Linger & Die

It's one week until I depart for my Trans Provence adventure. My training has been going ok with a pesky cold last week the only real setback. Even the winter has been pretty mild allowing plenty of actual bike riding. I wanted to get some practice riding new trails at pace and the Alexandra Linger & Die Enduro was perfectly placed for this. As far as I've been able to determine the terrain around Clyde and Alexandra is a reasonable simulation for some of TP with plenty of rocky narrow trails. However my average TP day will be twice the distance and three or four times the climbing and descending. Every day. For a week. Sweet!

The folks at Altitude Bikes put on an excellent and well-run event. There were four timed special stages with scenic transition stages in between. I was riding in my age grade but I knew it would be a good challenge against the other riders' local knowledge.

After a short but welcome shuttle up a steep gravel road we continued riding up to the start of special stage one (SS1) on Clyde Hill. The first half of the track (Cup Cake) was open and fast with sneaky double jumps and blind corners around large rocks before diving down the bottom half of the previous day's downhill race course. I caught five riders on this lower section which I think was a good thing as it was easy to overdo it on a few of the drops. I managed not to embarrass myself on the final jump at the finish line for a third place finish.

A longish transition along the mighty Clutha river was a nice change of pace and a chance to chinwag with some locals and Ally my riding partner for the day. This is one of the really fun aspects of enduro racing. You cruise the transitions and uphills, and race the predominantly downhill sections. Fun, like a weekend ride with friends really.

SS2 was the one track I did manage to pre-ride at dusk the previous night. This track was split by two distinctly different sections. The first half is high speed 4wd with lots of slick rock style slabs to rattle over, my Tallboy's big wheels rolled this stuff nicely. It then dived down a long off camber ridge which you could really scream down but if you got out of the six inch wide track into the sloping grass it was difficult to recover gracefully. I managed to hold enough grace to win this stage. Pre-riding really is an advantage.

Stage 3 was short with lots of pedalling. After rolling across the grassy tops we dived down more grass to the finish. The only real excitement here was a super high speed exit to a 90 degree turn 5 metres before the finish line which nearly everyone messed up. The penalty for messing up was about 5 metres of bog followed by a large pond. I didn't see anyone reach the pond but I sure felt like I was going to as I raced towards it with both wheels locked!

Looking down to the finish in Alexandra from the start of SS4.

A short transition led to the final timed stage which was my favourite of the day. After a short 4wd section we dived down the narrow rocky Single Malt track. This is a brilliant little descent though thyme covered hills, it smells sweet and it rides sweeter. I had a near miss on the steepest section as I was sure the track was flowing to the left but it very definitely went to the right! One of the challenges I will face in TP is riding and racing about 300kms of steep rocky single track with only course notes at the start of each day. This is one of the features of TP in that the course is a tightly held secret and we all get to ride "blind". No practising, in fact pre-riding or even walking more than a 100 metres will result in time penalties or even disqualification. After the adrenaline had subsided a little the track levelled out into a long winding stream valley down the aptly named Shit Track, stay on the trail and don't breath too deeply near the end! This is high speed fun with lots of in-and-out of the stream and up-and-down the stream banks. Momentum is your friend here and the big boulders have in-fill rocks that allow you to roll everything. Super fun. Halfway down the stream is a wire fence to climb over. I managed to get tangled but it probably only cost me 10 seconds. With my noob city-boy fence hopping skills I was happy to get second place on this final stage which gave me the overall win in my category, and 17th overall.

I really enjoyed the day and loved the opportunity to throw myself down some unknown trails. No injuries and first race outing on my recently upgraded Santa Cruz Tallboy LTc, a sweet ride. Thanks again to Altitude Bikes and the other sponsors that made the event possible, and to Santa Cruz NZ.

--Waggers