'Major Pain' final round of the Vic Enduro Series

Site laps of a mountain bike course can normally induce one of two emotional responses. You can feel that you can approach all trail features and obstacles with confidence and ride comfortably within your ability, or you can be left feeling that the next day will surely produce carnage and bloodshed all over the side of the hill on a scale not seen since William Wallace led the Battle of Stirling Bridge in 1297.

Our site lap of Mount Major the day before the race left Craig and I feeling ample doses of both. The course and the tracks were fantastic but six hours of racing around them was going to require total physical and mental focus. We searched every pharmacy in Shepparton but couldn’t find where to buy this anywhere.

Allow me to paint a picture: Mount Major is a treeless grassy mound rising 200m above the race village set up at the bottom. It is clad in long grass and rocks and several telecommunications towers crown the summit. It is windy and barren, and home to free ranging flocks of sheep, goannas and snakes. World Trails have laid out a network of single track that drapes over the hill like a spider web and takes in all the natural features and contours. Some tracks were as simple as a strip of grass that had been poisoned along the contour of the hillside producing the mother of all off-camber corners which were initially covered in loose dead grass until a line had been worn in after a couple of laps.

There was 300m of climbing per 10km lap, (at 11 laps for the winner, you do the math) with around a dozen technical rock gardens to negotiate in an uphill fashion. The main descent was named ‘roller coaster’ which either followed the contour in an off-camber manner or plummeted straight down before bottoming out on a sharp turn and shooting you back up the hill again. Speeds of up to 50kmph were claimed here, and with each lap that was safely completed one could become more brazen with their speed each time, letting gravity do the work and saving the legs as much as possible for the long climb back up the hill. Check out the crazy course map on the Garmin file: http://connect.garmin.com/activity/125171437

Phil flying down the "Roller Coaster"

It was a unique course in that you could see large sections of the track in front and behind which meant riders that you were trying to catch or gap were often well within site, creating psychological gameplays. Either that or it just meant that Craig and I could wave to each other, or we could see how long it would be until Phil lapped us. And it was damn quickly! The young man put in as good a performance as any for the year, in spite of it being the final 6 hour race in what has been a very long year of big races. And Craig’s perseverance finally paid off as well, celebrating his 20^th consecutive enduro round with his first win in the 40+ category. Will Geor also put in a customary solid ride, looking strong throughout the day, but relieved like the rest of us when it was all over.

Will

So now a three month hiatus before the series resumes again with Ballarat to host the first round. With the home ground advantage we should all be out there in Canadian getting to know every inch of the course and getting ready to tear it up!

Mens Open

Phil Orr 1^st place 11 laps 6:22:01
Will Geor 5^th place 9 laps 5:59:17
Matt Turner 6^th place 8 laps 6:01:34

Mens 40+

Craig Sinclair 1^st place 8 laps 6:20:57