CCMBC 4 Hour

Smiles all 'round... mostly... 

This weekend saw the CCMBC 4 Hour up at Stubbs Road, at Turners Beach. It was a 4 hour drive from our house and started at 10 a.m., so we chose to drive up the day before and stay the night. 

My MTB Coach had paid for my teams entry (we had been entered in pairs), and I was with Sam Fox, another athlete coached by Phil at Mymtbcoach.com. After arriving at the race venue and meeting up with Fox and the rest of the gang, we got our warm-up in and lined up. As it was pairs racing, obviously one person had to go first, so we settled it with ye olde 'rock, paper, scissors' - I was victorious and Fox was out first.

  Waiting in transition for our partners to make the tag.

We started off with a 2 lap on, 2 lap off approach, as the laps were predicted to be around the 20 minute mark and we thought it would be relatively okay. Before long we realised very quickly that because the course was both physically and mentally demanding, as well as the hot weather, we had to change our plan to a 1 lap on, 1 lap off system. 

While we had the U19 category down-pat, we still wanted to do our best and achieve a good result overall. Currently, the top 3 teams were well ahead of us (maybe about 5 minutes by this point), but we were pretty close to the team in 4th, consisting of Young Gun Ewan Ferrier and Racin' Rocket Jamie Kulhanek. We were neck and neck for the first hour of the race, but for the second and third hour we were consistently 40-80s behind. 

Making the tag with partner, Sam Fox. 

We had entered the last 40 minutes and were still about 45s behind. We still had hope that we could beat the team and get 4th, but needed to decrease our lap times are fair bit, as we only had 2, maybe 3 laps left. If we both managed to get lap times under 20 minutes, it meant we would 'just' get enough time to complete a third lap. 

Fox went out, and came back within the 20 minute mark, which meant that if I got around 19 minutes we were still good for a third lap. After a very stressful and hard lap, I managed to come in on my fastest lap time, of approximately 19:03. We'd also made up time and decreased the gap, to about 10s behind the other group. 

After a nervous 20 minutes(ish) of waiting, Fox came in before Kulhanek! We'd done it! Kulhanek reportedly cracked under pressure, crashing off on of the final descents and having Fox pass.

I was stoked to take out 4th overall, and 1st in U19 pairs with Sam Fox. It was a great day, and I really enjoyed the trail. Thanks again to all the sponsors and supporters, I'll see you soon Northern Tasmania!