Last week I competed in the Kellevie 6 hour XC mountain bike race, which is held on private property east of Sorell. I had originally entered with a friend, but he had to pull out at the last minute for personal reasons. I decided to have a crack at riding solo. The circuit was 9 km, with about 90 % single track and the rest open fire trails. I hadn’t really known what to expect, but was pleasantly surprised to find no overly steep climbs - I used my ‘granny’ gear on only one part of the circuit.

I rode comfortably, albeit slowly, through the techincal sections, and really started to flow through some bits as I got used to them throughout the day. I did have a few crashes (4 in total I think) and a flat on the second or third lap, although they were caused more by lack of concentration rather than fatigue. For the first couple of laps, the crowd set the pace. I was happy to go with the flow and sit behind the person in front; I let seemingly countless people overtake me. At the transition after the first lap, I bumped into Tim, a friend from work; we set out together, and remained close by for pretty much the rest of the race, as we were going at a similar pace to each other.

We ended up completing 9 laps (81 km) in 6 hours 19 minutes, which put us at 26th and 27th out of a total of 55 finishers. I was really happy with my performance, as I’d never competed in a race, and almost never ride with others recreationally. I’ll certainly never be able to compete with the real riders, but I had a great time, and will be looking out for more races when I head over to live in NZ in a few weeks. n.b. I have no idea if I’m breaching some form of copyright by posting the tasimage photos; I ripped them off the website, and will take them down the moment I’m threatened by lawyers.