Kowalski Classic

I won an entry to the Kowalski Classic 90km for having the fastest female night lap at the Mont24, I was stoked as it was an event I wanted to do anyway… then everything changed in July when I got hit by the car and we swapped the entry over to Tim instead.

For several weeks before the Kowalski I had been putting solid hours in on the roadie. The arm was just about ok road riding, except when there was a lot of surface bumps and vibration when I could definitely feel it. While I felt unsafe on the road, the impact of mountain biking on the arm wasn’t good so it was road or trainer… and trainer sucks!

Exactly a week before Kowalski I decided to test my arm on the mountain bike once more, having not touched it for weeks. We did a lap of Glenrock, less than an hour of riding but it seemed ok. It wasn’t 100% and I was definitely aware of it but it didn’t get worse over the ride and the pain wasn’t bad or unbearable. So I emailed the Kowalski organisers pleading for late entry into the 50km event, I got an almost immediate reply and within an hour I was entered.

Then Canberra got rain, I mean real rain, we haven’t had any up here for a while but they got 70mm in less than 48 hours. I started to really wonder if I’d done the right thing, after all my arm was ok for a gentle 50 minutes on dry and groomed home trails but for 50km in mud….

Word on the street said the trails weren’t too bad, and we registered at Kowen Forest on the Saturday afternoon with time for a quick spin round part of the course. What we rode was dry but we both felt slow, and failed to find flow on the trails. This was going to be a tough race.

The morning of race dawned with perfect conditions, cold enough to make us Novocastrians pretty darn chilly but no rain or fog or frost. Tim headed out in the 90km wave starts and I had the new experience of waiting around for the much more social start time of the 50km race.

Under strict instructions to take it easy I put myself towards the back of the large first wave start, I knew we headed into Kowalski Sideshow early on and I didn’t want to be holding up the field if my arm was sore. Before the singletrack however was a decent firetrail climb, which sorted a few people out, it was still conga line into Kowalski Sideshow though and I soon found myself stuck behind a cautious descender.

Overtaking at the first opportunity I started to find a rhythm in the swopping flowing pine forest that is Kowen, and slowly but surely I was passing people a whole lot more than I was being passed. I started pegging back some other girls, knowing that track position was true race position as we’d all started in the same wave, I recognised Flow Mag’s Kath Bicknell as I overtook her but most of the other girls were unfamiliar.

As we crossed over into Sparrow Hill it became evident that the race wasn’t going to be mud free, the tacky ground seemed to suck momentum away from your wheels and it seemed like extra effort was required to keep the wheels rolling.

Crossing back into Kowen we hit our first real mud, and a while lot of fairly new cut track which didn’t have the same flow as the Kowen we know. About this time I caught another girl and when I passed her told me that I had just moved into 2^nd overall female. She stuck on my wheel and we bumped and ground our way through some fairly unforgiving single track, including new switch back climbs up to the highest point in Kowen. She seemed happy on my wheel so I took the opportunity to back off the pace a touch both to recover and to avoid potential crashes which would have been easy to come by in that section of track.

We introduced ourselves and it turns out she was 3^rd placed female in Capital Punishment when I had flatted, meaning we were probably very evenly matched in speed. In fact she’d won her entry as fastest female day lap at the Mont, while I had fastest night lap – pity the Kowalski was a daylight race!

Coming into the feed station I knew I had to drop her off my wheel in the singletrack as I felt she was strong enough to out sprint me on the firetrail if we came to the finish together. I was too engrossed in racing to notice that the feed station had espresso coffee and egg and bacon rolls – how awesome!

Putting the power down through the next section I could feel my arm, as log rollovers were a major feature. But the whole “taking it easy” directive had been lost in the red mist as I had a good gap now on the girl behind.

Coming into tracks familiar from the Mont24 I kept the pace high, but riding familiar tracks in reverse is tricky and my front wheel and I had a falling out on a loose corner. Superwoman flew over the bars and landed without major injury to the bionic arm – thank goodness. Back on the bike and a hasty look behind, she hadn’t caught me despite the spill.

East Kowen was a feature of the Mont this year but the Kowalski route found a few extra hills, in particular a firetrail grind up the next feedstation where I could catch glimpses of the chasing girl behind. Then a loose descent where a near-miss made me slow things down a little before we were back on familiar trails in a familiar direction.

The legs were well and truly threatening to cramp now but it was so close to home, this whole 50km racing thing was a new experience – I was going a whole lot harder knowing it more like a long XCO race than a the marathons I’m used to.

Finally I hit the final fire trail and looking back knew I had a clear run home, I crossed the finish line as second overall female just two minutes off first - but first in my category. I had also put a minute and a half into the girl behind. I that point I was pretty happy that I wasn’t heading out on loop two as the 90km riders were doing, I’d passed a lot of 90km riders despite starting a good 45 minutes behind them – it was going to be a long day out for some people.

Most 100km races have fair portion of fire trail or road, the Kowalski has almost none, which makes it a tough race. I’ll be back next year for sure, maybe I’ll even stop for a bacon and egg roll!