done and dusted. not too dusty just hot. very hot. that’s pretty much the fling for this year.
the week leading in i was sick. the scariest weirdest sick i have been. basically my left lung, when i breathed in or out full extension, gave me a pain very much like someone was stabbing me from the inside with a knife. it was fucked up to be honest. it slowly got worse and by the time friday came around i traveled to work – rang the doctor and returned home. i had an x-ray that afternoon but it was too late in the day to get the result back. the radiographer did have to take two x-rays of my chest because – as he put it – “you lungs are really long” which does explain a lot.
i spoke to the doctor and she advise me that i could race but if i did feel any major pain to just pull the plug. traveling home i had pretty much come to the conclusion that i wasn’t going to race. i was in way to much pain so i ended up deciding to at least drive down to capture the day with the goPro etc. and if i felt ok – i would line up and race. today i rang the doctor to checked the results and everything came back clear from the x-ray. weird!
ruben micro packed
i drove to churchy’s early and grabbed some lunch. the lungs were still in a state but not quite as bad. we departed pretty much on time and headed to the shops for some supplies then off to bundanoon. the day was hot but i had been good with hydration the days leading in and also continued eating shit loads even though i didn’t think i was going to race.
on the hume things fell apart just past the picton road on ramp. churchy threw on the hazards then all of a sudden rolled off the road and pulled up. he said the nissan had just stopped running and had no idea why. we looked in the engine bay but didn’t really understand what was going on. after a bit of non mechanics trying to be mechanical fixing it he restarted the car only to have it start smoking. the nissan was deaded.
michael is always smiling
the decision was then made that terrance and i would drive to the fling, i would stay and set up camp and he would return to pick up churchy who was waiting for nrma to come and tow the nissan back to home.
i set up base camp with trieu, matt meed, victoria and christian. we all rode into town and met up with churchy and terrance on their way back to the campsite. that night was pizza in town, good laughs, more food back at camp and into bed around 10:00ish which was perfect.
christian with his pizza face
i slept really well and was up feeling really good. weirdest thing was my lungs were fine as well thank god! i was going to be ok to race – we rose ate, shat, ate some more then i fitted the goPro HD on the seat post. i rolled up to the loos [video above] only to find my legs rubbed on the mounts. there was no way i was going to spend the next 5-6 hours with that rubbing so i pulled the plug on it after i did the one lap of the pony club camping area…. and yes… this is really a video of me riding up to the shitter – then back to base camp.
my ugly mug as the goPro sees it
it had rained over night and it was super humid but thankfully didn’t look like the weather was going to be bad at all, just hot and humid. we rolled up to the start finish – lined up with the game plan of me, churchy and terrance sticking together for the majority of the race. i was going to drag them along the flats as much as possible and they would pace me on the climbs as well as the sniggle sections.
7:30 came too quick and we were off. the start this year was 300% better. it allowed everyone to spread out before any single track so there wasn’t any of the horrible bottle necks that had occurred the previous year. i did slow up a fair bit to keep in touch with churchy and terrance but still felt that this was the best plan for the day. the pre-race target was to avg 20.5 for the entire race which would give us a sub 5:30 finish time.
target times. first one no problems – not even close for the next two
the first split was great. we smashed it in 22.4km average. no issues apart from me over-riding the left into the first transition. we were on good wide gravel road and i was smashing out about 40+km/hr without realising there was a 90º left. a fully locked up rear fixed that and i had to u-turn back only to see i had about 6-7 riders in tow along the road.
in and out of transition fine and the three of us set out on the second leg. again i had to slow it up a bit so i didn’t drop the SS crew but i still felt much better riding paced with them. at least i wasn’t going out to hard. then we descended down a pretty fast firetrail only to hit the bottom where there was a really nasty right turn when your at full pace. churchy was out front and when i saw him lock the rear, not something he does, i echoed the motion and pulled up as quick as possible.
we all pulled over and realised spoon boy, who had done the cols ride with us a couple of rides ago, had over shot the bend and slammed in to a tree. he wasn’t in a good way at all. very winded and in lots of pain. someone had already started to climb the hill to contact the medic that was at the top of the fire trail. we hung around waiting for the medic, then helped move him out of harms way and into shade. we waited until the car came to pick him up. there was no way in the world he was going to be able to ride again.
by the time we left he was much better and he didn’t fell he had broken anything. he had hit the tree at what must have been a pretty hefty speed straight onto his rib cage. luckily we now know hes not too bad. i learnt tonight he hit the tree back first. the medic took down our race. no.’s etc and said he will let the timing people know we were owed 15 minutes.
we pressed on and rode reasonably well to the next food stop. it was a brief stop to fill bottles and eat a couple of banana’s. on the next section i remember churchy complaining about people braking – he was right, due to the helping out with spoon boy we had fallen back behind riders who weren’t as fast as us – they were definitely holding us up on the single track as well as any speed descents. even still, for me it was really good to be in tow of churchy. he descends super fast and it gave me a great pace to keep up with. he is also good to have out in front when it comes to over taking other riders. i have much to learn there, i’m just too nice and get held up a lot waiting around for a long time till we hit wider firetrails.
during this second section on a fire trail i was over taking a guy when i heard him yell out “FAARKKK” he slowed up and it was then that i looked up to see a huge brown snake crossing the firetrail in front of us both. me being a bit thicker than most people decided to ride in front of it to pass it. so stupid. the other guy almost came to a full halt as it crossed. churchy was a little way behind and saw it too as it re-entered the other side of the fire trail.
riding on this is where the real hills began and the first of which i walked up with churchy, then when it kicked up again i jumped on the bike and started to ride it. it was then that i dropped michael and went on with the rest of the race solo. i was still feeling pretty good but knew i had a while to go. i hit third transition – filled bottles and took off for the final run looking back as i left to see if i could see anyone but they weren’t around.
the last sections were brutal. your body’s done for the day and there were some serious climbs. this was when all the cols rides really started to kick in. i rode almost all the hills of the roller coster with only one i missed because i didn’t get it into the little ring smoothly enough.
the final technical section – which is where the majority of the profession pics were taken – zapped the life out of me. exhausted by this point it was a real struggle to get through the technical sections smoothly. i did so and managed to keep it upright but had reached that point where you know its almost over and you really want it to be that. over. i also kept on have vision that churchy was about to come up behind me and over take me!
i crossed the line happy to have finished without any real incidents. carbo performed really well again and i was lucky enough to not have crashed.
terrance ended up pipping churchy on the line which was kinda funny – his comments in the morning were “i just want to beat him” and that he did but sadly on time though churchward got him back with a 6:25 finish and terrance with 6:26 [both times before the 15min deficit ]. terrance took longer in one of the transition areas and paid for it. victoria finished in under 8 hours which is a super effort considering she doesn’t really ride MTB’s that much. Matt Mead finished in 8:40 and he was really happy as well. Trieu had cramping issues but still managed a 3:23 for the half fling. great results by everyone.
with the 15min deficit still to be taken of my time i crossed the line in 6:09:44 which placed me in 41st in cat and 137th overall.
so by my calculations with the corrected time should be 5:54:44 29th in category and about 104th overall.
not bad i guess. now rest up for stromlo this weekend.
can’t wait. super pumped and am going to give the go pro a serious work out!
ruben stacked – 3 bike frames – 2 sets of wheels. tent, esky table, cooker, three bags… just nuts!
