Speed Cycling Systems

The teams always start like this down at Forrest:

In the middle there is lots of fast racing, hopefully not too much of it looking like this:

After 6hrs of hard work despite a bit of bad luck in the form of the big crash above early in the race for James the end can still look like this:

In cool damp conditions on near perfect trails Ben and James (Speed Cycling Systems’ Little Big Men) battled it out for 6 hours and 20 min to take the win in the Forrest 6hr Men’s Pairs for 2012 in a big field of 91 teams racing.  Some quick laps out of the blocks saw the boys take the lead early in the race with a 4+ min time gap by the midway point of the race, but fatigue in the second half saw that gap slowly shrinking so there was no sitting up and rolling to the finish line.  Full credit to the Forrest MTB club for putting on a fantastic event with 400 riders competing across solo and team categories.

As part of their build up to the Forrest 6hr, Ben and James were keen to get in a hard 6hr pairs race to prepare the legs for the brutality which is lap on, lap off racing. The Duael was just he thing – A short, rough but fast course, pairs only race near Woodend. With consistent lap times all day the boys brought home a 6th place in the 30+ division, which not atypically for endurance MTB events had a deeper field than the Sport or Elite categories. Another hard month of training and things bode well for the lads in Forrest.

Benny and James headed off to Creswick this weekend just gone to compete in the Dirt Fest Victoria weekend. Ben was lining up in the off road Tri, Trail Run and MTB … James had the good sense to just stick to his knitting and race the MTB stage. Ben took out his age group in the Tri, and picked up 4th place overall. There was some stiff competition.  In the Trail Run Ben took 3rd place.  The MTB stage started very well for the boys, with James and Ben sitting comfortably in the lead group for the first few laps after a run, a series of punctures for both riders took its toll.  Despite many stops to change tubes and pump tyres, Ben held on to take 3rd overall in the Dirt Master championship.

Photos from the Tri Stage.

We Rode

We Paddled (and we swam)

We MTBed

We cruised rail trails

We Ran

And because it was so nice, we rode some more

Friend of Perfect Pilates and Speed Cycling Lisa Jacobs wrote about her experience of the weekend here.

While Megan and many of the gang were racing up at Falls Creek, James was competing in the first round of the Victorian State Enduro 6hr MTB series.  It was a tough battle all day with rain, 2 mechanicals and a big crash for team mate Gareth at the 4hr mark; The boys ended up walking away with 3rd, just a couple of min behind 2nd place.  Another great result for the team.