On the weekend, I participated in Brisbane’s Bayview Blast MTB Event.
This event is held by the RATS Cycling Club in conjunction with other partners.
I signed up for the social ride ‘Havablast 25 kms Women’s Chicks in the Sticks’ event to help populate and support the category.
Here is Zoe helping me ‘pack’ on the morning of my Bayview Blast ride – she never misses an opportunity to go for a ride!!
This event is held over two days and the order of event looks like this:
Sat Race briefing
The Bayview Blast MTB 2017 Event
It was a stunning, sunny Brisbane day.
I had two mates and Zoe (who all came as supporters for the day) with me and we had time to set up a lovely picnic camp in the bush near the race start and get organised before race briefing. The junior events were still being held. I was on my singlespeed and had decorated it with flowers.
How was the ride?
For this event, I was resolute to keep my ‘ride not race’ perspective. For periods of time, I made sure I did this by forcing myself to ride behind a fellow rider, and not pushing to overtake for 10 minutes, but just to be content to sit on the speed set by the rider in front and go at their pace. It was an interesting exercise to deliberately ‘slow down’ – and one I admit was not all that easy to do, but I was glad I did it and I think it was a very valuable exercise to undertake nonetheless.
It was great to be back on a bike after a couple of months off. I was certainly not race fit, but really enjoyed the physicality of riding, riding a course I wasn’t familiar with and testing my mental training on the challenging hill climbs and long slogs. I didn’t see any other singlespeeds on the day and it was an interesting experience having to charge up sections to keep onto of my one and only gear, while those I was passing looked on at me often very incredulously as if I was making a deliberate personal point on the uphills!
Nothing could be further from the truth! In fact, my approach for the ride was to do what I needed to do to get up sections, knowing that I would be gasping for air (like everyone else at the top – so my approach was to keep pedaling while going up and over (not just to the top) and to use the down sections where I was technically more confident as my ‘recovery’ period. Given my lack of fitness, this approach served me well on the day as I finished in a respectable time, did not blow my muscles out and felt surprisingly perky despite the hard work.
Me giving the XCers a little bit of scare – GOLD!!
Post-ride?
An added bonus was that, on crossing the finishing line, I was accosted by the race MC who was calling the day and was quickly interviewed and awarded the ‘best decorated’ bike for the day. This little accolade landed me a free hour-ling massage voucher – Hazah!!
After that little interlude, I returned back to our picnic location to regroup and recharge the batteries. Later on, I was invited back to explain more about my PhD and this blog over the race megaphone for an impromptu interview, which went very well and saw me chatting with a few friendly female riders soon after. A very productive and satisfying day overall!!
Our picnic spot trackside – Zoe & Sara holding the fort.
I’m glad I went and supported the Saturday event and helped fill up the Women’s category. The more ‘serious’ riders were registered for Sunday and I managed to talk one of the 100km Marathon competitors to write a blog post about that day – so stay tuned!
I think the organisers did a great job putting on the event, it must have involved some serious organisation and planning and I super appreciate the effort that was put in and the commitment of the volunteers. It is certainly no mean feat to stage such an event, which is why I wanted to support the local MTB club by participating.
Below is a Course Preview (video 2’55’).