Stage 6 of the Ingerreke Commercial Mountain Bike Enduro was billed as the Queen stage.
Stage 6 of the Ingerreke Commercial Mountain Bike Enduro was billed as the Queen stage.
Stage 6 of the Ingerreke Commercial Mountain Bike Enduro was billed as the Queen stage. If you’re trying to figure out what that actually means, just think in terms of length and difficulty being quite high. 82km is a pretty decent distance on a mountain bike. If you are racing, then it is fairly long. If you have already raced 5 times in the last 3 days, then it is really quite hard. There is no way of sugercoating it.
To add an interesting element, it actually poured overnight. Now here is an interesting story…every single time I have been to Alice Springs it rains. Back in the day I was doing hydrogeological work in the Alice Springs borefields determining the age of the groundwater that the town relies on using age isotope analysis. 6 weeks up here and it also rained during that time. I was actually fortunate to present the findings at a conference at the United Nations International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna. I am sure you can find the proceedings if you are so interested.
Riding over to the start with Imogen Smith, it poured on us again. Imogen was also quite fortunate to cop the splash from a car hitting a puddle. It soaked her to the core. However, being the optimist that she is, she stated quite boldly that we were actually riding towards blue sky and would indeed need our sunglasses. Mmmmkay….
The gun went off at 9am and we headed north up the Stuart Highway for 5km before turning left onto the dirt. Then the racing really started. The terrain out here is quite raw and old school. The singletrack meandered its way around for ages and finally hooked up with trails that we had ridden during stage 1. The first selection was made relatively early on as the rocky
By the time we had exited onto the start of the bike path and the first feed zone, we had lost Phill and proceeded to make light work of the bike path. 17km awaited us, and with a subtle downhill gradient, we were able to keep the pace up above 35km/hr and were just pulling 30 second turns due to the tight twisty nature. Half an hour later and we were onto a sealed bitumen road which went somewhere from some other place. Ryan was probably the only one who knew where we were, being a local and all.
After about 10km of the rolling turns, which are not technically as efficient as a good solid 30 second turn, Ryan was starting to yoyo and soon dropped off. Being bike racing (ie, cruel at times), the pace was lifted just slightly and Ben, Chris and myself motored onwards. The dynamics here were quite interesting. Ben had the leader’s jersey over Ryan. I was 1 or 2 seconds in front of Chris in 3rd place. We all had motivation for moving forward.
We were warned by John Jacoby that the last ridgeline climbs had a bit of a bite. He wasn’t telling porkies either. The trails were rocky and loose and freaking steep. He also said that they were towards the end of the race. It was here that I then took a bit of a gamble and attacked. And by attack, I mean, I did not ride off like a man possessed. Rather it was just probably quite disturbing. I would have been frothing at the mouth with my head on a tilt. Ben covered my moves and we were able to get a small gap on Chris.
Heading down one descent I saw a 4WD out cruising the ridgeline. A momentary thought of whether we were going to collide was all it took for my concentration to wander and I bottomed out on a rock with my back wheel. You know when you have hit the rim too hard. Sure enough climbing the next rise, I could hear it leaking. Damn*
*may have been slightly more profane than that.
I nursed the tyre down the next rocky section, but I needed to gas it so let Ben go, stopped and got some air in it. It probably took 2 or 3 kilometres to catch Ben, who did not really need to hustle much on this stage. He had done the work to dislodge Ryan earlier, and pretty much shut it down. I latched back on at the 2km to go mark and just drilled it with Ben on my wheel. The race leader does not have to do any work. It is always up to the others to take it to the leader. To Ben’s credit, he also said that he was not interested in the stage win, his work having been done securing valuable minutes on the General Classification. Pure Class Act.
Rounding the final corner, we had a lap of the BMX track to do and with the shaky hands and 3 hours plus in the legs, it was done rather carefully!
So with one stage left, Moving day in the stage race has totally shaken up the men’s general classification. Ben retains the lead, I’ve moved to 2nd, Chris Hanson has popped to 3rd and Ryan Standish has slid to 4th.
is it over yet? Most certainly not. Ben will no doubt win, unless he gets washed away in a flash flood, but 2nd, 3rd and 4th are still so close that anything can happen. Watch this space!
cheers
James
