HMBA Club Championships

Well after the Fling I gave my body some time off the bike, I don't think it was necessarily a choice for the first day or two... I doubt I could have ridden. I was planning a cruisy spin during the week but somehow that never happened, then it rained on Friday and by the time we'd cleaned the bikes on Saturday it was suddenly a whole week off the bike.

But that's ok, the email about the club champs promised a forgiving course:

"The race will be a 2 hour enduro format for A, B and C grades, and 1.5 hour for D and E grades. The track will be another new configuration with the promise that there are no big hills and it will be a relatively short track."

Now the past year the club has been mixing up the club rounds, new linking tracks have been used to swap bits of the lap in and out and, just recently, we've been riding parts of the track in reverse. Today was no different, a totally new configuration including a lot of reverse track.

The usual faces were at rego and it was a decent turn out, Wendy Stevenson had rocked up from Sydney for a Sunday morning cruise of the trails only to find the race was on so she joined in the fun and registered for A grade women. The format was a 2-hour enduro for most grades with the lower grades stopping after 1.5 hours.

I'm not sure what that email meant by "no big climbs", I mean the climbs at Awaba aren't generally huge in the scheme of things but there's a lot of up and down and the track is generally hard work. This time we set out on firetrail, complete with huge moto ruts and pretty soon hit the first real descent which was slightly greasy from the small amount of rain on Friday and Saturday. Through a couple of puddles and we hit something that looked distinctly like a hill, then it felt like a hill ... but according the email it can't have been a BIG hill...

Then it was back into regular track down a fast firetrail and a stretch of rainforested single track which ends with a short pinch climb called the Murderhorn. Just as we were getting comfortable we popped out of that section of track and instead of heading left on some smooth double track, we crossed the trail and headed straight up what is normally a very fun and fast descent. Well let's just say it wasn't fast and the fun factor was questionable in this direction. 

Only a few hundred metres further on the trail setter turned us left and we promptly lost all elevation again in a fast relatively straight descent back onto the double track that had looked so inviting before the climb. Onwards into normal direction single track for a while, with nice corners and no real ups or downs, we then came out at the bottom of DH track. Normally this is the end of a lap but no, we were facing yet another descent in reverse... which I would call a climb. This was a grind, it's normally a fun descent of bermed corners, now it became hard work.

Once topped out we continued on the track in reverse direction, descending a few tight corners and swopping along all the way to Siberia corner right out near the road. Now even in the right direction Siberia corner is hard to flow, it's tight and not bermed and tends to be a bit sandy and loose. Well in reverse it was worse, because we approached on a descent.

Not far to go now, and finally you're climbing a few snaking corners up to the timing tent. Great one lap done - now just repeat for 2 hours. I was lapped at around 24 minutes, I worked out that I should get in five laps and knew I was well head of the other girls. I timed it perfectly in the end, a 2 hour enduro and my finish time on my Garmin was 2:01:45 well ahead of the other girls.

It's funny how you can know a track so well, know every rock and root and line... then someone makes you ride it backwards and it's totally new. Some of it flows like you never realised it could and then other parts... well let's just say there's a bit of bark missing and sore knee after today. 

Log roll overs became step-ups, berms tricked you into thinking they could help when the were really designed for riders coming the other way. Then those bits that look flat but feel like they are uphill; well they really must be uphill because riding them in reverse is swoopy and fast.

Lucky it was a nice flat course!

So that's it for club racing for the year, officially female A-grade champion. Thanks to all the hard-working people who make HMBA and club racing happen, I know you guys are busy people with jobs and families - it's people like you who keep mountain biking alive.

And thanks to the imagination of the course-setter who keeps us on our toes. I'd much rather be made to ride up my favorite descent from time to time than get bored with racing the same track each month. It was a tough race but definitely worth the effort, next time I'll try and bring some fresh legs.