Bushlove Racing: WOF

Well seeing as Davo failed The Crazyman WOF for 2010. I decided to take my old body into VTNZ to see if I could get a check over. Yip, as I thought, it failed on account of too much rust and crumbling pistons. Despite not obtaining a satisfactory WOF, I signed up to the Crazyman anyway, but brought race insurance with a ring-in runner – Stephen Day.

After a long night Sandbagging in Queenstown with MonoStrosity Civil Defence - Queenstown Emergency, I sifted back to Wellington just in time to take the start line. It seems that during the trip home Mono had a monostrosity and subsequently failed his Crazyman WOF due to a lack of riding. Leaving just me and Wonderwoman to up hold the good BLR name.

The "Southerlies, thunderstorms & hail" were due to hit Wellington about the time the mountain bike section of the race kicked off. All Crazyman entrants were watching nervously as it rolled in across Wellington and rampaged up the Western hills! Much to everyone’s delight the Southerly stayed West long enough for it not to hit the race.

9am and the hooter went (Mono and Davo were probably tucked up getting their hooters online), the Crazyman was underway. Leaving the runners to do the real work. Stephen was all arms and legs along the beach front, getting ready to settle into the hills. Loving the up hills, he appeared second out of the bush behind James Coughbrogh who holds the current course run record). Stephen was able to hold this position to the transition area where I took over for the MTB ride.

The course had changed from the previous year and included some of the ace Wainui singletrack. I decided it would be best to stallion off the front and concentrate on catching the 'Capital Sports Medicine Team', which I managed about midway through the climbs. Unfortunately Alex Revell had the same plans and caught me near the top, just before starting the undulating section midway through the race. As he passed me and I chased hard, Alex took what looked like a cunning alternate line to make extra ground on me... Mega fail on his part as he hit a steep hill pinch, allowing me to steal 50m on him to take the lead. Now the fun started - it was DH RAMPAGE time and as the BLR DH God (Slackbladder) had proven over the years, there aren’t many who can own a rampaging Bushie on an XC DH RAMPAGE mission. So I opened up the taps and stepped on the juice. Was able to take a good couple of minutes out of Alex which I would need later on the 12km gravel track to home. Head down with the Flux locked out, I steamed the river trail road with Alex chasing close. Every time I looked back expecting Alex to ride past no-handed, browsing my horoscope in the Hutt Times, I was pleased to see he had not made much ground on me. Big head throbbing and little head shrinking, I dug a little deeper to hold Alex to a 23sec gap for the Duathlon Team win. MINT! First rider home too. I was stoked with me and Stephen’s efforts for the day.

A wicked day out and another Team Duathlon course record for the second year in a row - Awesome.

Cheers
Tiger

This was a simple outing with the idea to give ourselves a bit of a warrant of fitness before Crazyman 2010. Originally we were going to recreate as much of the course as possible and do a run/bike but for various reasons I will not go into, this was canned.

We did the full crazyman run in about 1.30. Timing was difficult due to the banter breaks, and waiting for Davo to finish showing us how to do pushups.

And how not to.....

Marco was inspiring in his usual running kit.

Jo took out the downhill section, no picture of this as there was absolutely no way of catching her. However pictures of Davo and Marco are available.

Jo showed her usual determination to reach the top first.

And Davo.... musing on perhaps accepting a ride to the event next time rather than going over belmont to begin with!

The full team of Marco, Davo, Sharpie and Jo (I am missing from the picture due to a lack of a long arm) at the top of the hill.

Marco chose this moment to get a head start on everyone leaving us looking silly before bolting after him.

A nice outing with full marks to everyone else who rode out to the nui to then do the 18km trail run. Also full credit to the godfather who decided to run the last road section in bare feet.