul destroying walk to the summit, where I was greeted by friendly smiles of the watering hole crew and camera men poised to take the most unflattering photo you will ever see.

Quickly realizing I was not able to clip my shoes back into my pedals I stopped to find one of my cleats had come loose. Stopping for what one of the passing by ridders described as a "Lay down" to tighten up my ever loosening cleats (Glove off, tool out (NOT that tool), tighten cleat, tool away, back on bike). Right, all clipped in and eating up the trail again at a comfortable pace. Only to find 300mtrs down the track I had left my bloody glove behind... Back tracked to happily find it waiting patiently for me and I was off again. Queue a "Good Roadie" Clive Bennett steaming past me as he loooooves the rollers.

Big Ring Boulevard was a hoot! surprisingly tacky with the rain pelting done. I now missed the glasses I decided not to take as the mud rapidly blurred my vision. Imagine flying down a slippery 4WD trail blinking ever half second to clear your eyes, enough to be able to half see the trail ahead... GREAT FUN! then occasionally having to solidly close one of those eyes in a pirate type squint... Not so cool..

Finally arrived at Dopers where I could see Angry Bennett mashing his pedals in a violent roadie attempt to clear the bottom technical/rocky section. Only to dab down long enough for me to catch him. Thankfully for me this was a blessing in disguise as I was getting a little chain noise, enough for Angry to generously throw me his chain oil. Lubed up I watched Angry disappear into the distance never to be seen again. I continued to churned out Dopers happily pulling in a rider or two.

The final decent down Pram track was a blast as this had some what dried out enough to clock a half decent 50ish km/h. Half way down the Gorge I came across Alex Bushlove Bennett, the Bushlove trooper smashing in the 20km loop. He had also taken a leaf out of my book to have a little lye down but did so using his face and knee... Ouch!!! after checking he was head strong and sprite high I left him with a fellow 20km father and his kid (Thanks to that Father and Son combo for getting Alex down the final parts of the gorge). It was off for the last river crossing and a pleasantly welcome sub 3 on a Karapoti course that was the wettest I had ever ridden.

Karapoti, Muddy Noooooo?!?!?!?!?!

Happy to cruise in home only 1 minute behind the Elite Threshold "ET"

Till next year Poti when I'll be back with climbing legs and a hunger for a dry fast track please.

Lataz
Tigs

P.S I also give you the benefits of using a crud catch on your bike V's not. In the photo above, guess who did NOT use a crud catcher???

Wayne Hiscock & Naked Bike Chicks plus New Blogs!

2011-03-03T20:58:00.014+13:00

To compensate for the lack of traffic-worthy content here at the Bushlove Racing Blog, we like to run a Blogroll of our favourite blogs down the right side. You are probably looking at it now. Its mostly locals from Wellington with a good handful of our favourites from friends around the country. It is full of gems and probably the only reason people come back to our ramblings, as they can see all these blogs in the one place.

We recently realised some blogs had slipped our radar and have added them in...

Wayne Hiscock >>> http://www.hiskeysblog.blogspot.com/

Great new blog from Hiskey. After years of top level racing the Hiskinator is still banging away, all be it often in the Mature Man class, and has got his own blog.

His Mum has written a nice synopsis about his biking in the right column and he has a growing stash of race reports. Wayne is one of the nicest guys you will ever meat and we think he is great despite him having handed us all our arses on a platter on the race track.

Emma Johnston >>> http://emmajohnstonxc.blogspot.com/

It seems like everyone knows Emma! Her blog is a great journal of her racing exploits and aspirations. Plenty of interesting well written tales.

Emma studies in Dunedin but spent the summer in Wellington working in the same office as Davo, who offered lots of important hi-tech training advice, like: "Just get a singlespeed", "Only ride offroad" and "Eat moar MacDonald's breakfasts".

Raewyn "Hucker' Morrison >>> http://raewynmorrison.blogspot.com/

Raewyn has a blog of good race reports from her adventures around the country, starting late last year. She is a bit of a rocket and can win XC races AND do this....

Here at Bushlove Mansions, we have a sneaking suspicion that she wears custom short shorts, as there is a lot prime real estate on display in addition to a sneaky little tatoo.

We know what our audience is like and you have probably been disappointed not to have come across the Naked Bike Chicks as promised. Well in the unlikely event that Emma and RaeRae were not enough, we bring you moar MTB Girls.

While googling for the MTB Chicks riding group I came across this little gem. MTB Girls. Was I the last to find this? I hope I am the first to bring it to your attention.

This is the PREMIUM site for late 80's/early 90's ladies dressed in bad team lycra with the zips undone, or just artistically painted.

And they are with bikes, so must be bonafide mountainbikers. Try not to dwell on the proliferation of street bikes suggesting they are models. They are all mtbers and you might well see them should you plot a route to intercept the MTB Chicks, or tag along at the back of a Revolve Ride.

Night follows day.

Sun follows rain.

And who follows naked chicks?

That's right:

John 'Sifter' Randal >>> http://sifter-writes-bikes.blogspot.com/

Great blog, great writing all he time. Awesome epic endurance adventures and moar.

Sifter is AWESOME! We particularly love it when he is sporting his beard. Check out this ANIMAL!!!

Regards

Leonidas Of Sparta.
BLR Press Sec & Body Painter.

Thoughts on the Christchurch Tragedy

2011-02-27T09:25:00.003+13:00

What a nightmare. The shocking events in Christchurch are at the forefront of our hearts and minds. It is the most difficult of times as our friends and fellow Kiwi's in Canterbury deal with the devastation and loss of life. I know those of us with kids have certainly been holding them tighter these last few days.

Our Bushlove email circle was quickly lit up with inquiries as to the safety of Nick & Sarah Kennedy, especially when early reports of the hospital being evac'd were coming out and we were unsure on the reasons (Nick is a doctor). We were very relieved to find they were ok.

I've been struggling with whether light hearted, joke packed blogging is really appropriate at the moment, considering the enormity of the Christchurch tragedy. But I think some more light hearted fare should make an appearance next week. I can't see any harm in a bit of mood lifting for those who choose to look for it.

Its a bit of tough saying that "life goes on". But it does, to varying extents. There is something reassuring about routine. Although it would have been difficult for the players it was still good to see the rugby continuing during the week. The MTB National Champs is in progress in Dunedin too, and I am sure many will have struggled to find motivation for their efforts. I am attending a wedding in Canterbury next weekend and will do my utmost to celebrate with gusto and reduce the length of the long shadow cast by the earthquake. Love and family should be celebrated with vigour.

All our thoughts, best wishes and condolences to all Cantabrians in this most difficult of times. Be good neighbours. Stay strong and hold each other close.

Kia Kaha.

Ps. Don't let the memory fade. Make sure you have a plan for your family and have supplies you might need. You never know what is round the corner. This govt site is good. Read it.

News just in, someone in Bushlove can still get results

2011-02-14T23:21:00.004+13:00

Seeing as the rest of Bushlove are a seemingly big bunch of non result getting nancy boys (cept for Ash, she's so hot she doesn't even need to race), I had to add to my race calender an XC race. Whilst In Nelson for a Dh race on Fringe Hill as part of the Rabobank Direct National series, I decided to do the Xc race.

"Wait whats this you say, a DH. But Ricky, we know you as Bushloves DH god, but we didn't realise that you've gone back to DH"

This is true, Indeed these days I am racing and mechanicing for the Monster Energy Dh Team. And pulling once more the only real results the bushlove gets, with a 1st, 2nd, 3rd and now 4th over the series to date (kinda hoping I don't keep the trend going, I don't want a 5th).

But I digress, back to the XC, Gauranteed a poduim with only 3 vet1's racing, I wasn't worried. I KNEW I was going to suffer. Doing NO Xc training or riding would mean a hard day at the office. Espeshly as Uncle Derek, Jeremy and Mildie meanly made us do 5 laps. The start was awesome and I started with a hiss, but no roar and settled in straight away. And by that I mean I let EVERYONE go ahead of me. Like most of the vet 2 field. Naturally I could of destroyed them with the calves of doom, but I was in a nice mood.........yeah, that was the reason. Into the first dh and Jared (in vet 1) stacked and let me past and I was off. The other chap (who's name I can't remember) past me on the next climb, and I whipped past on the last descent of the lap. I then held a lead on him which let him get to within 50 meteres or so on the climbs.then I'd stretch on the dh's. Mocked a sprint at the end for show in true bushlove fashion.

Then I spectated for the elite race, in the proper fashion, by screaming at as many of the riders as possible. It's really amazing watching a proper race on a multilap course. Where the intensity really shows who is the best rider. As opposed to single lap races where people tend to be closer together and there are no spectators cheering people on constantly. The best riders in multilap races really do stretch out. Dirk was on fire, as Was Uberfreak Anton who caught and passed the 2nd placed elite rider and put time into him. sure he did 1 lap less, but the way he was riding, another lap was well within him, amazing!!!

This just in: All Blacks Respect the 2XNC

2011-02-13T20:55:00.002+13:00

From Angry via Reuters:

Am at concert in martinbourgh
Conrad smith the all black is sitting in front of us with his girlfriend , I just caught him talking on the phone to richie mccaw telling him the the 2xNC was sitting behind him. True.

Date Night at Aldred Manor & New Years Resolutions

2011-01-17T21:22:00.022+13:00

So as another "Date Night" rolled around, Davo worked on his form with the help of his new Christmas Charm - the "Hump-Shoe-Pro". This present was given to him by his Grandmother with a promise he would finally get more shell action than Granddad Aldred ** on viagra watching Margaret Thatcher on Youporn.

.

After a week of "Hump-Shoe-Pro" the results were outstanding. He had progressed to the "Crock-Hump" and solo to boot.
.

New Years Resolutions:
For years I have been listening to people make New Years Resolutions, WHY?!?! I ask you. Do we really need an excuse to start a fresh or kick that fitness regime into gear??? So while on my holiday break I did a small study on some of my Bushlove counter parts and friends.

Davo:
Decided for the New Year he would get fit for the Elite grade of life.
The exercise regime started but I am not sure he will be able to maintain this, for obvious male genitalure reasons.

Angry:
Decided it was time to become a "REAL Boy" and attempt to grow some facial hair. What I find hard to work out is which is the real Muff Tickler under his lip???

Fastest Man:
Went all out to do something different and went and broke his hand just in time for the Nduro Series. I can't elaborate on how he actually did it but was something along the lines of "Rubbing One Out"...? what ever that means.

Al:
Has taken over from Angry with his outlook on riding. If you can't beat them then buy your fitness.

But I fear this is called cheating...?

Kah:
Has decided it is the year of the women, so is selling off his assets for a sex change. We all saw this one coming.
Pic too XXX rated for public viewing but I can say there was much bruising.

Ricky:
Well this one did not surprise me. Ricky's New Years Resolution was to become the oldest BLR Down Hill riding in the world to win the Grom Down Hill at the North Island Champs. Unfortunately he seems to be the only one actively achieving his goals thus far.

If he can stay upright long enough:

Nick K:
Will do his utmost to stay erect through times of hardship, but I do fear that wearing Lycra will hinder his efforts.

Guest Appearance Lynsky:
Will attempt a tan that compliments his Frizby throwing skills. Love those white stubbies.

The lesson here boys and girls. Never get Davo's opinion on dating unless you like humping shoes and when riding always stay erect.

L8rs

**No offense to any elderly people should be taken from this post, except Hundy Clive.

Musings Of A Man Companion / Hawkes Bay for Angry's B'Day

2011-01-15T12:18:00.005+13:00

Multiple National Champion and Birthday Boy takes Wild XC Huck

In only our second ever Guest post, here Tom Lynsky of the epically rambling "Musings Of A Gadabout" blog, waxes on the November trip to Hawkes Bay. Cheers Lyns!

The real Gangsta Nation

I don't remember exactly what I was doing when the call went out. Angry got on the electronic mailer and sent out the memo that he was planning an 'Upcoming Huge Weekend Away'. It had all the usual BLR suspects tagged in the addresses list and a few that were CC'd in – including I, the nominated 'BLR man companion' (whatever the hell that means). It alluded to Angry's Bday and a weekend that promised hours of zimmer-frame rampaging at Eskdale MTB Forest followed closely by a prune-juice chaser and bedtime by 6pm. Naturally I was hesitant.

Sportsman &

Gentleman's Man Companion

My exposure to the BLRT had been fleeting and always in the context of cycling, so this was unfamiliar territory for me. What were these creatures like outside of the whir of freehubs? Why was I being willed into travelling with them to Hawkes Bay? Was I being abducted for BLR 'probe steaming action'? I quickly formulated a plan to take my girlfriend along with me. Not because I thought she would want to come but because she's Serbian and therefore much tougher than me, which would come in handy if Tigs had a few too many and gave me a bit of the glad-eye. In the end, my fears were (largely) unfounded. Tigs did his best to get a leg over but in the end some gentle persuasion sent him toward Davo's open arms. I actually had a whale of a time. There were a few occasions of note.

Mariska in the stratosphere above Pukeora Forest

One night we were dining in a Malaysian restaurant and Davo talked me into having the 'Rad Nar' purely because it had an awesome name. It didn't have an awesome taste. We then noticed a gaggle of older women were louder than us so clearly must've been having a better time. Spurred on by Jonny sporting the 'wagger stagger' things quickly escalated until the sly old birds were positively all over Angry, much to the displeasure of his adoring wife. I also fondly remember the discovery that there were 'mooning virgins' among us. Fancy that, they'd never bared buttocks at a stranger! You might imagine what followed. And lastly, the 'Grab Me Crossling' team cup game. I'm sure this will be documented elsewhere so I'll just quickly set the record straight in pointing out that myself and Tigs won the teams event in a heroic display of lankiness and power. Davo 'Old Hat' Aldred's team was a distant 2nd place, despite what he has been telling everyone at the water cooler.

XC Radness

After all was said and done, it was a classic weekend away. Good times, good people, and more homosexual innuendo than you can shake an uncouth lesbian at. I was chuffed to be a part of it.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Nice one Lynners!

Leonidas - Press Sec & Media Liason to BLR

A Typical Evening at Keith Mansions & Other Videos

2011-01-12T19:52:00.006+13:00

Evening,

I noticed that only Davo and I, Leonidas Of Sparta (BLR Press Sec), have posted since November so it must be time for some different tales from the Hive. But until that happens:

The producers of Toy Story 3 have included a scene in the film based around a well known event in Keith Mansions where Jacinda lures Tony into a false sense of security by asking him to model for her. Tony jumps camply at the chance and then gets nailed for taking too many leave passes. Ken, sorry, Tony, then goes next door to get a manual off the Butler which contains instructions on how to perform DIY tasks on his own.

In other news, Dave went on a hardcore solo man mission on Sunday and rather than waste time training or riding up hills, he pushed his bike around Karori Woods and tried to ride some of the bits the young people ride, with mixed results.

And why not back up this post with the sensational Rapping Weatherman. Watch for this legend's amazing use of 'end parentheses' and also the props he offers to his co-host, Diane. Smooth.

Imagine for a minute if every morning you woke up, put the TV on and got a weather rap. Every day would be a lottery jackpot.

And here where he makes spectacular reference to his suit's colour. Immaculate.

He's at it again. Not only does he feed Erica more flattery and guarantee himself her office Christmas party attentions, but he manages to bring a whistle into the rap. Flawless.

The Rapping Weatherman: Men want to be him. Women want to be with him.

A lot like "Keg Of Love On Stilts" Oli Brooke-White, but with a mic rather than a Campag corkscrew.

The nice weather just keeps on coming here in WellySparta and we hope it is the same in your little neck of the woods. Plenty of epicness coming up too, including the second round of the N-Duro Summer Series in Vegas and the Wellington MTB Champs, which even has a Super-D component so the skilled can come out and school the bright pink accented XC campers.

Happy trails

Leonidas Of Sparta - The Rapping Ancient Greek Press Sec to BLR.

Wainuiomata & Mount Lowry Rootfest

2011-01-09T10:31:00.001+13:00

Great ride last weekend.

Al, Sam, Dave and Rob met up with Sepp and Aaron who had been ditched by their guide Mr Aero Lyall, as he had to stay home for reasons aptly explained by the presentation's uber-rad sound track.

They rode Beeline and the awesome traverse of Mt Lowry. We even did some radical high speed big air BMX racing...

Sly Old DH Dawg

2011-01-09T00:49:00.003+13:00

Stop the press - Newsflash

Photos have surface proving that our main man Ricky Pinecone has either

1. Won the Nationals downhill round in Tauranga
2. Stepped in to collect something for a friend.

There were mutterings on Failbook that Rickster had been hitting the big jumps too.

Nice one Ricky - Our DH God fo shizzle.

Makara Rampage, Ice Cream Rampage & Child Juggling

2010-12-29T20:02:00.012+13:00

Its not easy to get the whole whanau out biking. Despite best intentions I hardly ever manage it, and it has become double tricky now we have young George who just turned 5 months.

My smokescreen, Amie, is getting back out on the bike after a long spell out of the saddle and wanted to head up to Makara with her friend Kristen from Vancouver. I cunningly tied it in with some sifting with Al Crozzalozza whilst a girly morning tea took place and we swapped the kids over at 2pm on the dot.

It was an awesome sunny day in stark contrast to the rankness of the day before which had put the odd unseasonal puddle on the track and added a little no-traction-action to some of the chutes.

Al and I cruised via the standard fare of Koru, Sally Alley, Missing Link, Aratihi to the summit and then sauntered along Zaks Track and headed down Vertigo which was riding really well. Then we enjoyed a foray up Trickle Falls to the waterfall with the riderfall next to it.

I'd not ridden it before and always had a crisis of confidence on my own or found myself there with both an inappropriate machine and inadequately sized stones between my legs. It feels great dropping in with the waterfall next to you. Recommended. Fine when soaking wet too, which is handy, as to my knowledge it has never been dry.

After a poke around on Rimu, AMP Connecter, Magic Carpet and Live Wires, we arrived at the car park for the hand over of the juniors. Amie and Kristen headed off whilst Al headed up to ride Deliverance and I took the ankle-biters to Karori Park for a scooter/bike/ice cream fest. Kristen's man, Rob, carried his offspring in a back pack up Wahine and down some of 98DH.

Al returned in time for ice cream. The choices of ice cream were, in grandeur, related to the ferocity of one's challenges for the day. So whilst I feasted on a Gucci White Magnum at $3.30, Al had a Lemon & Lime Splice at $2.00. When Al deploys less Shank's Pony on Vertigo's drops he will be stepping up to the Cornetto.

In another huge win, our daughter, Ella who is 5yrs, learned to ride her bike by herself at the park. She has been ok without training wheels since October, but learning to get moving by herself was a HUGE event. She got right into it and earned herself a White Magnum at $3.30, like her old man.

Amie was less than impressed with the video of Trickle Falls and has assured me I won't be doing it again for some time. Then what do I find on the camera? A shot of her and Kristen rampaging the See-Saw Of Death! Pot, kettle, much?

Hope you are all having a good Christmas break.

Cheers
Davo

Gone With The Wind - Turbulent Love

2010-12-23T08:18:00.003+13:00

No, not the American classic in which a manipulative woman and a roguish man carry on a turbulent love affair in the American south during the Civil War, but rather my ride home yesterday.

As a remedy for too much work and not enough play, I left work a little early yesterday and rode home on my fine Ibis Tranny singlespeed, along Wellington’s Skyline. I knew this idea had little merit and was likely to be more character building and soul destroying than a quality outing. But to get from the city to Porirua on trails there are few options. So despite not being able to see the hills as they were shrouded in fast moving cloud, I headed up anyway.

I climbed up via the Karori Cemetery Track which despite the recent rain was in great condition and only forced me to dab on those two switchbacks, which would be tight for a terrier, let alone my beast. I could hear the gale roaring outside the safety blanket of trees and was not looking forward to emerging on the ridge. But I’ve never met a kilometer I didn’t like and didn’t plan on whinging about kms I’d chosen to do today.

Singlespeeding along the skyline is pretty hard for me, so in a gale force Northerly it was shithouse. I expected to do plenty of hiking and wasn’t disappointed. Visibility was between 20-40m in the cloud I was riding in, and riding in a cloud meant I was wet, but working too hard to put anything over my t-shirt. It occurred to me that the road might have been a better option. But I cast that weakness away and plugged on, getting on the pedals whenever I could.

I did a couple of singletrack switchbacks and found myself out of the wind for a moment so I sat down and ate some of the chocolate I procured from a supplier’s Christmas gift basket and called Mr Al Crossling for a quick gasbag. Turns out it wasn’t Al with bb problems that I had called to help with, but Tigs, but was good to share my epic with Al as he sat at his desk making love to excel spreadsheets, or whatever a statistician does. I told Al I could hear the wind roaring like thunder about 100m away where the wind and cloud must have been pouring through a col on the ridge, then let him go about his business.

I dropped out of the gorse shelter around the thin track I was on and immediately got body slammed into the ground. I’d not leant into the wind early enough and paid for it. I got up, got pushed over again, and as I got up the second time and was halfway through pointlessly exclaiming “Fuc…” when the wind confiscated my left contact lens. I dropped some C-bombs in short order. My prescription is -5.75.

The next sections involved a lot of hiking alongside the bike. Even that was hard to do and if I didn’t keep a hand on the back of the bike, the gale would lift it off the deck and blow it out like a flag, twisting up my brake lines. I braced myself against the wind and risked ‘life and limb’ to bring you this high quality footage:

I was eventually relieved to drop out of the cloud and the wind off Kau Kau and as I span into the far more moderate wind along Ohariu Valley the memory began fading. I wondered what the problem was and why had I made a fuss about the conditions on the top. So I thought I’d blog it for posterity.

This morning dawned fine. Sunny and no wind. But I had no energy to do any of the riding I forcefully claim I never do, so got the train and ate a massive Mcmuffin.

Happy windy trails.Dave

Makara GLC - Rampage Time Trial

2010-12-08T23:27:00.004+13:00

For the Spartans, the main event at the recent Makara Peak Festival was the ever epic Grand Loop Challenge. 30 warriors turned up to try their metal against the impressively loose, dusty and rocky trails to the summit and back down Ridgeline.

Commander Crossling Ran the show with jockstrap-like support from Rammer and Bushlove’s Amazonian Arizonian, Ashley.

This was the latest opportunity for sultry shysters, Davo and Wonny.J to knock heads. With Davo one up in there epic odyssey of rivalry, Jaghorn would be looking for a victory in this race within a race to preserve his debatable honour.

First man out was lean bean, Stu ‘Holeshot’ Houltham, followed at 20secs by Lanky Wildman, Tom ‘hot chicks on his Facebook’ Bradshaw, then Fastest Man, then Wonny Jaghorn, Davo and NCX2.
Fastest Man reeled in the human golf club, T-Rex, on the early climbing and continued his rampage to dish out some good news to Holeshot Houltham on Aratihi. Stu was later heard to be baffled as to where Ed found 40secs on him, and blamed his 20hrs of training that week. Here at Sparta Towers we call bullshit on this as nobody has ever trained for that long in one week and to our knowledge it is not humanly possible.

Ed takes the win with a new record time.

Meanwhile Davo, rocking his (Wildman’s old) Ibis Tranny singlespeed, was chasing Wonny hard to get on par before the descending. Luckily he caught Wonny and Tom at the same time on Koru and dispatched Wonny sharply lest any spectator see him exchanging pleasantries with a rival, especially one with pink heart shaped sunnies and zebra print lycra tights.

Wonny chased hard but was kept a couple of corners back on Aratihi by Aldred, who was motivated to stay clear of hard charging Clive NCX2 Bennett, who was coming strongly from behind. Eventually NCX2 collected both the retro rivals once he found his stride after bloodying himself going uphill in Sally Alley.

Dave led Jaggerhorn onto Ridgeline and they both stalled the singlespeeds in the gale force crosswinds on the rocky pinches and did some pathetic hiking, but picked up Clive on the main descent despite a delicate dismount from Davo. Aldred drew out a gap with some pinball dh styles to take 4th.

Ashley meanwhile was cutting out a fast lap to win the Goddess section. Unfortunately there were few ladies prepared to take on the loop and plans are afoot to remedy this low attendance with initiatives from Sparta Towers such as placing Horn Dogs like Kah Chan and Sam Rammer Dungey as strategic topless cheerleaders around the course.

Everyone wants MOAR Grand Loops and intensive planning is underway at BLR HQ to deliver them.

Excellent pics from Ridgeline by Damien Steele-Baker here

Moar pics of the fine day by Andy Kingpin here

Results on P3 of this thread

Happy trails.

Leonidas. BLR Press Sec & Fluffer

Retro Rivalry - More stats to Czech

2010-11-25T20:18:00.014+13:00

Likely lads Waghorn and Aldred are two of BLR's trio of old schoolers. The other being Ricky Pinecone. Despite maintaining the public image of being friends, in reality these two are cut throat competitors. Their wolverine-like killing instincts honed over their combined 98 years of mtb racing, help them to steamroll countless metrosexual shaven wanabees when they line up, on a strict diet of pastry, ice cream and zero training. Ripping places and seconds from each other is everything to these two. Fun doesn't even come into it.

Dave and Jon are bitter rivals and relish any opportunity to bang another nail in the other's coffin lid of inadequacy. Dave scored big recently when in a megafail by the Taupo organisers they cast him on the front of the Taupo brochure and magazine adverts.

This would have riled Waghorn, fresh from his last defeat at the extremely important Wellington SS Champs. But not to be out done Waghorner In The Corner got an action photo in the Wellingtonian.

Despite the huge cycling audience for Alldread's Taupo pic, he looks like a dirty roadie, albeit in denim lycra, so J-Dizzle won this particular media whoring event.

Since Waggerlagger returned to NZ he and Mr Aldred have knocked heads at the Karapoti, three CX events and the Wellington SS Champs. Waggers was gifted a victory in Poti as Dave used a very old retro bike with toe clips. But Wagers wasted this generous gift by axing himself and his wheel, ripping spokes out and holding his breath lest his wheel should collapse in the final kms. But Dave had to chnge gear on the Nishiki with a stick. Placing it in the front mech for the dog, and putting it in his pocket for the granny. Lots of sandbagging either way here and Jonny takes a minute from Aldred, with both going under 3hrs anyway.

The CX races were classics and there was even matching between the retro rivals as they traded a place each way with AllDread beating Jon twice against his once, to level the playing field after Private Waghorns Poti 'victory'.

The Welington SS Champs was a warm up for the Worlds. But there was nothing warm about it. These two elderly Spartans had themselves for company at the front, but despite his suspension fork and Davo's lack of one, Waggers got his horoscope read on the early descending and couldn't reel Aldred back. A flat tire put a dampener on any comeback plans for Waggers and thus Dave is currently one up.

Check out these stats. Trend lines added. Here at BLR Media & Stats HQ, we think this clearly shows the stats in their purest and most unquestionably vague accuracy.

Next head to head could well be the 2010 Makara Peak Grand Loop Challenge, held in the afternoon of the Makara Peak Festival on Sunday 5 Dec. Thats if these hardy untrained lager swillers aren't building fences, dealing with their ankle-biters or doing some other miscellaneous manly activities.

Be solid

Leonidas Of Sparta
Bushlove Press Sec.

Makara Grand Loop Challenge - it's back!

2010-11-22T22:21:00.000+13:00

This is the biggest race in mountain biking - no contest!
As part of the Makara Peak Festival, the stage will be set for another set of names to be written into the Grand Loop Challenge history books. Who will it be?
At 4pm Sunday 5th December, the riders will be set off in 20 second intervals to find out who is the Makara Peak Grand Loop Champion of the World.
czech last year's stats!
The current record holders will be there:

Mr Ed - 37'53"

Wonder Woman Ash - 52'35"

WILL YOU?

This year a trophy is up for grabs...
We've got high tech this year and you can enter online: ENTER NOW

That's a Wrap!!

2010-11-16T20:09:00.003+13:00

Another year, another PNP MTB series and my second overall title. Sunday was the final round of the 2010 PNP MTB series and instead of giving you a run down of the race, I thought a quick recap of the series is in order.

Rd1 Makara
Crap weather, crap worn out drive-train, just plain average sums up Rd 1! The heavens really opened up for the first race, turning most tracks into rivers; it did offer some interesting situations with washed out tracks and mega chain suck (my drive-train was screwed anyway), but it’s still always fun playing in the mud no matter what your age. Lucky enough to hold onto 2nd behind a hard charging Mono.

Rd2 Wainui
My good old home town, what better place to race then where I grew up, except that the tracks weren’t there when I lived in the ‘Nui. My legs felt brilliant this time and nothing was going to stop me, allowing me to take a 10min win; riding in Wainui is always fun with the wicked tracks offering rocks, clay, roots, just about everything really. Apart from the win the highlight would have to be racing down Spoonhill twice.

Rd3 Mt Vic
Couldn’t say my luck with Mt Vic has always been favorable, except this time things went smoothly. Once again the legs were super sharp and with Whaka the following weekend, I was happy with my skid in the central town belt. Once again a very satisfying win, though my ability to float across the wet pine needles and roots impressed me most; considering my ex-roadie skills I have to savor the odd shining of decent bike handling.

Rd4 Belmont
Always tough from a physical point of view due to all the farm track and lack of technical single track, this was my toughest race in the series. Managed to lose my bottle only a quarter of the way in and on a warm day this is not the most ideal. Coupled with a very tender knee I had my work cut out for me. This race was not over until the finish line with me only winning by 5sec’s; I always love a good hard race and like the previous year Belmont didn’t disappoint.

Rd5 Makara
With the series already wrapped out I could just head out and have some fun. Rocking my new SantaCruz single speed I didn’t exactly give myself the easy option, though riding down Vertigo towards the end put a grin on my face. Only rolled across in 6th place but it was the Champagne that I was looking forward to.

So, another successful PNP MTB series and another summer of racing to look forward to.
Big thanks to Marco, Al, Ash and the rest of PNP for another fun filled series, SantaCruz bikes for helping me roll on the fastest wheels, all the Bushlove crew (and SS’s) for their ‘encouraging’ support and most of all my lovely smoke screen; cheers to everyone.
(Thanks to all the photographers out there as well, awesome pics)

Stay tuned for tales from my summer adventures.

Dirty Girls

2010-11-11T17:43:00.002+13:00

We’re not like other girls; we like brown more than pink, camelbaks better than handbags, and would choose a chain ring over a diamond ring anyday… We are the ‘Women of Dirt’!

On Sunday 7 November the women dug deep and got dirty with Wellington’s first women’s only 6 hour mountain bike feast! 10 teams (Dirty Girls) and 21 solos (Dirt Divas) completed the event. The ladies took over the car park at Makara Peak Mountian Bike Park, and transformed it into an impressive spectacle. Everything from decorated bikes to matching costumes, and even customised name plates and themed tent sites, the women were ready to ride in style.

The Women of Dirt enjoyed the sweet trails on the fun 20-30 minute course, while dedicated supporters and photographers were all smiles watching the women zoom past. The hardcore women completed 14 laps- just over 80km with more than 2,500m of climbing! These girls totally deserved the baked goodies that were waiting for them at the end.

The women finished the day off with a tea party in the sunshine. The top Dirty Girls and Dirt Divas were awarded with Dirt themed prizes, and of course there were a few extra goodies to be given out. The Best Dressed award went to Amanda Walker, aka Dinky Furpurse, for her quick and colourful costume changes- she had a new one for every lap! The Best Baked Goodie award went to the 'Banana Flavoured Snatch Cake'.

This event was brought to you by the lovely ladies of Revolve: Down to Earth Cycling for Women. Check out http://www.revolvetraining.co.nz/ for all the women's only weekly rides, clinics and seminars, and events.

The Fastest Women of Dirt:
1st Dirty Girls- Thorn between 2 roses
2nd Dirty Girls- Team Style
3rd Dirty Girls- Knight Riders

1st Dirt Diva- Jackie O'Hagan
2nd Dirt Diva- Rose Green
3rd Dirt Diva- Jude Young

How to be like Fastest Man 101

2010-11-09T09:26:00.040+13:00

If you're anything like me you ask yourself every night before going to bed "How do I become "Fastest Man", I am about to divulge all . Stalking... Nooo, we'll not much anyway.

Take one part "Fastest Walker"
Add a dirty "Fastest Roadie"

Mixed together should give you something that looks like this to start to live and breath everything he did.

Breakfast of champions, yes that is Raw Sugar on Rice Bubbles and Peaches

Dress the same:

There were times I got soo close he was mesmerizing....

Some lost tack of the goal at hand...

Yes Davo it is a Toaster...

Others tried to mimic his race style. No NOT both feet on the ground at the same time, slow enough but NOT a champion walker there...

Sexy as this man is, NOT Fastest Man's Wardrobe colours (Thanks to Wardrobe Flair for dressing Fastest Man)...

Others have tried getting in the pants of Fastest Man and come up short:

So after days/weeks of stalking I came up with only answer... HTFU Pills!!!! See you all at Makara for the final round of the PNP Bicycle Series.

My advice to you all "Never eat Fruit Burst Clusters"

Czech my stats - OTA at the ss worlds.

2010-11-05T09:31:00.008+13:00

Just when you thought the coverage from the ss worlds has finally ended, there's more! I'll keep it brief though, you know my stats.

After a winter of skiing (or attempting to) and doing no riding whatsoever, I've only been getting back on the bike in the last month or so . With the sun out, the trails in Chch are finally open and the riding is great. With not a lot of riding and quite a lot of BMI, I wasn't expecting much more than a few lolz and a weekend drinking.

Being a tad unorganised, we had to fly to Auckland post work on Friday so rolled into Vegas around midnight. I managed to build the bike up when we arrived without any dramas ready for the big day. As always, we had breakfast at Zippys pre race and headed out to the forest where we were greeted to a great selection of not gay at all costumes. They were a big step up from other ss races which really added to the atmosphere.

You've all heard how the race started "Daytona" styles so all I will say is that out doing everyone I started back in 1400th place. OTA FTW.

With my race over from the start I just enjoyed the atmosphere and the trails. By the second lap had passed enough people to have some clear trail so put in a bit more effort to try save some self respect. It would have been nice to have a bit more focus on racing (without taking away from the spirit of singlespeeding) but nevertheless I had a great time. It made my day to see Garth take out the title, he's truly an inspiration.

We stayed up in Rotorua till Monday catching up with peeps, having a few drinks and steaming some trails. Good times were had, thanks Rotorua.

Going for the holeshot at the start.

Not a drop spilt.

Feeling the bushlove from Mike at Bike Hutt

Having a well deserved swim.

Brutal Hardcore 29er / CX Action

2010-10-29T18:30:00.004+13:00

This is mainly for Mike Anderson's benefit as he hardens right up at this kind of thing.

See Al Crossling at 39secs and Hayden Richards at 1.58

Where for art thou SlackBoy

2010-10-24T20:53:00.005+13:00

Now I keep getting asked "Where are you now? Why haven't you graced our presence with your majestic calves. True our partners find it harder to lust after you, which we find grateful, but nonetheless, we miss you SlackBoy"
Now don't worry my lil star-struck fan base, for I am not completely gone. For I now call a mountain top mansion of cheap pine and tin home. And am one of the chosen that worships upon the altar of trail building, and carve out of the mountainsides sweet womanly curves of dirt and rock.
For once, tho I have been digging trails for years, I am actually being paid for doing what I used to do on my day off, for free.

Here's a small sample of what I/we have been doing..........

Like a Bat out of Hell I’ll be gone…

2010-10-19T20:34:00.006+13:00

Haha, you have that classic Meatloaf song in your head now! But I’ll spare you, that’s where the singing stops and the racing begins; Vegas was host to another awesome race on Sunday, the Whaka 100. 100km’s, 5 hours and a whole heap of sweet Vegas single-track.

The forecast during the week was pointing to a foul Sunday, but alas the weather played ball and just held up (providing you finished by 1pm). With a decent amount of sunshine in the lead up, as well as some resealing on most of the 4wd’s in the forest, a fast race was on the cards. A few of NZ’s Pro Elite sifters lined up for the 8am start, with a decent contingent of single speeders from around the globe gearing up for this weekends World’s (100km’s on one gear isn’t my cup of tea)! With my big bro having the honour of leading us out around the field on a CX bike, it was down to business as we hit the single track.

The first 15km was literally all single-track in the core network part of the forest, allowing Cabin and myself to pull a gap on the rest (always handy sitting behind locals). All the tracks were flowing sweet, bike was riding smooth, legs were pumping; everything was looking good as we headed out for the large out back loop.
After about 20km I felt really strong, setting a rhythm I thought would last me the following 80km; this rhythm was a bit faster then what Cabin had in mind so he happily sent me on my way. Around the lakes, over three big hills (including descents of No Brains and Split Endz), through Old Chevy, everything was still feeling comfortable. Through the feed-zone for a quick refuel, a time check (4mins back to Cabin) and, onwards to the more challenging second sector.

On the way up to Billy T things began to fall apart very quickly. I could feel fatigue starting to set in fast prompting me to slow things down (hard ask when you have a 400m climb ahead). After a brief breather at the top it was time for one of the coolest descents in Vegas, except this time it was a struggle with a body that was refusing to cooperate. Into G-Rock then Rollercoaster, the race caught up quite literally; what was a 4 min lead on Cabin was wiped out in 10km, Cabin was right back on me!

After a quick jaunt across the flat towards Hot X Buns, the penultimate ascent began which would confirm my world of pain. Cabin simply rode away and all I could do was conserve my placing. Down Hot X Buns cleanly and onwards to the final hill of the day (with out dribbling on, managed to get over in one piece and press onto the finish).

At just under 5 hours I crossed the line in 2nd place, some 9mins after Cabin (that sandbagger pulled 14mins on me in 35km)! While I was disappointed to not win I was relieved to finish and improve on last year by a full half hour.

Lessons to be learnt…? Riding like a Bat out of Hell won’t always work. A 5 hour marathon race such as Whaka is a complete different story to the 2 hour XC events I’ve been racing for the past few months, but how can you hold me down when I’m thrown into a race, of course I’ll ride at 110%.
Bit of rest for now, but I’ll be back in a couple of weeks to hopefully defend my PNP series title and win the Huka race at the Lake Taupo Cycle Challenge; if I’m right, on Sunday I blew at about the same point as the Huka race finishes, 80km, here’s hoping….

Short and Sweet

2010-10-12T20:48:00.003+13:00

Just like the course used for Sundays third round of the PNP MTB series, I’m going to keep this quick.
Mt Victoria in central Wellington was the setting for the latest PNP race, held on a 6-7km course with heaps of roots, clay and pine needles; when it rains like it did for the 12 hours before the race, Mt Vic can turn into lethal sliding feast even for the Steve Peat’s out there. Us Pro-Elite punters were thrown 4 laps of fun, sending us on our way for 2hrs of pain.
The turn out for PE was fairly down, but I still had Alex Revell keeping me honest through out. For the whole of the first lap Alex was right on my tail, pressuring me to ride full tilt (couple hairy moments but nothing too scary). Come second lap I really put the hammer down, trying to distance Alex as soon as I could; it took over half the lap but I finally pulled a gap.
Even with a fair amount of traffic, my legs happily settled into a steady rhythm, attacking every up-hill and descent. Only one small slip up to mention, landing on my knees which left me with a few cuts, but other then that my SantaCruz was railing everything.
After 1:55 of racing I rolled into the Mt Vic velodrome for my second win of the series; a nice step towards defending my title and a good sign ahead of the Whaka 100 this weekend.

So this weekend it’s the Whaka 100, 100km of sweet Rotovegas trails sandwiched between 5hrs of pain. Forecast is looking sweet so should be a great day!
In the mean time off to Metallica on Wednesday, hopefully the adrenalin will still be pumping come Sunday (and my hearing returned).

Ben Nevis Dh race

2010-10-09T22:56:00.002+13:00

Finally I have a vid of this race up.

I won, not usual for me, but I'll take it, even if the main competition of Derek Winwood was hungover.
I did crash on my 1st race run and sprained my wrist, tho I didn't know or even feel this until later that afternoon. However the 3 weeks since I haven't ridden my bike at all, until today. I got 3rd today at the fringed classic. Once more running the bushlove colours, with matching pink strapping on my wrist.

But alas, for I can give you no more wordy prose this fine night, as one has consumed too much bourbon and tis late.

Canadian research - "learning experiences"

2010-10-03T19:27:00.000+13:00

Well my trip was not just about riding and stocking up on cheap souvenirs, it was experiencing different things. Some things were a bit more "different" to what my Lonely Planet told me to expect. So here are some of the highlights...

Begging in Seattle
Unfortunately Seattle has been hit hard by the recession, so there were a lot of people begging on the streets. However some of those out begging don't seem to have a credible story:
Begging Woman: "Hey man, spare a veteran a dollar?"
AL: "Sorry" (NZ accent of course)
Begging Woman: "Well excuse me, you're not from round here. We liberated your country and you can't give me a dollar?"
AL: "Ummm I don't think NZ was liberated recently" reaching in my pocket to give her the change I had just so she would get lost. "Here" giving her a handful of quarters and pennies
Begging Woman: "What, you waste my time and that is all you give me?"
AL: "ah....."
Drunk man who just appeared on the scene: "Hey man, ignore that stupid b____! I won't lie to you sir, I'm no veteran but if you give me a dollar I will be go get drunk!"
AL - I fish out my wallet and give this man $5!
Drunk man: "Hey man, America needs more people like you! I'll go raise a toast to you right now!"
It was only 9am in the morning...

Sh!t coffee in Seattle

The original Pike Place Market Starbucks "Coffee"

Ah yes, the original Starbucks in Seattle's Pike Place Market, where sh!t coffee was born! There must have been a Starbucks every 50 metres in Seattle with a queue in every one. They sure do like their coffee flavoured sugar water over there. But to add insult to injury, they love to top it all with whipped cream.
So as a fan of real coffee and an even bigger fan of tea you can imagine my delight in find an independent cafe that specialised in "real espresso coffee and good old fashioned tea"
So I went in and order a tea. All was going well till I was asked if I wanted cream. "Sorry, did you say cream with my tea?" A surprised look from behind the counter... then she pulled out a can of aerosol cream! "Yes sir, whipped cream for your cup of tea"
I admitted defeat and just had a crappy coffee and donut instead

Yummy!
Not all the food was complete rubbish, there were some interesting and yummy things out there
...like waffles for breakfast!

Fresh Sockeye Salmon for dinner...

I had to bring back a bit of food as well, like Marshmallow Fluff for the hyperactive food colouring fan club at work

1.6kg on Pancake mix for my father (it's nice, but c'mon! It's just pancake mix!)

Hello Yogi!
Yes, as you probably already know, Canada has bears. Now given I was travelling alone, I quite often would you out riding alone... in back country Canadian trails...

But not all bears hangout in the woods, they quite often come into town looking for food.

So there I am riding along the main highway going through Whistler. I pull up to the main set of lights outside Whistler village and there is a queue of cars (or to be more precise North American Suburban Assault Vehicles). People are hanging out of these cars taking photos. But there is only a ditch on the side of the road, so I look at the them all a bit puzzled till I hear a noise from the pavement. A black bear is standing right beside me on the pavement as if he was waiting to cross the road at the lights. Given this bear was less than a couple metres from me and I have never seen a bear (but heard lots of stories about them), I decided that I could justify the traffic ticket for running that red light and getting the hell out of there!

REDNECKS!
Now Nanaimo was my favourite place my trip, but I did fear for my life during my ride there. When I visited the bike shop to get directions of where to go the shop owner gave me a few landmarks to get my bearings from. One of those landmarks was a clearing with quote "what looks like the remains of a redneck party, shoot up cars and lots of beer cans." I keep an eye out for this area as it was where the good trails started from. It was easily to find then I thought it would be...

Moments after this photo was taken... a redneck scared the sh!t out of me!

As I came out to a clearing with what I thought might have been the area the guy in the shop was talking about a guy in a pickup truck pulls up.
Guy in pickup truck: "Morning"
AL: "Morning"
Guy in pickup truck now parking the truck and getting out: "Are you alone?"
AL: ".......yes?"
Guy who has just pulled out a rifle from his pickup truck: "Oh yup"
BANG BANG BANG (three cans on a log at the end of the clearing are shot at)
That guy again: "Oh sorry man, that question was a bit odd. I just didn't want to shoot any other riders"
AL: "....ah cool... I'll just head off now...."

I have no photos of the clearing or the redneck, funnily enough I wasn't in a photo taking mood and felt the need to move on!

Farewell oh British Columbia!

So there you have it, I still have a few tall tales to tell. For a donation to the Send-Al-back-to-Canada fund...

NEWSFLASH - Al cheated in showdown with Tigs

2010-10-01T09:37:00.000+13:00

Al of Bushlove Racing has just announced that in his crucial showdown with Tigs at the final round of the 2009 PNP Series at Makara he used performance enhancing drugs.

Al has released the following statement:
"When the pressure of my impending showdown with elite rider Tigs at last year's PNP series final was starting to make me doubt my ability, I did what any ex good roadie would do and looked for ways to improve my performance. I had to take a HTFU pill to beat Tigs.
I haven't taken a HTFU pill for a while and I think my test results from recent races will clearly show that. I think I have to be honest with everyone and tell people what I know.
Other riders in Bushlove are not innocent either: Davo has used pies and lager to good effect, Angry owns a powertap that he secretly uses.
My only excuse for this is I use to be a good roadie, so assumed that was what you did."

In reply to this statement, Tigs made the following comment:
"Look everyone knows I am an elite rider, so when someone like the ginge Al beats me something must be going on."

WADA has also made the following comment about the matter:
"We will be investigating this matter, but early indications are that Al was not 'just sifting for the win' as it defined in the Bushlove code of conduct. This behaviour cannot go unpunished."

Canadian research - the racing

2010-09-27T20:58:00.000+13:00

Well it has been a while in the making, but here is my "race report" from my Canadian trip

So while sifting in Canada, I thought I'd do a bit of racing. I heard that at the time some thing called Crankworx was on, so I tagged along to see what all the fuss was about...

Waiting for the lift for another rampage run...

Looking down the dual slalom course

Brendan Fairclough's bike collection...

Gee Atherton takes the slalom win

You will be surprised to know there is a XC event at Crankworx in Whistler. I lined up for a laugh at the back of the grid, forgot that I was back on my XC bike after a week of riding DH bikes and got up to second!

Rocky XC Rampage!

Just to increase the lulz, I decided it would be a good idea to ride "Comfortably Numb", "River runs through it" and "Kill me thrill me" a day out from the race. For those who have been to Whistler you will realise that as far as rides go that is stupidly hard! Probably explains why I destroyed an upsized-super-large-you-fat-bastard combo at Maccas and before you can say "BMI RAMPAGE!" Yeah, I was rather hungry after that ride!

Yes that is my medal and some guy called Nico Vouilloz signed my cap

The hat is the photo was done for me by this guy:
http://www.myspace.com/1976ItsJustArt
If you are ever in Seattle, make sure you visit him in the Pike Place Market - highly recommend! Even Nico Vouilloz thought that cap was cool, and if Nico says it's cool - it's cool!

Right, that's enough of that race carry on!

One final Canadian post, the stories post... it has rednecks with guns, hungry bears, crappy coffee - something for the whole family!

Don't touch that dial!

Wainui...Layback time

2010-09-21T21:33:00.004+12:00

Sooo layed back I was nearly horizontal...

After a wet and windy Makara Peak race I was looking forward to some faaaast skids on the trails of the WTP of glory. Having been about a year since riding on these trails I was looking forward to a few surprises and I was not to be disappointed.

I started the day off by picking up a mate of mine Simon who was not only game enough to brave my bad driving style, but was silly enough to trust me in suggesting he raced the gentile rolling hills of Wainuiomata. Some people never learn, Sorry Si :D
Race start was here and I had my tractor tyres on ready for the "Storm the size of Australia..." where was it I ask you? maybe the Ozzies had turned tail after the Tri-Nations Cup walloping we game them. Either way I was stuck with the tractor tread on a day that could only be best described as picture perfect.

Elite pain fest called my name once again and regrettably I inched my way to the start, thinking it can't be as hard as I think... WRONG! we took off up the Crazyman climb and I thought I would try and hang with the cool kids Gav & Mono. At the top of the Crazyman climb my lungs were feeling the burn but I knew if I made it to Labyrinth before them I would have a smokin down hill, Mono entered before me and Gav just behind. we stayed like this until the "fantastic short cut" which Gav and I took and popped out just ahead of Mono. Woop!!! go the shortcut. Opened up the taps of gnar on my tractors and pulled at bit of time out of Gav and Mono only to have them tear me a new one on Jungle Scout climb, this went tit for tat as I romped over them down Beeline only to have them gingerly (similar to Slackie's goatie) cruise past me again on Jungle Scout, this time chatting about what moisturizer they both use and how it makes their skin glow (They were so relaxed when they past me I was surprised they were not comparing softness of skin). Lucky for me Spoon Hill & 419 were in my favour as I returned to my glory down hills chase, picking them both up gain. Not to bore you all the rest is easy... Crazyman Climb and they dropped me like Davo's backside after super special at Tulsi Indian Curry House. Did a bit of suffering by myself watching the odd Elite rider smoke me on the up hills Thomas Linup and a brief encounter from Lynsky who threatened to pass me going up the last pasts of the Crazyman climb, thanks for the pep talk sheep shaggger.

The rest of my ride was much the same riding by myself with brief visits from the likes of T-Rex who went the wrong way and then once back on track smoked me, Ed (Fastest Man) who thought it be funny to pass me like I was an old man with arthritis and a Zimmer frame.

Trucked on home loving the down hills and finished with a MASSIF smile from ear to ear. Wainui has once again stolen my heart and not my wallet with some of the best trails in Wellies.

Till Mt Vic when I look forward to another smashing but happy to just be out riding.

Tigs

Wainui..payback time.

2010-09-21T07:38:00.007+12:00

After riding extra sections at Makara and coming 2nd, which is actually usual for me, Wainui was about getting back on track.
The predictions by the bearded ones of a Weather Bomb never eventuated and we woke up to a bright and sunny day, so loaded up the kids and headed over to Wainui for round 2 of the PNP mountain bike series.
Course was going to involve quite a bit of climbing and some reasonably techy descents, starting out with a climb to the water tower along the recently renamed from the crazyman climb to Konini. My usual adversaries Jonny Bushlove and Rob Kilvington would be hot on my tail so a fast start was required.
1 fast start later I hit the top of the climb with about a 50m lead, so headed along the various pinches and 4wd track and into Labryinth when I promptly got a bit excited and stuck a wheel over the side DAMM.. I got back on and did exactly the same thing again, its a funny thing race pressure turns an easy track into a hard track, so yelled out to myself to calm down (literally) and continued to the bottom via Snail Trail.

(photo kindly stolen from Hickie. thanks!..)

Back up Jungles I kept on checking back and Jonny and Rob where wearing their cloaks of invisibility so I thought I was in the clear, (Ed steamed passed at about here!) back up the 4wd track I picked up Liam from M1 and passed him before hitting spoonhill which like everyone else said was great fun, slipppy muddy with lots of places to axe yourself, I wasn't carrying a huge amount of speed down spoonhill and Liam just smoked past me and by the time we hit the bottom pulled out about a 200m gap!, not bad considering it wasn't even over a huge distance. (note to self to be more brave)

The new link track was interesting in its slimyness not well suited to my crossmark tyres but I survived that and hit the road to put my "good roadie" skills to the test, I wound up the big ring and hit 50kph and re-passed Liam again just before the school. Then up Konini to do it all over again , at the top by the water tower I again checked back and Jonny and Robs cloaks where still fully functioning which lulled me into a false sense of security and foolishly I didn't feel I pushed as hard on the 2nd lap, into Labryinth and Snails I caught up with Wifey who was riding with Alex in the Bushlove under 8 classification, Alex was nowhere to be seen and was way ahead and Trudi was playing catchup down snails, (that's my boy :-) ) , I caught Alex at the bottom of snails and he looked happy as larry.

On and up Jungles again when mid way up Alex Revell caught me from Pro Elite I let him pass and then the batteries in Jonnys cloak went flat and he suddenly appeared about 20m behind me!.. Damm that wasn't in the plan, so hit the gas pedal and caught up with Alex Revell just before the exit and gassed it up the 4wd climb to put in a better gap between myself and Waggers. I had a little more urgency down Spoonhill this time as I know Waggers eats this stuff for breakfast, I knew if I could hold him off here there was no way he would catch me on the road.
Down link track I calculated Jonnys trajectory, speed and gnar using this formula.

And used this formular and my rear wheel to place a rock on the side of the track as a backup plan, I exitted at Waiu street and headed for the finish in 1st place so very happy, Jonny (un)fortunately found my strategically placed rock which sent his rear der through the back wheel for an expensive running finish to his race for 2nd.

Next is Mt Vic in 3 weeks time..Charge your invisibility cloak batteries Waggers..

Back to my roots

2010-09-20T19:14:00.004+12:00

Sunday saw the second round of the popular PNP MTB series, with another awesome turn out of riders. If you’re wondering where my spiel from round 1 is, well to cut a long story short, don’t turn up to a race with well worn drive-train (or you’ll get chain suck all day long).

After the so called ‘largest storm on Earth’ skipped the Mountain Bikers in Wellington and rather dumped itself on the Trackies in Invercargill, we were treated to a stellar day in the capital; nothing but the best for MTB’s of course! With the awesome crew from the WTP (Wainui Trail Project) grooming the tracks for some serious traffic, all was set for another fun day of skids (only on the firebreaks of course WTP ;-)).

After a quick spin down the road, dodging a randomly parked local’s car as you do, it was straight up the 4wd past the water tower; nothing like starting a race with 15mins of climbing. Right from the start I knew I had good legs so felt intent on testing them and the other guys; not long in I pulled a small gap but could still feel them breathing down my neck. Down Labyrinth then Snails, it looked liked I had pulled a decent gap, so I settled into a nicer rhythm that I could sustain for the whole 2hrs. Near the top of Jungles on the way back up I could see Alex Revell chasing hard, obviously Alex was going to be a challenge to dislodge as always. Into Beeline for a quick descent, pulling a few risks was in order to open a gap on Alex, so down I slide (on my wheels of course). On the way up to Spoonhill I managed to find a nice rhythm helping me to pull out a decent gap, but I still had the infamous descent of Spoonhill to go. In its usual sloppy style, Spoon was slippery, entertaining (still no crashes, wow) and bumpy, but that’s half the fun of riding in Wainui. Through Spoon Link, Wetlands, then onto the road, lap 1 was done and dusted.

Even with daylight behind me I didn’t let up one bit, always another carrot to chase after; the next time up the 4wd I could see Hiskey off in the distance, a perfect target. It did take me all the way to the top of Labyrinth to catch him, but the thrill of descending behind him is always worth it. Apart from the near head on with a rider lost on Snail’s, everything went smoothly. Other highlights from the final lap is passing Tiger on Jungles letting him know he still has 2 more climbs to go, and getting stuck in traffic down Spoon which by now was truly thrashed! Back on the road, into the college grounds and across the line for my first win of the series.

Another well run and enjoyable PNP race, all in my hometown Wainui (that’s right, I grew up in Wainui, but escaped before I become a prisoner ;-)). Huge cheers as always for the race organizers (Marco, Ash and big bro Al), the WTP for providing some amazing tracks (Spoon is my favorite in Wgtn) and, Mariska for dragging me out and dealing with my general shenanigans! Look forward to seeing everyone at Mt Vic in three weeks.

A brief commuter's trail tale

2010-09-20T09:42:00.003+12:00

I am house sitting in Seatoun and have the pleasure of taking in some trails on the way to the office. I headed up to the Miramar prison to take a run down the excellent Jail Brake. I had to stop to put my ear phones in at the prison. It must have been morning shower time and the sounds coming from the ablutions block sounded like an Il Treno Dolore house party.

Jail Brake was running really well. It was hard to get the right speed and flow through all the bermed corners on the rigid, but I did get both wheels off the ground a few times, some even on purpose. My Camelbak schlong was dangling too deeply though and on one jump into a lh corner, I somehow ripped the nozzle off so got my leg drenched.

Sifted along to Mt Vic, regretting not having a buff for my ears, as I am trying to get over a cold. Had a look at the extension to the Hataitai Zig Zag which Simon Kennett et al are putting together. Good trail. I went over the bars on it, as I usually do on any family friendly, gradual uphill climb. It did give me a chance to take in the view though. I see they have work parties on it for an hour on Tuesday lunchtimes. As tradition demands I will publicly state how I will join said work party, and then live through my shame as I fail to show up.

I continued along to the Rihanna and Eminem song that embarrassingly I quite like, before dipping into the singletrack and dropping into one of my favourite descents. NO, NO, NO!!! That frustrating Polly lady on ZM’s morning show started doing one of those tragic self-voiced adverts for the Village Goldsmith! This immediately harshed my mellow, and I was lucky to pilot the bike successfully round the early tight left hander. In the car ZM is immediately switched off whenever they mark their card by wittering on about Optizorb painkillers or the Village Goldsmith. But with both mitts gripping the reins I had no choice but to endure.

The XC Campers and DH God had good weekends. They will be along shortly with their tales. Don’t touch that dial…. unless self-voiced adverts come on.

D-Banger : The All Mountain Athlete.

For DayDreamers .... "bank"

2010-09-12T19:09:00.003+12:00

So it appears as if I was teasing Bushlove's biggest fan by NOT posting any pics of myself in the Broken Axe post.
Thanks to Damon (Mundi) Mead, who's birthday was just the other day, who took some top pics of me at the Broken Axe race, we can replenish some visual aids for DD's .... "bank"

Broken Axe Downhill

2010-09-05T22:05:00.008+12:00

So most people view Bushlove as an XC, seat up, lycra wearing jeiboi club. Whilst this is true, some of us are super hardcore, Gnarcore even.

Thats not me, tho I am an old skool DH'er from way back. And seeing as I'm currently residing in Nelson for some time, I broke out the Sunday for some fun and hit up one of the Nelson club DH races.

A day of runs for $30 odd bucks and 2 timed runs at the end of it.........bargain. The track was rocky and with a few roots to slip you up when you least expect it. The speed was quite high as well, and something that took me quite some time to get used to, in fact I never really got full handle on it. But I'm still fresh back onto the DH bike, so I'm willing to be slower than I should be for the moment.

In the end I got 3rd in the semi old bastards category, half a second off second, but 11 seconds back on super local Derek Winwood.

I managed to get a helmet cam run of my 2nd race run. Apologies for the slowness and shit riding.

PNP Round 1 - Rider Reports

2010-08-30T13:12:00.015+12:00

A feast of lulz and skidz

- Waggers' report

The first round of the PNP spring series came with the usual menu of unpredictable weather. The day prior a huge but brief serving of rain was just an entree to the main course of fat juicy rain drops, low cloud and plummeting temperatures drizzled with a thin gritty mud-vinaigrette. However, unusually for Wellington there was no side-serving of wind.

Al the up and coming Bushlove maitre-d' gave the race briefing explaining that all tracks were as per the menu with one exception, they were unable to get a fresh supply of T3 so it was unavailable. However there's always one Angry customer who doesn't listen and demands to speak to the chef afterwards...

The long road section to start spread the M2 field out. At about the top of Swigg we encountered the slower riders from the previous start and they were difficult to pass on the narrow tracks which was a little frustrating. I was about 7th place in our start group and the stretched out field continually bunched up behind the other class riders. Frustrations aside I was only feeling average and it wasn't until the first time up Aratihi that I started to fire. I dropped Rob and a senior men rider going down into Nikau. At about this point my rear brakes were gone which made me a little nervous for the remaining long decent of North Face, Smokin, and Swigg.

On the final 4wd section to the summit from Aratihi Rob jumped past me in the mist and disappeared. I didn't realize at the time but he had mistakenly charged for home via Ridgeline. With freezing cold hands and no rear brake I still managed to pass several riders on the final descent. Most pulled aside when I yelled (politely) that I couldn't stop but others were mysteriously already lying upside down beside the track, what's that all about?

On the final road to home that pesky senior men rider went by but he did apologise for leaving me behind on my single speed. The flat road is about the only place the SS has a real disadvantage vs a gear-befangled bike.

As I fumbled with numb hands to get my number off, er race numberplate off, I was surprised to see fellow Bushie Angry arrive after me. He had been busy stuffing his face with extra helpings of T3 and some Varley's so I got the win, lucky me!

A fun day - now that I'm warm, clean and dry - and with the

entertaining Al and Ash show on mic the prize giving was succinct and fun. Cheers guys, three stars.

ps: continuing the "do these pads make my brakes look fat" theme, here's one of my sad little numbers. I was well into the pistons this time :-(

Kah's participation report

What I did on Sunday could not be categorised as racing, so we'll use its proper name here. I got kicked out of the house as I ran around trying to decide if I wanted to head out and ~~race~~ participate in the rainy festivities. Rolled in to the school just in time to get my ass grabbed and sign up for the events.

Turns out Senior Men had a pretty poor showing compared to the M1/M2 guys. I blame everyone else for wussing into the Enduro Men category (Tryfan, I'm pointing at you!). I tried to save my legs early by not rushing into the road climb start- turned out to be a bad idea as I negotiated traffic from the start of Koru until Missing Link. No dramas until I caught a few other riders on Aratihi.

Rode like I've never seen a mountainbike before down to Nikau - I was hopeless in that mud. Blew up going up Zac's for the final climb before letting rip (I had no rear pads left, I had no choice) coming down the final descent.

Al helpfully pointed out that I made the podium if you're counting backwards. At least I made my target of finishing with no ~~mechanicals~~ excuses.

Canadian research - the riding

2010-08-26T18:50:00.012+12:00

As many people will know (I kind of had been driving people nuts going on and on about it a bit!) I've been in Canada for the last month. Why? Well just for the hell of it! Obviously my luggage included a bike. So instead of giving you all the blow by blow account, here are some of the highlights...

Warning: I have a sh!t camera and couldn't be bothered using it much, so most of the photos are stolen

Urban Rampage
Before anyone starts pointing out that Seattle is not in Canada, you have to admit it is kind of close. So I thought an American detour was worth a try. I didn't do much in the way of "normal mountain biking," but I did go and check this place out:

I stole these photos from this site: http://evergreenmtb.org/wiki/index.php?title=Trail:I-5_Colonnade

Built under an expressway, this is a really cool park. Should we build one in a NZ city? Of course!

Squamish
Despite having to climb a lot of mind numbing fire road, the downs were worth it!
Favourite Squamish trail? Half Nelson - basically a downhill pump track!

That might not be me...

Whistler
Well what can be said about Whistler that hasn't been said already?
My favourite? This run: Ninja Cougar - Karate Monkey - Samurai Pizza Cat - Ho Chi Min - Heart of Darkness
Rocks, roots, berms and a few surprises to make sure that you are on your game and not just letting your bike get you out of trouble!

My favourite section of the track, the bridge is A-Trail

Nanaimo - Vancouver Island
I have saved the best till last...

These trails were not super groomed roller-coaster rides, just good old fashioned rough trails that made you appreciate suspension. There were steep switchback corners that reminded me of Choppers in Belmont. But here there was more of them and they were rather hard. This was the most enjoyable ride I went on in the entire trip. While it's hard to navigate here and there are rednecks about (story to follow...), you won't leave Nanaimo dissappointed.
I recommend you go see the folks at Arrowsmith Bikes, they were really friendly and suggested a loop that left me wishing I had spent more time in Nanaimo!

So if you are heading to British Columbia, get in touch. There were so many places I wished I spent more time (in particular Vancouver Island) that are not the most well known places for riding in an area spoilt for mountain biking.

Right time for a banana split...

More stories from Canada to follow... stay tuned!

Long time coming

2010-08-18T21:09:00.002+12:00

Better late then never, but here’s my take on the last of the winter N Duro races in Rotovegas.

Cutting straight to race day (because I was too lazy to go for a ride on the Saturday):
The rain didn’t really let up come Sunday, so as I sprinted up the hill at the start and into the first track Genesis, I knew it wouldn’t be long until my brakes were gone.

The early part of the race involved much of the lower tracks in the Whaka forest, which made it relatively easy for the legs but not my head with the constant changing direction. After sitting behind Garth and Mike (both from Vegas) through the early tracks, it was very inviting to finally see some open 4wd road. Knowing this is the only spot for me to open up a gap on the locals, I had to push all the way to the highest point of the day, Billy-T.
With a lack of riders in the park it was nice to scoot down Billy T with no traffic. After a descent that involved some loose moments it was off to Hot X Buns for some really dodgy descending. I would blame my average at best descending skills but, HXB was a real challenge; every steep chute seemed intent on throwing me off the track!
After cleaning HXB it was off to the Chinese menu which was the same as always, apart from a few fresh river crossings to contend with. It was after this in Be Rude Not To that the real fun happened. For some reason whenever I’m caught in traffic I feel an urge to push harder on the descents, probably just from trying to pass the short course riders; with the surface a bit more muddy hanging it out in corners was in order, trying (but failing) to ride motocross styles.
Up Lion Trail, then to the top of Gunna Gotta, all of the climbing (which was a fair bit this race) was taken care of, leaving a fun cruise back to the finish. Apart from a bit of traffic and a tree across the track 1km from the finish, every thing went smoothly. Through the finish for the win and that was it.

Even I’m thinking as I write this that was pretty uneventful, but it sort of was. No crashing, no sudden explosions in my legs, everything went according to plan; strange, I’m not used to talking about a race in that sense?!

With my win in the final race I managed to take the series, YAY!!
It has been a while since I won the PNP series last year (which I will be defending over the next few months), so it’s pretty awesome to get the ball rolling with a win.

Big ups to Cabin for his hospitality again, no wonder he has so much respect in NZ MTB circles. Most of all my amazing smokescreen for taking me to all the races, putting up with my ‘racing moods’ and, still looking forward to when I get back covered in mud.

See you at the first PNP race next weekend.

"I Shouldnt Be Alive" - NDuro Round 3

2010-08-17T17:25:00.025+12:00

Having had food poisoning for Round 2 of NDuro where the weather was picture postcard perfect, I thought Round 3 would be a bit more of the same.. Hhmm.. 3 days of torrential rain turned the usual pristine redwood trails into raging rapids and slick descents.
I went out for a sifty preride in the rain on the Saturday, 15 mins in along Challenge I hear a rather unpleasant sound, sounded like a stick going through a wheel, that sort of sound.. looked down and saw a large stick had gone through my back wheel, it took out several spokes pulling them right through my lovely Slacky from Burkes built ZTR Race rim, and to top it off toasted my XTR der, game over, thought great will just call my wife to come get me, 6 phone calls and no answer left me a hike back to the motel in the torrential rain, to find my lovely wide bathing in a warm hot pool, I promptly joined her.

Queue pic of toasted wheel

Thankfully Pro Elite Tiger had just arrived and was going to be riding Cabins Karapoti winning Niner for this race so I was in luck having to ride Tigs Turner fitted with worn Conti Race King summer tyres, perfect for slick clay and huge mud.. NOT.. Having the Race King on the front looked a bit scary so swapped a crossmark off my bike for the front to give 0.0005% moar grip. I smelt a setup.

Heres a pic of a new Race King.. imagine this but well worn..

Race day arrives on Sunday and the much promised "Rain easing" hadnt occured so we spiffed up in the latest BLR kit and headed for the start.

With rain still falling the race started with Ed steaming off the front and I was having to contend with the extra weight of the Turner hence was back a couple of places after the first climb.

Theres not much to say about the race other than EPIC fun, huge slides due mainly to tyre (see above), the climbs where more difficult due to the weight penalty and I got lost once at the top of Hot X Buns so had to wait at least 3 minutes for the next person to come along.
Had one meaty stack at the bottom of one trail wouldnt have any idea which one, as they where all slippy, muddy, rutted and steep, was glad I didnt hurt my knee from which I have just had surgery on.

Trickest trail of the ride was most defintely Hot X Buns, in those conditions it was lethal, but rode most of it and crashed the rest of it, Shortly around that time my brake pads ran out leaving for some very interesting descents whilst trying not to brake, madness really but thats what legendary races are about and this one goes in the books for that.

Tigs by this time I thought would be at least 20-30 minutes ahead of me on the lightweight purpose built 29er hardtail loaned from Cabin, after all this was the bike that won Karapoti so was one hell of a quick machine.

Ed, well he smoked everyone, probably stopped for a Will Smith at the top of Hot X Buns and drank it on the way down without spilling.

Was half relieved to finally get to EXIT trail and saw Helen snapping away, She must have been there a long time as Ed was about a day ahead of me

Here comes the Tiger, at least 30 minutes ahead of me on that super light weight weapon. (or so I thought and expected)..

And finally me, after just having knee surgery and somehow mysteriously finding myself on a heavy bike with summer tyres I was pleased to just be alive, I was racking my brains to figure out just how Tigs had pulled it off, how did he know just where to leave that stick?, did he have outside assistance?.. who helped him?.

Into the race finish for a 3rd in Masters, 13th overall, I saw Tigs just finished, I couldnt believe it that after all those penalties I had for the race, I was only 2min 30secs behind.. If only I had known I wouldnt have stopped for that Gary Coleman on Gunna Gotta.

Huge HUGS to Tigs though for loaning me his Turner, otherwise I would have spent the morning soaking in a hot pool drinking lattes and not enjoying the redwoods at its best... THANKS BUDDY!!

The 2010 Winter NDuro 3 claimed many many sets of brakes pads and had around 25 DNF's, stuff of legend.

Next day I checkout out what remained of my brake pads... These pads were installed fresh at the start of the race..

Rear set lasted 2 hours.
Have kindly included a new set as comparision, see if you can spot the worn pads

Front Set

Queue Tigs

This was to be a "Family Holiday" with one little race thrown in the middle... Yeah Right I hear you say, you know me well. Second day of the holiday and I was feeling well under the weather, it seems as Jack Snot had decided to camp out in my nasal passage while Jack Hammer went to work on my head. Tossing up (Not much different to date night at Keith Manor)on whether or not to race, I decided to test the waters. A 1hr 30min ride through the illustrious "Tree Trunk Gorge" with my local homeboy Sly Guy Si, sorted me out a treat. Jack had left the building.

FTR If you have ever driven past Tree Trunk Gorge on the Desert Rd (Which EVERYONE has) you would have thought to yourself "One day I should ride that trail" I say do IT!!!! Beautiful scenic ride through some extremely wonderful native bush. Check out the Kennett Brothers, Classic New Zealand Mountain Bike Rides book for directions.

Ok back to the riding. Pre race day had arrived and as Angry said I arrived just in time to see his ridiculous attempt at dropping out of the race. A fresh stead and he was back in the game. I popped around to Cabin's (Mark Leishman) to pick up what he calls his "Training Bike". After close inspection I noticed he must have taken the "Trainer Wheels" off just before I got there. I got a tour of the "Man Den" and a history tour of his bikes. Between Nick and Him they could start a bike yard. After my lecture from Cabin about how he downed a Monteiths after winning Karapoti and stuck the bottle cap to the top of his stem (Bike stem obviously) I treasured every minute during the race steering at it... well that was until I brutally dismembered it and replace it with some class of its own (Cabin I will sell the Montieths one back to you for a shiny gold one)

Mud was the order of the day and after 1h 30mins of racing I had already burnt out the back brake pads of the 29er. Still feeling great I troopered on dabbing the front brakes, speed was my friend I thought... until!!!! Superman here I come. I had hit a steep down hill section only to be bucked off and soar a good 5mtrs through the air completing a spectaular ninja role to recovery. The rest of the race was full of slip sliding, endos and face plants. Finishing in a little over 3hrs in the pooooring down rain. 8th over all and 3rd in the Open Mens category.

Back to the hotel where the owner instructed Angry and I to hose off before jumping into the hot pools. Oblidged and away we went, it was Rotorua after all where pooh colour pools are a normality.

The rest of the weekend we dedicated to Bushlove Keith Family. Thanks most of all to m wonderful wife for supporting me over this weekend and putting up with my endless mountain Bike Antics.

A BIG thanks to Cabin for the lend of his 29er bike. It was definitly worth its while going out for a skid on this. Big wheels keep on turning and all, I loved it one the open fire roads and its traction on the climbs. I did however have to remember to drop 2 gears at the bottom of each climb to save my punny little shanks.

Lataz

Tigs

PS..

Both families stayed at the Alpin Motel in Rotorua , these guys rocked!.. they went to great lengths to make sure our stay was great and that we had a hot shower, soak in the hot pool and a beer after the race even though we had aleady checked out, check them out next time you are in Vegas, top people. Chur Angry..

George Aldred - New Bushlove Team Member

2010-08-12T15:30:00.002+12:00

Yo!

I'm very proud to announce the birth of our new baby boy, George Anthony Aldred! George was born by C-Section at 5.01am and weighed in at 7lb 3oz.

Both George and Amie are doing really well and George was straight into the feeding.

George is a really handsome little lad and we could not be prouder. Ella is meeting him soon which is very exciting! Ella wanted a brother so she could be the prettiest and he could be the coolest! He will also never steal her toys. I can also now justify the huge Scalextric slot car racing set of my dreams.

Thanks very much for the phone messages we've received and in advance for emailed replies and comments here. Apologies for any delay getting back to well wishers, but it is a hectic time!

See you on the trails (lol - in about a year).

Dave

Sloppy Thirds - Bike Hutt Cyclocross No.3

2010-08-01T17:13:00.013+12:00

The third round of the Bike Hutt Cyclocross series was served up with a traditional amount of awful weather, making the course at California Park very challenging. The rain started during warm up, and just got worse. Every lap the puddles were growing until the gravel track was covered on the last laps. The boggy corners became more treacherous and for those riding the pinch climbs, they needed twice as much control and technique towards the end, despite being twice as buggered.

Who farted?

The turn out was down on the previous two rounds due to the weather forecast. But there was a good number of hardouts who had come out, including CX newbies, our men Alex Bennett and Tiger Keith.

Tony made work for the event crew by knocking their barrier over a lot. I didn't. Double their height says I.

Importantly, Bushlove represented extremely well in the opening 30minute race, by fielding our secret weapon, pocket rocket, Alex Bushlove Bennett. Alex smashed out his laps without complaint and looked awesome in his custom Bushlove Racing kit. Good work Alex! It's great to have you racing for Bushlove. How long before you beat your Dad?

The 1 hour race set off with the usual flurry and eventually settled into Stu Houltham and Alex Revell duking it out a little ahead of Bushies, Ed and Tigs. I was in 5th trying desperately to find enough beans to hold my nemesis, Waghorn, off who was in 6th. Clive was superfast everywhere but the barriers, but you can lose lot of time there. Will chasing Waghorn be Clives role in the PNP series? Or will Waghorn spend 5 rounds chasing the NC?

Lots of riders, including most of us, took a few naps in the mud on the fast, muddy off-camber corner where Mr Madsen had set up his camera. Glad I wasn't the only one!

The pecking order at the finish was:

Mighty Houltham (good luck in Canada, Stu. Go hard!)
Tigs
Ed Crosling (rode out from city!)
Alex Revell (rode out from city!)
Dave Aldred (rode out from city!*)
Waghorn
Clive
Results

Epic Bushlove loading of the results. Good job everyone. I might miss the final due to incoming baby. Amie, my lovely Smokescreen, is due 11 August.

Thanks especially to Mike Anderson for laying the event on, and well done to him for riding both races! It was his birthday! Thanks very much to our mate, Craig Madsen of Hedgehog Photography for the awesome pictures. Big round of applause for all the spectators who gave everyone a big boost with their cheers. Especially The Bennett family and Belinda and the Waggettes! Great pics from Belinda here: Belinda's Pics

Cheers
Davo

* Upper Hutt city. My Smokescreen was at her cousins.

Grass Grubs - Bike Hutt Cyclocross Round Two

2010-07-19T23:46:00.007+12:00

Yet another beautiful sunny day for round two of The Bike Hutt cyclocross series in Upper Hutt. The California Park course was short with several pinch climbs, the usual barriers and plenty of momentum sapping long damp mossy grass. This time the true CX bikes would have less advantage over the motley collection of "other bikes". The short tight course made for great spectator action which Waggers used this to his advantage with his personal support crew The Waggettes toting vuvuzelas. With DJ Mariska on music and vodka shots the stage was set for lulz, skidz and general shenanigans.

The spectating is equally as serious as the riding

Four well-dressed Bushies lined up for the 1 hour race, Davo and Waggers in dashing black BLR kit, BGA in BLR disco-ghey white, and Ed in sponsor "disguise".

Lots of hurt as Davo exits the "drink station"

The tussle for the hole-shot was won by Davo as he wound his single speed up to 11. However this winning tactic ensures that unless you have a stellar day then the only way is backwards from here. After a bit of partner swapping everyone found their groove and a pecking order formed of Ed, Alex Revell, Davo, Waggers, and BGA. Things stayed this way until about half time when Waggers finally got the better of Davo to move in to third place. To add insult to being passed by someone skinnier than a cross bike Davo's chain dropped and tangled in a boy-scout knot that was tighter than a Tiger on date night. He manned-up and ran the final ten minutes drinking heavily at Bar Mariska on each lap. BGA had a solid race and got the most wolf whistles probably due to his Greg Herbold glasses and grin.

A classic BLR example of racing and cross-dressing combined

The final finishing order is awaiting a count-back by the judges but a top effort from Ed to take the win, especially considering he and BGA rode out from town and then back again, ouch. It was a supremely hard slog through the long grass with all punters crossing the line gasping but smiling. Several beers and a whole bottle of vodka were consumed by the 20-odd riders, but that's cyclocross racing for you.

Almost faster than sunlight, Ed had the cleanest heels of all = WIN!

More pictures can be found here.

Cyclocross Newsflash

2010-07-18T13:41:00.002+12:00

Bushie, Ed Crossling wins the second round of the Bike Hutt Cyclocross series at California Park, Upper Hutt. Alex Revell first loser. Private Waghorn second loser, rounding out the virtual podium.

Ice, Ice, Baby!

2010-07-14T19:12:00.004+12:00

Before you get any bad ideas I’m not gong to remind you of Davo’s favourite song, rather that title would sum up the general weather across the country over the weekend and, what Rotorua treated a few sifters (300+ riders) to in the 2nd Winter N Duro race.
I’m not going to complain though; after a distinct lack of vitamin D on offer in Wellington for the past couple months, it was so good to see the sun again in Vegas.

The weekend started off good and bad. Good in that my amazing smokescreen and I had a good run of traffic Saturday morning heading up the country; bad with the Desert Road deciding to shut shop and add an extra hour to our traveling time: fail!
After a brownie points ride with my smokescreen in the Whaka forest (even paid for her shuttle ride to the summit, bonus points!), it was time to settle in for another night at Nic & Cabins place. After pathetic negotiation on my part, payment for our accommodation was offered in the form of ‘Bushlover for a day’, with Cabin rocking the team edition roadie fail cap for the race.

After a clear still night which gave most of NZ its coldest overnight temps, race day was here. Even though the sun was shinning, it still hovered in the low single digits through much of the morning; starting a race with numb feet and hands is never nice but I had no say in that matter.
Race started as always; skid around the field and into the single track in a nicely timed 5th position. Didn’t take long for things to break up; me pulling at Mike Northcott’s pockets, with Stu Houltham and Cabin chasing a couple seconds back (after about 5km).

After sandbagging along A-Trail giving 10s to Mikey in the twisty single track, decided a bit of rampage was needed at the end of the track on the jumps to pull him back in. With a few wild flying sessions (which came very close to ending in tears), I managed to grab back onto Mike’s tail, and notice we had pulled a bit more time on the other two. Through Tickler, then onto Direct Road where I would find that all the chocolate consumed at work is not always in your favour. Up Frontal Lobotomy to the top of Billy T, Mikey pulled out to 15-20s lead on me; luckily I still had no view of the vultures behind me.

After a smooth decent (thank you Mr SantaCruz), the gap had only grown slightly to Mikey. But with just twisty fast Vegas single track ahead it was always going to be a big ask to pull him in. Split Endz went by accident free but not the same down Pondy DH. In exactly the same place as the previous week I had a small flip over the bars; nothing too major and back on my bike within seconds but with the other guys breathing down my back. The rest of Pondy treated me better as well as Rollercoaster and, now my mojo was returning.

Chinese menu put a halt to that. Halfway through, a fern smacked me in my eye making vision really difficult. I had to relent to a hard charging Sam Shaw a bit before Dragons Tail as I was starting to ride all over the show; now I just had to hope I could hold 3rd.
All was going well until the very last track, Rosebank. Within 1km of the finish I went slightly off track, confused with direction and, who should pass me but that Bushlove imposter Cabin; damn locals! A few quick drops, a river crossing and it was into the finish; very tired and a bit battered but not nearly in the same state as the last race.

So 4th overall it was (3rd open, Sam’s a speeding junior); on paper crappier then the first race but in my head a lot better then the previous N Duro race.
A whole month now until the next one now! The trouble I could get up to… Probably not, just a bit more sifting in the crap Wellington weather and working to pay for the next trip.

I must thank Nic & Cabin for their hospitality, but Cabin did get the honour of Bushlover for a day… And my wonderful smokescreen; puts up with my bone dry humour, ghey Bushlove mates and, still takes me to all these races when there’s a good chance the ambulance will be taking me home.

Catch you in a month Vegas!

Nduro Round Two - Flash Report

2010-07-11T19:24:00.002+12:00

Epic speed walker, Ed Crossling, rode a fantastic race today in Rotovegas to clinch 3rd place in Open class and 4th overall. He was in extremely good company

Mike Northcott 1.49:51

Sam Shaw 1.51:45

Filthy Multisporter Leishman 1.52:10

BIG DOG ED CROSSLING 1.52.20

Those are some tight time gaps. Full credit to Ed for a steaming ride.

After mentioning on several occasions how he would be happy with Top 10 in Masters, Angry Clive Bennett scored a lusty 10th place. Narrowly missing out on the inspirational 11th.

The Trouble With Smokescreens

2010-07-07T20:33:00.005+12:00

Some of the team have spent good money on Smokescreen wives, girlfriends, boyfriends and even children, in order to maintain the valuable illusion that they are desireable and competant in the ways of both emotional and physical love.

But if you can't afford the extra fee's, like those for respect at home and intercourse, it isn't always plain sailing.

excuse the french words used in these lulz-packed discussions

River Queens - Bike Hutt Cyclocross Round One

2010-07-05T21:00:00.006+12:00

Mint photo - Craig Madsen

Cyclocross is a wonderful thing. Its short and painful. You get no rests, no relief. CX racing has plenty of fight and close contact. You can see your marked rider up ahead. The challenger behind has eyes on you. You must chase your next rider faster than the hunter behind can chase you. You must hit the gas hard from the gun, and keep your foot pressed to the floor. No mistakes. Start freewheeling too far from a barrier, or waste time on a remount and your challenger will rip precious seconds out of you.

Its great that Mike and his team from The Bike Hutt are such ardent cyclocross fans. Mike is putting on a four round series in Upper Hutt based at California Park and Trentham Memorial Park. We'd been looking forward to it and for round one, Bushlover's Waghorn, Burgess, Crossling and Aldred lined up in their ravishing new team strip.

Mint photo - Craig Madsen

Ashley represented in the fantastic new BLR kit and had custom made some BLR CX Special Socks to go with it. She even rolled out in a spankly pair of POW gloves in a suitably pink and black chequered flag design. Ash won the women's race in the 30min event with a fine ride. We know from the Revolve Womens MTB Series held earlier this year, that there are tons of lady offroad racers in Wellington, so hopefully more will come out for the next three rounds.

Mr Crossling was so desperate to spend time on his freshly painted Turner Flux, that he rode out to the race from the city (and back again) which took the razor sharp edge off his shanks. It was a tough course to start tired on and Al suffered like the proverbial dog, but represented well with Bushlove battle calls across the field of dreams.

Mint photo - Craig Madsen

Waghorn and Davo ran singlespeeds. Davo modified his with a slightly taller gear and slightly narrower tires. But Waggers ran his 'as God intended' with burly tires, shocks and a regular ratio.

Mint photo - Craig Madsen

Off the line the Crosstafarian himself forced the pace and gave everybody a bit of a shock - Had he been training? Can he maintain this pace?!? Davo edged past to lead into lap 2 and then Mr Houltham rolled past him in the big ring which Dave didn't have. Davo's chain then derailed and he could only watch with despair as the whole pack rode past while he removed his wheel to reseat it. It came off again on lap 3 much to his frustration as all those he fought to get past, read him the good news as they shot past.

Everybody found their rhythm and settled into the epic grunt fest. The stream crossings were a magnificent addition to the course. Several skilled riders rode the crossings both ways including Stu Houltham and Waggers on his SS. Davo ran them like a proper roadie.

Mint photo - Craig Madsen

The effort of keeping the foot nailed to the floor told on everyone and positions were gained and yielded in the second half. Eventually Davo pipped Waggers and led him home. Davo 4th and Waggers 5th. Although they both got upgraded after a results adjustment, meaning a fabulous 3rd and 4th for the boys. A great start for series points.

A mint day, a great hard course and grand company. Everyone is looking forward to the next three rounds where hopefully new riders come and try this commanding code and much merriment, vomiting, drifting and hurdling will be had.

Here is a link-fest:

Ashley lap 1 helmet cam footage. See how she represents well with thank you's to the marshals
Owen's Facebook photos of round one.
Katie Morgan's photo's of round one (much hotter than Owen. Sorry Owen)
Bike Hutt blog with results.
Vorb thread.
Good CX on Youtube

For Sparta.

Leonidas - BLR Press Sec.

Muddy Winter Lulz and Uber-Camp Slippers

2010-06-27T19:46:00.004+12:00

We wish our Smokescreens were this dirty.

The weather forecast made some mention of the rain clearing for the afternoon. So Tiger, Ed, Kah, Cam Wood and me went for a ride at Makara. We did a nice loop, but despite the lulz and exertions, got bloody cold waiting for Ed 'Speed Walker' Crossling to catch us up all the time. That boy needs to lose some pounds and lift his game.

Cam on Missing Link

My latest crud catcher is the Mark-1 Keri Juice BLR Team Issue Pro Special. Works a treat.

It rained from start to finish and the trails were somewhat damp. If there wasn't a river running down the trail, there was porridge all over it. By the time we got back to the car park, the idea of carrying on over Salvation, blah blah, Car Parts, blah Deliverence, blah, disappeared faster than our brake pads. So we went home.

Kah SPEEDS up Aratihi

I went back to Tigerbronnar Mansions and we knocked back some burgers, muffins, tea, lager and some hot steamy shower action. Tigs was good enough to stoke the fire while I was in the shower. Then after our shower, he got the fire going as well. What a trooper.

Nothing quite as cosy and cool as big rubber shoe covers on the mtb.

I even got to wear the incredibly camp 'guest slippers' that Nana Keith made. They look shit, but were very comfortable.

Samara's Quiz Night

2010-06-27T19:34:00.003+12:00

A load of us piled into the Monteith's brewery bar in Kandahlahlala in Wellington's suburbs, for a fine evening of quiz lulz and the odd lager, in support of Samara Shepherd's euro racing trip.

Samara had a fine turnout and has definitely raised enough funds to spend at least an hour drinking in Paris, or wherever she is heading for the big world cup and Swiss Cup events.

We thought it would be a fine opportunity to present the new BLR team threads to the world, as it was a 'team' event. Nothing looks cooler in pubs that lycra. Fortunately the clientele was used to such attire as the room was a veritable who's who of Wellington fat tire protagonists.

Clive Bennett (2 x NC + Top 27 Round Taupo) even autographed some of our huge amount of NZMTBR mags as spot prizes. They immedietly dropped in value by 95%.

The Crosslings won a t-shirt in an auction. It was an XL, but our beautiful Elite XC skinny runts found a way to fill it out.

MTB Oh!

2010-06-22T17:44:00.008+12:00

What?

2010 WOA MTB Orienteering Series, event 1, Makara Peak

NZ MTBO Stuff : Results

WTF?

As a self-confessed weather geek I pride myself in the ability to look out a window and detect if the sun is shining. When applying the standard tests this morning the rain was so gnar that I couldn't even see the neighbours house, certainly not across the harbour as far as usual to Petone. I decided to commit and donned my spiffy new BLR top, bottom and gimp cap. As my first ever mtb orienteering event I struggled to take in the race briefing, study the map, and sand-bag at the same time. We had to ride a fixed-order course clipping compulsory controls*, but with options to ride extra distance to get other controls that gave time bonuses. The rain continued.

* A 'control' is orienteering geek-tech for a bright orange and white thing with a bus conductors clipper attached. Waterproof.

Through some perverse seeding involving Karapoti PBs and an impromptu and vicious sand-bag-off I was entered in the open category starting at 20 second gaps behind Fastest Man then the wily Simon K. Immediately behind me was Sifter, a season campaigner and experienced map-whore. The early start gave me less time to study the map so at kick off I only had the first 3 controls sorted and figured I'd make the rest up on the bike. The rain continued.

Like me, FM is also an orienteering novice and his plan was to ride really fast around the mandatory controls staying out there for the shortest possible time. I didn't see him at all during the race. After some fluffing around getting to the first control I was caught by Sifter. I clipped my ticket and put the hammer down easily dropping him - actually he went a different way on a much more clever route. At the second and third controls I bumped into Simon. Then we split as I made my oh-so-cunning next wrong decision. My mighty single speed powered through the rain and muck across Missing Link and down the very slippery and super fun Nikau Valley track. This was my only real deviation to get an extra time bonus of 20 minutes. That extra loop took me only 18 minutes so I was chuffed. The rain continued.

Back at the summit I had a bit of trouble finding control 4. It was cunningly placed "nearly" as marked on the map, this caught out a few punters (and Sifters). From here my cunning plan was to get home quickly and get out of the rain. So I blasted down from the summit to the top of Vertigo then back up Zacs collecting a simple 7 minute time bonus for a 20 second deviation. Back over the top and down to the eastern corner of the park to get the last two compulsory controls my rear brake pads had completely gone, no worries nearly home. The rain continued.

When I arrived at the finish I had ridden for about 1.5 hours and with time bonuses I had a 6 minute lead over the next person, FM. He had ridden right past the 7 minute bonus on Zacs... Only Simon was still out there so I got warm and dry and returned to see him arrive about half an hour after me but with a bunch more time bonuses. On count back he had pipped me by just 30 seconds. Crap. The rain continued.

A fun day out doing skids in the puddles. Driving home the rain stopped, grrr.

Fastest Man's Vegas Podium Post!

2010-06-19T22:28:00.005+12:00

My first post, finally, just taken me how long?!

Cut to the chase, time to head back to Vegas. Last Sunday was the first round of the popular and very well organized N-Duro Winter series. After three months of just ‘sifting’ around the various tracks in Wellington it was time to hop back on the racing wheels and push myself.

Last time I raced seriously in Rotovegas I had a ‘moment’ which gave me one of my nick-names, that being my front flip reverse 360 tail whip which ended in, um, an ambulance. The aptly named track No Brains which caught me out with my acrobatics was included in the race on Sunday, so a bit of a date with destiny (but hopefully not St Johns) faced me.
To the race:

After pissing down for at least 12 hours before the race, the heavens decided to shut shop just in time for show time, but they still left their mark on the course. Was going to be a bit of a gamble running summer party tires, but it’s pretty hard to lose grip on the volcanic Rotorua surface. After a good start straight up the road for the first km a group of five hard outs pulled away, and stay liked that for a bit. When we reached the faster, bumpier 4wd track’s this was taken down to three of us.

After a bit more sifting I finally made the top of No Brains. Determined to finish the race in the car and not the ambulance I took it a bit gingerly, but still managing to shoulder charge a few trees in my usual fashion. After clearing that it was off to Split Endz/ Pondy which has been the victim of a bit of logging for past months.

Halfway on the hill to the top however I was thrown a sandbag and lost contact with the two speeders. Kept sifting to the top trying to keep them in sight, but chasing down the NZ Champ is never easy.

After sliding down Pondy DH because of the bog caused by the loggers it was into Pondy New and Rollercoaster, which were good fun apart from the heap of traffic. Much the same story in Old Chevy, riding by myself, trying to squeeze past the short course riders and keep my distance in front of forth.

However, out of Old Chevy I decided a detour to Harvey Norman would be smart and picked myself up a fridge! Don’t know what happened but one second I was flying then the next I could barely turn a pedal. After stopping for a minute I decided that the smaller fridge might be a bit more practical and rode off, thinking that forth placed local legend Weinberg, was going to catch me any second.

Finally made it to the top of Pig track, somehow still holding third, after which it was all downhill. Down Exit Trail (no crashes, another track I don’t have the best history with) and into the finish. It has been a few months since I made the finish line of a race but this one I was very happy to make after my fridge exercise with 5km to go.

So third back after a decent break from Pro Elite sifting made me pretty happy. Even after dropping 10mins to the leaders, I was pleased with my performance.

Once again in 3 weeks time I will be hitting up the Vegas tracks with a few other Bushies; looking forward to another hard race and hopefully some more thrills (but still, the no spills works for me).

Cheers
Ed

"Bikes of the Amateurs" - Dave's Ibis Mojo

2010-06-13T10:34:00.012+12:00

Ever since I was a kid, one of my favourite parts of bike magazines were the articles about 'Pro Bikes'. I used to really love getting into the detail and seeing why these top guys used certain parts, and what wasn't standard, or even available in the shops. I remember the article about David Baker's Ti Raleigh, which with it's first gen' Hope Ti hub and ti skewers, not to mention an 'aheadset', was state of the art.
I even googled for the article and happened upon this Youtube of the same bike!

This guy looks to be about half as cool as a teabag, but back in the day he was the business and got 3rd in a World Cup XC. He sounds like an idiot, but this is because he is from the North of England.

So here is the first (and possibly last) in the Bushlove "Amateur Bikes" series.

I have a new Ibis Mojo. Its the best thing I've ever ridden and pretty much does the riding for me. Its a full carbon frame (except for all the lead weights Slacky no doubt put in the tubes for me) with 5.5 inches of super plush travel in the back and up front with the Fox RLC fork. It's got a DW link which basically means it doesn't shag you around when you try to pedal it up a hill. One of the coolest things is the look of this fine horse. The swoopy frame shape and the bright orange colour makes for a real head turner.

It's my first foray into the new world of modern mountain bikes. All the man cards I have held close to my chest for so long, have been thrown on the pile, as I embrace the full suspension comforts and even contemplate a super-camp adjustable seatpost and tubeless tires. My baggy shorts now even outnumber my tight ones.

It's been an interesting couple of months learning to ride it. It's good pedaling through rough ground, especially when climbing as the back end gives awesome traction. Descending is sublime and many technical sections of trail are now quite easy, until they get, er.. hard. I've set it up with an 80mm Thomson stem and sweet Easton EA70 680mm Monkeybar, which stops the bike feeling too 'XC Racer' and gives great handling, especially round steep corners or over drop offs. I run the saddle at my regular XC height which as all those in the know, know is inseam in shoes x 0.883 (per the great, Deadly Ned Overend) - 10mm to give more maneuverability on steeper trails. I get a lot out of the bike when I drop the saddle for some downhills so might get something like a Gravity Dropper or Joplin in the future. Once I've done some testing to see if the dollars spent translate into enough time saved.

I almost always run Schwalbe Nobby Nic 2.25 with tubes at 30psi. I reckon they are one of the best all round tires. I can race them wet or dry and they roll great. If I get a chance to do some racing this year (baby due in August ;o) I might get some super fast Racing Ralphs and run them tubeless when its not too wet.

Some of these airs are even bigger than Clive's. This is the same frame. I figure good enough for Lopes, more than good enough for me!

The other interesting thing I've tried is the 1x9 set up with the MRP 1x device. Working great so far. Coming off the singlespeed I still have plenty of climbing gears, and never came close to touching the bottom cogs doing a nice Makara ride yesterday Although I did do quite a few climbs in the 34t. But then I am feeble and lazy. I like riding steep techy uphills though and it might be too tough with this set-up. Time will tell. Although there is a 12-36t cassette I could get. And when Shimano brings out 10spd, it will have the range required to make this set-up more versatile. Nothing says 'probably wearing bib shorts underneath' like a World Cup XC gear set up.

I'm not hugely experienced in riding different fullys. The Mojo has won a few magazine test showdowns and the MTBR bike of the year a few times, so I thought it was a safe choice and I've been very impressed. I've done some fun amateur jumps and drops on it, and even gone fairly well in a couple of XC type races, which was reassuring. The customer service is also meant to be excellent, and I've had some great chats and support from Mike Stylie at Hyperformance Hardware, the NZ distributor.

Its an awesome machine. I read somewhere that the measure of a great bike is how much you look forward to riding it. Driving over to Makara yesterday I felt like I was 16 again, in my best undies, on the way to a new girlfriends house, knowing her parents were out.

Cheers
Dave