The view from the other side, plus some very exciting news

There’s a new sheriff in town

Well, that’s not actually true, but I was a marshal at the weekend, for the first time. It was Round 3 of the Canterbury XC series at the weekend and it was held at the fantastic Living Springs track on Banks Peninsula (which Pete and I helped dig). Also held at the track on the same day was the South Island Singlespeed Champs so it was a long day of racing and a very long day of fluro vest wearing. Being a marshal is pretty cool actually, especially if no one does anything silly and crashes in your neck of the woods. You are provided with a very fashionable hi-vis vest, a walkie talkie, map of the course and notebook and pen for the official look. I was disappointed not to get a shiny badge, but being provided lunch made up for that.

My day consisted of shouting encouragement, and later in the singlespeed race, abuse (they loved it, bunch of masochists), at the racers, taking a few snaps, applying liberal amounts of sunscreen and chatting to various punters. The racing was fantastic, with the course hammering everyone. The sport race guys started out in the morning and some of them were suffering from early on. It was a great race, with a few of the expert guys doing their laps early so they could punish themselves in the singlespeed race in the arvo.
I did discover a few drawbacks to marshalling multiple races in one day. If you are lucky enough to have different areas for different races there can be quite a bit of hiking to be done in a short space of time. While I did enjoy walking the track to get to the complete other side, the enormous blister that formed on the arch of my foot put somewhat of a damper on my mood. Owie (yes, I am a big baby). Also there’s not a lot, in fact there’s no opportunity for a toilet break unless you’re stationed up near the start, which I wasn’t. Luckily I have developed a bladder of steel over many years of drinking so this wasn’t too much of an issue.

The expert race was an absolute ripper and being stationed by the only jump on the course provided me with plenty of entertainment, but luckily no nasty crashes. Young Anton Cooper completely blitzed the field. That boy makes me sick, not only is he incredibly talented and fast, he’s also a really nice kid. I’m looking forward to seeing him kick some international arse in the future when he gets older.

The final race of the day was by far the most fun to watch. The singlespeeders are a mental breed and all dressed either themselves or their bikes appropriately for the race. Some the expert riders who’d just finished 6 laps of the course were lining up at the start for another 5 laps, but this time without gears. Not Right At All! Especially in a gorilla suit. You wanna sweat, wear one of those while racing. Unfortunately for my eyes costumes (if you can call it that) also went to the other extreme with one insane man wearing nothing but a horribly small g-string. Won’t someone think of the children! I’m guessing riding with a tiny bit of material in your butt crack is not a very pleasant experience, possibly even worse than riding in a gorilla suit.

I was gutted I couldn’t race this race, it looked like heaps of fun (and heaps of pain). Any race where you get to colour in, eat weet-bix and drink beer sounds great by me! Hopefully next year I’ll be fit and raring to go. All in all I loved marshalling. It was great to be part of such fun and well organised events, even if I’ve managed to shout my throat raw.

Exciting News
This is actually old news, but I didn’t want to write about it till it was done and dusted. A month or so ago I sent a couple of bits of writing off to the fantastic Spoke magazine to see if they would be interested in publishing something I’d written. I’ve always wanted to have something published in a magazine and I’ve had some encouragement from a couple of people to give it go recently. I’m over the moon to say that not only did the editor of Spoke like my writing, she then asked me to write another piece for the upcoming edition. Wooo Hooo, commissioned to write for Spoke, oh yeah! I’ve sent my piece off today and will be eagerly awaiting the next issue hitting news stands to see my name in the byline.

Dangerously Addictive

When I first started mountain biking I honestly thought I would never ever want to ride Downhill, down hills was fine, but Downhill is insane. Recently I’ve been rethinking that a wee bit and after going and watching a DH race on Sunday I thought I’d like to at least try and ride the tracks they were using in the race. My how things change.
Three of us headed to Vic Park after work yesterday to suss out some easy and slightly more difficult tracks for a prospective women’s only event next year. Southstar are running a shuttle service in Vic Park now so that made organising our little expedition much easier. Michelle and Liv were both keen and both much, much more experienced than me (Michelle used to race downhill and Liv still does at elite level), so I knew I was in good hands.
Oh. My. God. It was sooooo much fun. We started off on the new track Seasame Street. It is so sweet, beautiful bermed corners, crazy gap jumps and step downs for the talented on big bikes, nana lines for the less brave, wee jumps and big jumps and just a whole lot of fast fun. Then onto Dazzas, again lovely berms, but with some roots and rocks and interesting lines. From there we did Brents which was a bit trickier, more drop offs, big roots and gnarly corners, but I managed to ride most of it and then on down the 4wd track grinning and doing wee hucks over the speed bumps. We just missed the next shuttle pick up so there was some sitting round, talking bikes and shite and generally chilling. Next run started in Brake Free, lots of table tops for practising jumping and berms, then Seasame Street again (how could we not), Dazzas again, then a line I think is called Ponos (please correct me if I’m wrong) that was pretty rocky with some exciting blind corners that I walked and some steep sections, then a bit I don’t know the name of, but I’ve ridden it a few times through some rooty stuff and then back down the 4wd track.
I think we’re getting a fairly good idea of some tracks to put together, but we’ve decided that Wednesday night shuttles should be a regular occurrence so we’ll have another run next week and get a better idea. I might also go for a walk through the park with my camera at the weekend and take some pics of the various tracks.
The 2 runs were so much fun and I rode things I never thought I would, let alone find them to be relatively easy. I can’t wait to go back and do some more, but I think I need to sort myself out with some googles because the dust was horrid. Some proper downhill shorts would also be good so I might have to pay a wee visit to Grind as they have a great range of women’s clothes.