The last race of the 2009/2010 AMTBC Summer Series was yesterday.  The race was held at Flinders University on some of the trails near car park no. 3.

This was the first time I had ridden on these trails at Flinders as they are normally closed to bicycles.  The course was a mix of singletrack and fire road with some moderately technical sections and a fair amount of elevation change.  The weather was cool at around 20°C with light rain starting about half way through the race.

As in the previous two races, I was in the C grade.  The C grade raced four laps of the roughly 4.5km course.  This time I decided not to lead from the start, and let someone else set the pace.  This worked out for the first couple of laps where I held a close third or fourth place.  But, by the third lap my fourth place was significantly behind third.  In the end, I finished in fourth with a time of 1:03:08, 30 seconds behind third place, and with fifth and sixth place not far behind.

A brief update on the BB7 brake upgrade:  The BB7s worked very well in the wet and muddy conditions.  My feel for the brakes has improved significantly in the almost three months that I’ve been using them.  I initially had some concerns about rear wheel brake modulation, but the modulation seems on par with the Motolites now that the brakes are fully bedded-in and I’m more used to them.  Also worth noting is that after the initial setup, the brakes haven’t needed any adjustment.  Overall, I am very happy with these brakes.

My official results; hours:minutes:seconds:

For comparison, grade average lap times; minutes:seconds (number of laps completed):

Do you want more data?  Well, I noticed that a large number of people in my race grade were named David.  In fact, 7.8% of people racing at Flinders were named David.  Furthermore, 66% of those named David finished adjacent to another David.  Overall, those named David had a lap average time of 16:29, which is 29 seconds faster than the field average.

Helmet-cam video of my first lap:

On Thursday I entered my first MTB race. This race was the 2009/2010 AMTBC Summer Series ‘Dirt Crit’ No. 1.  A ‘dirt crit’ is similar to a regular road crit or criterium in that the course is very short, but it differs in that the course is mostly dirt, hence ‘dirt crit’.  The race format sets a fixed amount of racing time for each race grade plus one finishing lap after the allotted time has elapsed.

This being my first race, I wasn’t quite sure which class/grade to enter. The grade system for this race was A through E, A being fast/elite and E being something like slow/recreational.  The E grade raced 15 minutes plus one lap, and each successive grade added five minutes; the A grade raced 35 minutes plus one lap.

I entered in the B grade.  My logic was that C must be average, and like everyone else, I think I’m above average.  As I checked in and realized who was racing and what grade they were in, I began to question my self-assigned grade.  But, it occurred to me that the worst that could happen was a last place finish.  And, as luck would have it, that is exactly where I finished.

My official results; minutes:seconds:

For comparison, grade average lap times; minutes:seconds (number of laps completed):

Full results and more info available on the Adelaide MTB Club site: www.amtbc.com.

My average lap time was 2:20, which was only one second slower than the next fastest rider, but I was behind the cutoff and finished one lap down.  Comparing my average lap time to those in the C grade, it looks like I could expect to finsih somewhere in the middle grade.  This being the case, I think I’ll spend some time in the C grade and see how things work out.  But, we will have to wait for the next dirt crit in January to see what happens.

Until then, a photo of a camera Velcro’d to a helmet (if ‘Googled’ is a word, then so is ‘Velcro’d’):

…and a koala from Eagle Park:

The hard drive crash delayed a couple of updates I was going to post.  So, without further delay, a boring and potentially nauseating video.  I don’t suggest watching this if you suffer from motion sickness, the camera bounces around quite a bit, and with the video sped up 800% it is pretty rough.

This is the Crafers Bikeway, which runs from Adelaide to Crafers via the Princes Highway.  While the video isn’t all that interesting, or all that steady, it does give an idea of what the route is like.  The Crafers Bikeway is about 10km long, and from Adelaide to Crafers is almost entirely uphill.  This ride was in the afternoon in 35-38°C weather and took about 35-40 minutes to climb and about 15 minutes to descend.

In other news, I’ve decided to make the Gunnar slightly more presentable since it now stays pretty clean and doesn’t see much off-road use.  The paint is in decent shape, but does have some noticeable scratches and chips.  The decals have the most noticeable damage where large portions of the black on silver decal is missing.  I have a set of replacement decals for the frame, but I’m going to save these for some point in the future when I get the frame repainted.  In the meantime, I cut new decals from black vinyl electrical tape.  Many of the letters were touched up, and the second “N” in “GUNNAR” was completely replaced.  Not bad, huh?