Lucky (Muddy) Last! Wanganui AKDH Race

Ok, so that was HEAPS of fun! But it was also maaaajorly ‘the deep end’! Here’s a race report, it ended up being a bit long, sorry. Too much fun!

I had talked Caro into coming to Wanganui too to shuttle and ride even if she wasn’t keen to race, so we drove up on Friday, and made the most of not having to ride up hills fast the next day by drinking when we got there, something that has been missing from xc trips to Rotovegas! The weather was dodgey, meaning we didn’t stop at Kapiti as we’d planned, but it seemed like it was clearing. Our cabin was right between two families with bikes and teenage boys, which was to be a theme of the weekend…

Next morning (practice day) and we didn’t even have to get up early to make it to the very haphazardly organized shuttle day. The shuttles didn’t come till and hour after they were due, so much time was spent talking to other vorbers and Welly bikeshop boys and watching the groms argue about bikes. There were a lot of groms, very few guys seemed over 20, and when the shuttles came I soon understood why so many people detest the groms – they were pushing and shoving to get on and expecting everything to be done for them (bike stacking, putting mats between bikes etc) while they fight for places on the sides of the truck.

We got on the last truck and headed up (pretty sketchy sitting on the sides of a loaded truck charging up a hill…) and at the top waited for the others to go so we wouldn’t be mown over. The track wasn’t good. We had been told it was pretty cool with some steep sections, but apparently it had been changed. It was a series of mud pits at the top, then a short but steep muddy chute, lots of rutted muddy corners, into a ridgeline with some little jumps (the funnest part!) the down into trees with steep dirt into small berms. Then the real madness began, with a steep off camber section, follwed by a very steep bit with lots of short, rollable, but very soft little drops in deep topsoil stuff, followed by a big drop into a tight gap between trees with a corner that was also VERY steep.

We walked most of the first run, and a lot of it looked completely un-doable for me (and Caro too), and I was gutted and questioning WHY I had ever thought this was a good idea. We went back up though, and the second run rode quite a bit more. And with some advice, we found the nana line around the final drop (other steep sections had nana lines that were taped off, to make it ‘more challenging’).

By the end of the day, I had just two bits I couldn’t ride, the muddy chute (rollable on one line in theory, bit still freaking me out!) and the soft soil drops parts which I crashed trying and then was a bit scared of. I decided I would try them both the next day if I was feeling good and it was a bit drier. Everyone else was saying the course was far harder than expected, and spectators at the big drop were saying roughly half of those who tried it were crashing! It was stink I couldn’t ride it all, but I was having fun and pushing myself which is great, and I was SHATTERED by the end of the day!

The only other girl racing was Jenna (Don’t know her last name but someone will) who had just come back from Worlds and had decided at the last minute to come down with mates to do the race. They (and lots of others) were also staying at the same holiday park. After we’d had showers we got pizza and went to find a park to eat it at and just happened to end up at a park where lots of the groms were doing these HUUUGE dirt jumps which was pretty impressive actually.

Back at the holiday park groms were doing all kinds of things like chasing the park ducks, crashing the park’s 3 wheel buggies, riding their bikes on the air pillow… as one of their mum’s said, it’s amazing they’re allowed back each year!

Anyway, Saturday was a pretty nice day, but in the night it POURED. And the next morning it was nice then it POURED, then the sun shone then it POURED. This continued all day. The already muddy track was an absolute mess, and there were a lot less people for the actual race than the shuttle day. We did one warm up, and I’d decided I would only do one race run and spectate for the other run, but they cut it to one run for everyone because of the mess.

Jenna and I were seeded last (as Open Women) so we had a long wait in the cooooold rain and wind, but Jenna was clever enough to get mats (that they stack between the bikes on trailers) to shelter under so we were the warmest of all the shivering riders at the top! My race run was good comedy value, I had been sliding on my arse for much of the warmup run and in the race run I just did that again, but with feeling! But I rode the less steep parts, and Scatter’s speedway analogy made a lot of sense with the mad mud drifts (I didn’t have mud tyres).

I was laughing most of the way except the last bit where I decided to run my bike along a narrow slippery off camber path where there where lots of spectators and groms who had finished already shouting ‘aw go on just ride it’! They did cheer when I got back on though.

So I came last, but not by, y’know, half an hour or anything! I was 20seconds behind the next slowest rider I think. Which is fine by me, for a first race!! I was also second open woman, for which I got a mention at prizegiving (unlike a certain much larger xc event recently…), a bar of chocolate, and a purple certificate to put on the fridge, just like ones you get at school! Stoked!!!

After that we drove back to Wellington to do some ACTUAL riding at Makara (as opposed to my hydrosliding and Caro’s spectating) which was a complete WOOT, Ridgeline = pwn3d!!! Awesome weekend though, I’d totally do it again, it really can’t get much worse than that in terms of conditions and track difficulty (or so I’ve been told by fairly knowledgable sources), so presumably will be more fun next time? Oh and apart from a couple of bruises, and sorer muscles than after the Nduro 100, (seriously, DH is HARD!) I didn’t munt myself. Or my bike. Sweet!