Wildside day 1

Race 1 - 17k from Cradle Mountain

This was the 'seeding' race so we were jumbled up based purely on category. The whistle went and everyone took off. The race was on moorland on grass over what felt like peat so it sucked the energy out of you - apparently it was a lot worse last year too. I quickly stopped trying to keep my group in sight and just rode at a comfortable-ish pace, reglarly being passed by guys from the groups that had left after me. At this point I had a sudden realisation of how fit everybody else was compared to me! Still, too late to back out now. By the end of the stage we'd had some creek crossings, it'd switched to fireroads and even some dusty singletrack and the riding was fun - I'd even managed to pass a couple of people.

Cruise stage 1 - 15k

This cruise stage almost finished me off! There were some big hills to get over - you can see the road in the distance.

Descents were fun though - I hit 72km/h on the way down. Lunch was great and afterwards we got seeded based on the first race time. My mate Jon had managed to get into group D on his rigid SS on-one. I was in group L. Jon said 'I didn't know they went that far back'. Thanks mate :).

Race 2 - 22k

It was good to line up with my athletic peers

This was a fireroadie race with only a little bit of singletrack at the start. The level of gumbiness was fairly impressive with me adding my fair share - someone in the lead three would put a foot down, we'd all grind to a halt and then for some reason I was having trouble clipping in so half the field would roll past. Also managed to fall into a mud pit for no reason at all. We switched to fireroads around the outside of a pretty cool damn and then we hit the first real river crossing - wading across up to my waist in murky water. I thought we'd got lost at first. After that it degenerated into lots of fire road pinch climbs, fast descents and the occasional sleeper to catch out the unwary - one sleeper-bridge with a hidden hole in the middle had a line of 4 people all fixing flats on the other side. I was still working on taking it easy so walked a lot of the ups to conserve energy. At this point the combination of wet socks and walking was starting to cause my shoes to dig in to my heels.

Cruise 2 - 17k

After the race stage we cruised down to Tullah for the night. It was mainly downhill but I was starting to struggle to keep the legs turning on the flat sections. Tullah was gorgeous with a pub next to the lakeside for the presentations

Somebody had their bike nicked during the presentations which got us all nervous so I slept with mine

A few days later Tullah was almost evacuated because of bush fires and when we were there the smoke was thick in the air, turning the moon was a deep red