I'm ready for my close-up Ms Hucker

As promised yesterday, here is a selection of the photo's from Saturday. There were heaps of photos of me grinning insanely while everyone else looked Very Serious, but I haven't included those here, the chipmunk cheeks are just too embarrassing.

First attempt at the wall ride. Scary, but fun

Scatter shows me how its done

Rita show me how its not done!

Huck it au!

Natural born poser!

Look, my wheels are off the ground.

The charge of the Hucker army

I love berms

Martha Hucker reprasentz

Who bought the karate kid?

As you can see we had a great day, thanks Anne and Martha!

Martha Hucker radtastic photoshoot and huck-fest

As there are more and more sunny days the riding in the Port Hills just gets better and better. On Thursday after work I headed up to Flying Nunn. I knew I was participating in the “Martha Hucker radtastic photoshoot and huck-fest” on Saturday and I was feeling pretty intimidated by this. Martha Hucker is a brilliant website featuring the world’s best downhill and freeriding chicks. So when Martha asked a load of us to get together to model her new t-shirts I couldn’t say no. So I headed up to the Nunn to get my confidence up and to tackle the corner that’s been my nemesis once and for all. It was a perfect day for riding, the track was dry, but not dusty, the sun was shining brightly and the Nunn was sheltered enough to protect from the howling wind. I wanted to get used to riding with my seat waaaaay down. I’d discovered that dropping my seat right down felt really weird and threw me slightly off balance. I found the whole not being able to sit down thing a pain, too much cross-country seat up the jacksy!

Three clean, fast and fun runs of the Nunn and I was over the moon. I nailed the rocky corner that I hate every time. Sometimes it’s all about confidence, the confidence to go a little bit faster and trust to bike, and on the Nunn this is really the case. I was so stoked and was feeling a bit happier about the photoshoot on Saturday.

Saturday was perfect. Hot, still and sunny. Michelle picked me up and then we grabbed and Anna and we headed up to Brake-free. Yep, the place where I broke my arm. This would be my first attempt at really jumping again and it would be fair to say I was pretty nervous. Especially about riding with people who really knew what they were doing. My first run and I just rolled everything, but pumped through all the berms. The bike felt good and my next run I started getting a weee bit of air. Each run was better and better and while I wasn’t getting big air I wasn’t casing everything and didn’t feel like I was making a fool of myself. We even attracted quite an audience. After all, it’s not every day you see 6 chicks in matching t-shirts hitting jumps with a photographer. Very funny.

After Brake-free we headed down Sesame St. With the seat down I found I was able to go much, much faster through the corners and then I hit the wall ride. I was right outside my comfort zone and kind of mucked it up, but my bike did its job and I was fine. I hit it again, slightly better, but still messy and then the fear grabbed me and I decided that I wouldn’t push my luck any further with the wall. With so many people watching, we’d got more audience at the wall, I just wasn’t keen on hurting myself.

We continue down and hit the big jump at the bottom called B-Line. I’ve never tried to hit anything as big as that and I was pretty rubbish at it. Need more brave! I gave it a couple of goes, but just wasn’t feeling confident so let everyone else show me how it was really done. Then more photo-posing silliness and it was over. We pushed back up to the top and headed to pub. Wedges and beer all round and we were very happy girls. Back to my place for coffees and utter silliness. V-10 tries to eat road bike, brilliant fun.

I’ll post up some photo’s of the day once we get them from the photographer.

Today was a spin to Rapaki, up it and then across the Traverse and for the first time ever I cleaned the whole thing without taking the nana lines. Yes!!! Then a run of Brake-free and down Sesame St. Both felt not-so-good on the cross country bike and then I my lovely husband showed me how to hit B-line. As amazing as it is riding with the girls, and it is amazingly fun and the best way to learn, riding with my husband is the best. Doing the thing I love most with the man I love most. Win!!

Girls go Wild on the Singletrack

It’s been another fantastic week of riding, with a strong roadie ride over the “Pyrenees” , then a fantastic night ride up the Port Hills and topped off with a brilliant road trip to Hanmer Springs.

Thursday night saw a group of 4 of us head up Rapaki in the dark and immediately my legs suggested that yoga and hill climbs should not be done in the same day. Further up the hill they suggested that perhaps I’ve been doing just a leettle bit too much riding lately and not quite enough recovering. Rapaki was a nasty slog that night and the 2 whippets we were with raced off ahead of us. I was looking forward to hitting the Traverse though, so this slight sufferfest was worth it. As we cruised round the road the fog rolled in and gave the ride a wonderful spooky atmosphere, but by the time we hit the singletrack it was gone. Zooming across the Traverse in the dark was fantastic. Again the Anthem was super responsive and if my legs hadn’t been such weak pieces of over-cooked spaghetti I would have been shredding the whole time. As it was I really flew along the second half and particularly enjoyed the new berms towards the end. And then I rode Brake-Free for the first time since the accident, and while I didn’t do any big jumps, I did a couple of small ones and it was fun. It felt good to conquer my fear. Then we headed down Sesame St and it was fabulous, but I did discover my brakes weren’t working too good. In fact by the bottom of Vic Park they weren’t really working much at all.

The next day I was so tired I could hardly move, so did the sensible and thing and planned a roadie ride in the afternoon. Luckily, I guess, my work interfered and I didn’t get to go on it. This meant I was very keen for some riding on Saturday and what could be better than a girls day trip to Hanmer? Well it turns out, not very much at all actually. Yesterday was one of the best days riding I’ve ever had. After a great trip to Hanmer, and the all important ingestion of delicious pies, we headed to Krank to get the skinny on the tracks from Neil. We all (well not Neil, he wasn’t involved in the conversation) decided that we were keen for fun and shiftiness. Unfortunately for me, this meant we were heading for Red Rocks (YAY!!!), via Timberlands (BOOOOO!). Timberlands quickly taught me that my legs were still toasted and that a spin around the carpark is not enough of a warm up for a steep hill climb. The hill climb continued, after a brief pause for important discussions, up Red Rocks, which I remembered well and then we were finally at the top. From there it was a fantastic fast, slippy descent down the old track, which then flowed into swoopy new bermed goodness and then went up a rocky pinch into a great fall-line rock berm. My excitement to be on my bouncy bike had me keen to ride it and a very nice local gave us a quick demo. After watching him I decided to take a completely different line and set off up the track to get a run in. Not far enough up the track because I didn’t have enough speed when I got to the crest so bailed and headed back up the track for a second go. This time I got the speed just right and nailed it. Brrrrraaaaaapp! It was brilliant and I was buzzing as you can tell from the corny grin.




Red Rocks was over too quickly and we pootled up Dog Stream and then up Detox. Anna and I made it look easy (hah!) and almost like we were enjoying ourselves (HAH!), climbing the 4wd track.

Both of us were not loving the climbs. It was worth it again though as Detox was sweet flowing goodness and I was stoked to nail the rock drop without having to scope it first. We sessioned it a bit and Michelle showed us both how to really ride it properly. Unfortunately I’d gotten a bit over excited with the fun riding and further down Detox I got a bit tangled up in a rut. I managed to bear the brunt of my crash on my well padded hip, but I did end up in the middle of the track with my bike on top of me. I yelled back to Anna so she wouldn’t get too much of a shock to see me there, unfortunately she was distracted by my ladylike, spread-eagled, beneath bike pose and tipped herself gracefully into a gorse bush. So then I was lying under my bike yelling “Are you alright?”, while she was lying in a bush yelling “Are you alright?”. We both were and giggling uncontrollably, it was soo funny. Not having learnt my lesson at all I continued bombing down the slippery track at highspeed only to stick my front wheel into a rut and go flying over my handbars. This was my worst nightmare as I landed right on my bung arm, and my dodgey knee. Good news!! My arm is mended and strong, and now I don’t have to worry anymore. Even after being a complete muppet on that bit of track I was still grinning at the bottom.



We were all pretty tired and zoomed down Camp Track and back to the car to take photo’s of alien baby that was now growing out of my knee.



Off to the pub for some mulled wine and sunshine before a well earned soak in the hot pools. But the thrills weren’t over and we braved the freezing evening air to take on the “Blackhole”, the pitch black hydro slide at the hot pools. Insane fun. After three runs I decided that I didn’t want to bash my already bruised knees and elbows any further and so we soaked in the octagonal pools and scared the other pool dwellers by all touching our noses with our toes! I tell you, the fun never stops on our road trip. After a feed of traditional kiwi kai we were on the road and singing hits of the 90s the whole way home.

Today I’ve been completely shattered. My whole body hurts, apparently hitting the ground hard a couple times isn’t something my body likes, even my left ear which may have hit a rock or a bee? But I do love road tripping and riding with the girls and I do love learning new skills, like tipping my bike into berms, and realising I still need to get my knees wider when descending. I love riding my bikes, but this week I’m going to rest for a few days and get my strength back. In other exciting news, I’ve managed to lose a whooping 6kgs in the past 6 weeks so all the riding seems to be paying off. I can’t wait to get out again next weekend, bring on the sun and the singletrack.

Tis better to give

I've bought my lovely husband a present. I think its lovely. So does he. Here's a some wee teasers.....

Twitching by Cycle

Goodbye sunny weather! This weekend has been wintery and very very damp, with Scottish mist clinging to the peninsula and plains like lint clings to a small child’s licked lollipop that’s been dropped on the carpet. For some reason I decided that I would go on a ride to Little River and back from Motokarara along the railtrail.



Sure, I can hear what some of you are thinking (I have powers) “She’s crazy, how boring”. Well yes, and no. I wanted to do a long training ride to see how my build up to Molesworth is going. So 45kms (ish) should be a good test. To be honest the ride started fairly badly. The overwhelming smell of a pig farm in the damp air urged me onto the trail and 3kms latter I realised I’d left the lights on in the starlet. Bloody starlet. It doesn’t come equipped with one of those handy alarms that let you know you’ve left your lights on and I’ve been caught out by it more than once. In fact, on Friday night I discovered this is problem for other starlet drivers also when we parked next to a woman with a flat battery who’d suffered the same fate. After giving her a jump start, and assuring her that it happens to me all the time, I did take a second to wonder if I’d jinxed myself. Yes, I had.

So after going back and turning the lights off and making sure the car still started, I set off again. And it was lovely. Misty, but not raining and only the slightest of headwinds. Visibility was pretty low, which gave the whole ride an other-worldly feel which was pretty cool. Unsurprisingly there weren’t many people out. In fact on the whole ride I only saw 6 other people on the trail. Nice.


So what’s the key to enjoying a cold, damp, flat, straight ride? Well an enjoyment of solitude helps, an appreciation of the changing moods of nature and to really enjoy this particular ride, a fascination with birds. I will admit a shameful secret now, I love bird watching. Before the biking bug bit me hard I loved heading out to the middle of nowhere to spot rare and interesting birds. Ellesmere has a lot of cool birds and I got to see lots and lots of them on my ride. Unfortunately, many of them were feasting on the clouds of lake flies that were in dense pockets along the trail. You could see from quite a distance where the flies were because flocks of birds, swallows, various finches, yellow hammers, dunnocks, fernbirds, all flitted wildly through the clouds of bugs. I also saw a gorgeous pair of Royal Spoonbills. I love spoonbills and have since I was a kid collecting the weet-bix birds of the world cards.


Of course this meant I had to piss about taking photos of birds and then of myself. So the first leg of the journey took quite a bit longer, well a lot longer than planned. Just over 2 hrs to get to Little River and I was feeling pretty smashed. I thought a feed would sort me out, but if it didn’t I could call my lovely husband to rescue me. So a large hot chocolate and half a very yummy mac’n’cheese latter I headed out of town to the phone booth and rang for a ride. No one home. Shit! Shit! Shit! There was nothing for it but to get back on my bike and ride.


The trip back wasn’t pleasant. I was pretty cold by now and knew I had to keep moving to stay warm, but my legs didn’t want to play. So I broke the trip down into parts. All the way along Lake Foresyth, then stop, eat some nut bar, move on. Birdlings Flat turn off. Stop, eat some nut bar, move on. Bridge over the river, stop and enjoy the view. Gate, stop, go through the gate, eat some nut bar, go on. Quarry, stop, notice family on the rocks, pretend to read sign while eating nut bar, move on. Even with all this stopping I still managed to get back to the car in an hour and a half.


I was broken. Completely broken. It was a long ride, a slow ride, but a good ride. I did discover that I really need to get a speedo on my bike, because without one it was like riding blind. But 53ish km of riding was a good test and with 2 and a half months till the big race I feel like my training is going well. I even managed a nice recovery ride today. It wasn't a ride I want to do often, but it was beautiful and it felt pretty special being out there alone.

It’s On!!

Yep, just like Donkey Kong, it’s on. And by that I mean I am now preparing for my scheduled races for this year. It’s a nice calendar which mainly consists of events I’ve got scores to settle with. It starts out fun with the Cheviot Hills Challenge. Last year I managed to get pretty sick right before the race and down graded to recreational, this year I will be looking to finish in Sport. It’s a great wee race, well run and a great start to the season.

Then after that is the 6hr Blast at McLean’s Island. I did the 12hr last year in a team of 4, this year it looks like I’m going to do the 6 hour in a team of 2 (maybe 3?) but on singlespeeds. That will be interesting. Hopefully my knees will hold up.

From there I might do a new event for me, the Dusky Trail race in Twizel. This is only a maybe at the moment because it’s at Labour Weekend we might flag racing and head to Alex for a holiday with our bikes instead. We shall have to see.

Then another new race, but one I’m pretty excited about. I’m going to be part of a 4 or 5 up team for the Timaru 12hr race on the 31st of October. We’ve come up with an amusing theme, but I’m not going to let the cat out of the bag in case other teams poach our ideas (yes, I’m under this misconceived notion that people read this blog).

Then the big one. The Molesworth Muster. I really want to nail this race this year in under 5hrs. I’m hoping for around the 4.5hr mark, but it is a big ask. And to do it I’ve agreed to keeping a food diary to help me loose the excess weight that a summer lost to arm mending and then a cold wet winter have gifted me. The twist is I’ll be sharing my food diary with my friends so I will be really motivated to eat right. I’ve also been receiving lots of fantastic advice from some very inspiring athletes and I think I know what I need to do. They you shouldn’t try to lose weight and train at the same time, and they’re right, but I’ve never made things easy for myself.

After a rest from the Molesworth I’ll be heading back to the Moa Hunt, for a day of punishing climbing, but with my new super bike I’m looking forward to taking my time down at least half an hour. The next day is the most exciting day of the year, with Pearl Jam playing Christchurch. I cannot wait. I’ll be booking some annual leave to sleep on Monday.

Finally I’ll be back at the Hammerhead if its running. Hopefully I won’t leave any skin behind this time and I’ll handle all the climbing better. I’m so looking forward to these races with my new weapon, I know I’ll enjoy them more and my times will improve.

Just a final note: I highly recommend everyone get out and get the latest issue of Spoke (Issue 33). There are two extremely insightful and well written articles in there by yours truely (aren't I modest?!)

Snake charming is the perfect end

Before I get into this blog post I just want to briefly acknowledge how sad I was to read Fat Cyclist’s blog post of the 5th of August, letting us know his courageous and amazing wife had finally succumbed to the cancer she had been fighting so long. His blog has been an inspiration to me for a long time and now. WIN Fatty!

Anyway onto happier things, such as the stunning weekend we just had in Christchurch, in fact I believe most of this glorious country experienced fantastic sunny weather this weekend. For me this meant a weekend of boundary pushing. It started well on Friday evening with a quick jaunt up Kennedy’s Bush. It was a bit nippy out and I stupidly was only wearing shorts and a short sleeved top with a woolie singlet under it. The icy wind was whipping off Lake Ellesmere, so I had to work extra hard to just stay warm. We hammered up pretty quickly and I revelled in the 1 minute singletrack descent at the halfway point as usual. Further up I was distracted by the cute hairy cows again and almost feel off my bike laughing as one stumbled down a bank in front of me. It looked completely drunk! We got to the last steep climb and the sun was setting behind the Alps and the wind was really picking up. I pushed my freezing body as hard as I could, but I was just so cold. I stopped and put my extra warm Ice Queen on, but the damage was done, I was just too cold now. Didn’t quite make it to the top, but enjoyed the breath-taking sunset and then headed down out of the biting wind. It was getting quite dark now and I found it an interesting battle between the part of my brain that was saying “Oi! Slow down, it’s dark, you can’t really see the ruts” and the part of my brain that was saying “Faster, faster, faster, it’s cold, get out of the wind”. It turns out the go faster part won, it often does, and I flew down the hill, till I got back to the hairy cows. They were arrayed across the track and in the dying light the seemed much more receptive to patting. I couldn’t resist stopping and patting the cute baby cow with the floppy fringe while it’s gorgeous mum licked the salt off my leg. Of course this delay meant it was even darker by the time we got to the singletrack on the front of the hill. I was adamant I would be sensible and ride the 4wd track down but as my lovely husband zoomed down the singletrack I just had to follow him. I know this track well and really wanted to try riding it in the gloomy fading light. It was fun. I was grinning at the bottom. At fantastic ride, if only there had been more hot water when we got home.

Saturday was a stunner, if a bit blusterous. I’d checked if it was ok to ride at Living Springs and been given the go ahead so hubby and I went and picked up Rita and headed over. The track was in excellent condition, with only one really wet patch right at the very bottom of Zanes. Unfortunately I didn’t see it till too late of my first lap and end up sliding along the bank at high speed and being completely coated in mud on one side! Ooops. I daintily walked this section the next lap. My legs weren’t very happy on the climbs, apparently the previous night’s hammering at Kennedy’s had left them slightly tired so riding up the steep tractor-chewed 4wd track wasn’t super good, or to be honest, good at all. Once into the singletrack things were much better and it was beautiful climbing up the switchbacks through the trees.

The descent was completely fantastic. Lots of tight corners, flowy sections and challenging pinches. And all in the beautiful yellow glowing light. One section of track was completely covered in leaves and riding through there was magical. I really loved riding the track, in fact so much so that I was willing to take on the horrible climb a second time. The second time hurt bad going up, even the climb through the forest wasn’t fun for me this time. But it was worth it and I was grinning madly at the end. A stop at the Governor’s Bay pub on the way home for beer, wedges and cake capped off at great ride.

Ahhh, SUNday. Even better weather than Saturday, no nasty wind. Really, what I should have been doing was some sifty, flat riding to recover from the two previous high intensity days. But the hills were bathed in warm sunlight and I was aching (well I am today) to ride the tracks I’d so recently walked, Greenwood Park, Godley Head (argh!) and the beautiful Anaconda. Cunningly I planned to drive up to the top and Mt Pleasant Rd so I could ride Greenwood with my legs as fresh as possible, not very fresh it turns out. More like a bit of one day old bread that’s been left on the bench in the sun. Uh, oh. It was just me and scatter, and as we wound our way around the hill and through the rocks we were very happy. I rode better than expected and finally mastered the art of floating up rocky bits while still pedalling. There were only a few sections on Greenwood that I walked and only one pedal-into-rock-stopping-bike-suddenly incident (which was just amusing rather than painful). I loved Greenwood Park and can’t wait to ride it again. Lots of challenges, but soooo much fun.

Then we were onto the dreaded Godley Head track with its initial rocky death wall (as I call it). I was pretty tired already and knew that there would be a lot of pushing my bike up rocks. And there was, but there was also more riding my bike up rocks than expected which made me very happy. Then we were through that really tough section and out onto the flowy, and recently well armoured, sections, hooning over the boardwalks and generally having a great time. The descent back down the other side of the hill was so flowy and fast I was grinning and laughing. And then suddenly I was laughing even harder when I hit a rut at the bottom and gracefully crashed in slow motion, coming to rest on my side, fully stretched out up on my elbow as if I was reclining on a chaise longue and one foot still attached to my bike. It was hilarious, and luckily a rider coming the other way got to enjoy the spectacle I’d made of myself because a crash like that needs to be seen and enjoyed by others. He congratulated me on my grace and amusingness, which I thought was nice of him.

Then finally we were at the top of the Anaconda. This serpentine track winds down to Taylor’s Mistake and has become truly brilliant in the last couple of years. Oh, I’ve been wanting to ride this for a long time now. It was so good, the big bermed corners encouraging speed, the little groms pushing their bikes up – stunned to see two chicks riding down it at top speed, the sun and sea sparkling and then, too soon, it was over. And the ride was over and our ride was there to pick us up and take me back up to my car. Thanks Slim!

It was a fantastic weekend of pushing my skills and fitness to the limit in great company and I loved it all, even when it hurt, even when I had to lie down and eat a banana cause I couldn’t move any further and even when I stuffed up bits of track and had to walk them. I’m very glad I have yoga tonight because I’ve got aches and pains in new and exciting places and need a damn good stretching. Bring on more sunny weather!

Different toys for different playgrounds

Disclaimer: There will be yet more rhapsodising about the Anthem in this post. I am still in the honeymoon phase after all.

I’ve noticed a trend in MTB magazines recently to expound the virtues of longer travel trail bikes as the answer to everyone’s biking needs. One bike for everything. In fact this was the sales-pitch I got when I bought the XLT. I went in wanting something that climbed well, descended ok and was good for racing, and something fairly light. Also I didn’t know anything about bikes at this stage. I feel in love with the XLT, but I probably didn’t need the 130mm travel at the front and 125mm travel out the back. Or the extra weight. . (Just for comparison the Anthem has 100mm at the front and 80mm at the back and weighs a few of kilos less). But I didn’t know any better and was instantly in love with the bike, especially when I took the tractor tyres off it.

Over the years I’ve climbed and descended on this bike and it’s given me the confidence to try new scary things because it’s really forgiving. It seemed to climb well enough and I was always left with a big silly grin after any descent. I could jump stuff and do easy downhill tracks, and bulldoze over obstacles and generally have great fun. I know that this bike is a lot of the reason I’ve developed more skills in the last couple of years. It inspires confidence and it has looked after me. But in all that time I’ve never ever been able to ride the top, steep rocky bit of Kennedy’s Bush. Sure some of that has been my fitness, but on Saturday I learnt that mainly the problem was the XLT just doesn’t like climbing.

On Saturday I’d offered to show Rita the Crocodile and Kennedy’s Bush. Last year I’d really come to think of the Crocodile as my nemesis. Riding down it was fantastic, I really like switchbacks, but climbing up it; horrible. Five tight, steep switchbacks in quick succession, nicely rutted and right at the very start of ride that usually set the tone for the ride. Over exertion, followed by jelly legs and blurred vision. From then on it would be a battle for traction in the switchbacks and often my front wheel would just wander off and I’d have to walk. This would make me lose confidence and by the top I would usually be an unhappy camper. I was pretty apprehensive about riding it, especially in early August, usually I don’t get the courage up to tackle this beast till September.

Up we went and I knew pretty quickly that I didn’t have the fitness for this yet, but surprisingly I did have the traction and as I went on I cleaned all the corners that I’d been washing out on last year. We got to the top of the Croc and I was stuffed, but I was still smiling. The rest of the climb up Kennedy’s was a world of hurt, but where in the past I just wouldn’t have been able to keep turning the pedals over on the XLT, on the Anthem I could just keep moving.

Then something truly amazing happened. We got to the base of the last bit of nasty steep climb, where it turns all rocky and gross. I sat down and looked up. This bit of hill has taunted me from the start and I have never ridden to the top. Based on past experience and my complete and utter exhaustion I expected this to be the case again, but I thought I’d give it a go and see just how much better at climbing the Anthem is. It is riding-to-the-top-of-Kennedy’s-when-stuffed much better. I rode the whole thing! Sure I had to stop every minute or so, but once I’d caught my breath I could keep going and the bike gripped and let me spin and then I was at the top, collapsed in the heap, but feeling insanely triumphant!

Going down was hard work, I’m glad I’ve had a couple of years on the XLT to learn how to ride scary stuff and use my body position and suspension to ride good lines and be stable, because I needed all that knowledge to handle the Anthem on the descents. I felt like my arms were going to shake off and my elbow was popping audibly after the bone jarring ride down (yes, I could have taken it slower, but where’s the fun in that?). I won’t go on about the incredible cornering sweetness of the flowing descent but down the Croc, but oh, it was sooooo good. So for me a quiver of bikes is the right way to go. Roadie for training and raining. Singlespeed for Bottlelake and Mclean’s Island in the sand and mud and flatishness (yes, that’s a word) and skinnies. XLT for shuttles and learning scary things and riding new technical tracks (and building strength lugging its fat arse up hills). Anthem for races and climbing and fast runs on familiar tracks. They are all great and they all give me something different and each of those things makes me ride better and have more fun. One bike to rule them all? No thanks, I’ll have four.

Late edit: The lovely boys at hub cycles have come through for me and got me this lovely new seat to save my sit bones. Look how perfectly it matches my bike. The guys at Hub rock!