Specifics Event Reviews

I bought my first 'real' mountainbike in December 2009 and actually rode on dirt for the first time. This led to group trips to the mountainbiking mecca Rotorua. And it was on one of these trips that someone mentioned the Moonride in May, a few converstations later (maybe a few wines) and we had a entered a team of four in the womens category. While the other girls started convincing our partners to enter a team as well, I started googling and found Shane. So now its nearly 10pm on a Friday night I'm in Rotorua huddled up in a tent, surrounded by mountainbikes and other mad people,awaiting the start of the 2010 Cateye MoonRide, thinking how on earth I got myself here....?

Luckily they suggest a more experienced team member start the race, so our 'captian' and 93 other people set off at 10pm. I was last to ride so thankfully the pack had spread out a bit when i got to the track.The course was really great, not too technical and thankfully not too many uphill slogs! I was worried about starting the race at night but this turned out to be a good thing as you don't worry about what you can't see!

We were really lucky to have fine weather although with this came the cold, we had two heaters in our tent and in between laps huddled in front of these and wrapped ourselves in blankets and sleepingbags. Dawn finally came and brought slightly warmer temperatures and also the challenge of re-learning the track in daylight.

At 10am the 12 and 6 hour competetors started, so there were an extra 300 'fresh' people on the track, this made it difficult as you were constantly hearing 'on your right' and trying to let people pass, but you soon got used to it and most poeple were polite and would have a laugh with you. To allow for longer rests inbetween laps we changed the order of riding and made sure we kept our food and water intake up.

Every hour results were posted in the main tent and we discovered we were moving between 2nd and 3rd and even 1st for a while. The thought of possible podium finish and a medal gave us extra energy and kept us going in the final home stretch. As lights came out again and only a few hours to go we kept at it. With gears on my bike failing it managed to hold together and before i knew it i was on my final lap, then our captian and mountainbike legend did the final two laps. And then it was all over! We packed up the site and then went to prizegiving. Standing up was difficult as the lack of sleep and large amount of exercise finally started to catch up! But before i knew it our names were being called up for 2nd place, and that felt fantastic! Overall we came 2nd out of 6 all-women teams, and 64th out of 93 finishers in the 24hr category.

So in the 3 months since I started training with Shane I have come a long way from not being able to walk after my first session (and those evil lunges! ) My next challenge is to survive snowboaring season in one piece and maybe the 12hr Jamis Taupo Day/Night Thriller in September... maybe ..

Sara Page

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