Well a great weekend on the MTB, Went up and raced in the Bannockburn Gutbuster ride from Garston to Bannockburn – 75km with 1300m of climbing in it, so a good honest ride. From Bannockburn I caught the bus through to Garston. The bus ride wasn’t the best as I ended up down the back end of the bus and the windy road made me a little bus sick, losing a bit of breakfast on arriving in Garston, luckily the bus arrived about an hour before the start of the ride, so I was able to get some food into me and get rid of my grogginess!! Anyway at the start of the ride everyone was off! Not long into it and the 1st climb began, I settled into a pretty solid and comfortable rhythm and worked my way to the top of this climb feeling good (which was planned as there is a lot further to go) a the top of the climb my rear tyre felt a little softer than it should have been, so I stopped and puffed a bit of air into it, thinking that it was probably going to keep going down. Anyway blasting off down the hill I was right as the tyre went down, by the second creek crossing I dunked the bike in and could see a stream of bubbles coming out of it, bugger! So a quick tube change here, a bit gutting seeing people cruising past a s I repaired this, but back onto the bike after this and I managed to make up a lot of time and places on those who passed me and was feeling good. On and on down the valley and finally arriving at the start of the climb up to the top of Duffers Saddle, from the bottom to the top I just focused on keeping those pedals spinning round and eventually got to the top, feeling pretty exhausted but satisfied with the climb, from her it was a quick descent and grind along the road to the finish in Bannockburn. I finished in 4hrs7min, and this placed me 65th overall and 35th Open man from a field of about 300 riders. A good blast. click on this link to view web page of full 2008 results http://www.cromwell.org.nz/downloads/2008Gutbuster.htm
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