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Showing posts from 2018

Racing, Life, and Rediscovering Passions

As most of you will have noticed, I’ve been rather quiet on the race/blog front recently. In typical me fashion, I got injured. Again! But this update is going to be a wee bit different to anything I have done in the past. It is going to be a review of the last year, relating to work, racing, life, and rediscovering my passions. I apologise in advance if any of you fall asleep while reading this, I have discovered that putting my thoughts on paper (or in this case online document) is a valuable tool to remind myself of lessons learnt through either success or failure, and ensure I keep moving forward. As someone far wiser than me once said, “don’t bury your failures, let them inspire you!” One year ago (today) I made my first step into the corporate world with a full-time job as an auditor at Moore Stephens Markhams. While I can’t say I 100% enjoy the corporate world lifestyle of sitting at a desk and wearing a suit, the people, clients and opportunities have made the year fly by

SCMBC 4x2

Little events like these end up being the gems that you have to compete at year after year. This one will certainly be one of those, especially with an entry fee of only $31.50! (Take note other race organisers). Anyone who has ridden in Timaru will know how fun the trails are, especially for longer races like this one or the Timaru 10 hour. Unlike last weekend, I would certainly recommend this event to anyone. As a bonus the South Canterbury Mountain Bike Club use the funds for trail building so it's a win win for us riders! It's just ashame that after several weekends in a row of racing, I was only able to enjoy 2 hours of racing rather than the full 4! The course was great fun for this length of time racing, the competition was crazy fast (just look at the results to see how dominant Tim Rush was...), and the weather was perfect. I probably should have been a little less relaxed about the start, as you can see from the photo, you can barely see me! I certainly don't ha

Red Zone 6

In what’s becoming a bit of a habit, I didn’t spend the day before this race relaxing or prepping my gear. I was getting up at 5am to go spend 12 hours in the middle of the waimak doing safety for the Coast to Coast. While I enjoy being able to still use my skills in a location I’ve spent many hours the last few years, I probably should have picked one or the other as I am wrecked today! My waimak island for the day I really wasn’t looking forward to this event, I only entered it as it fitted in nicely with my training plan and goals for the season. Nothing about 6 hours riding on footpaths around the Red Zone was very appealing. Add on the forecasted rain and I knew it was going to be a long day. In retrospect this mindset wasn’t a great way to start off the day when I was already feeling flat from the day before. My warm up lap of the course really didn’t do much to improve my mood when I realised we would be orienteering around the course as well! For the third weeken

South Island Champs

I can't start this report off without saying a massive thank you to Craig and Rebekah Tregurtha. Cross Country racing in Christchurch would not be where it is today if it wasn't for the selfless hours they have both put into the Christchurch Singletrack Club, trail building, and event organisation over the years. I certainly wouldn't be where I am today if I hadn't have had their events as motivation after my heart issues. And to top things off, after organising a super successful event that competitors and spectators alike enjoyed, Craig topped things off by winning his category.... pretty damn impressive. I really wasn't sure what to expect going into this race after my performance the previous weekend. I've been asked a few times why I didn't race elite, and in all honesty, my results show why I didn't go elite. While I may be able to go alright over long distances, short races like these require an entirely differently focus, and with the current l

Concilio 679

After a big summer of training at the local training playground (and a whole range of pb's despite training and racing there for many years), I was looking forward to starting off my block of races with a 3hr in Dunedin on the Oceania course. Unfortunately I hadn't quite accounted for the state my bike would be in after 4 weeks of backcountry racing... 1 week later and my bike still in pieces, I was fortunate enough to have Chain Reaction supply me a demo Specialized Epic Comp Carbon. I can't thank them enough for this as otherwise I would have had yet another DNS, and it certainly wasn't the bikes fault about my final result (but more about that later). Not many people know but before multisport and before my (first) attempt at mountain bike racing, I was a competitive slalom waterskier. I was fortunate enough to win Canterbury champs for waterskiing, then the following year switch to mountain biking and win Canterbury champs again (this time on a bike of course).