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).