Chase the Sun Round 1

Airtime...


5 hours of red hot racing. The course was 90% dry and very fast.

Steele smashed out lap 1 to bring us round in second behind josh carlson with brenton from Torq a bit behind and Cal Britten seemingly off the pace.
For the next 3 laps it was us and the Torq boiz absolutely mackin through the course with only a wheel between us. Cal and Dan were chasing hard and were always just in the background.

On my 4th lap the pace started to take its toll. Robbie got a gap on me as i got caught in traffic and i couldn't get back on. Dan B was lurking and past me too. Back into 3rd. i transitioned to Steele for his 5th lap and he took up the chase. Looking to leave it all on the track.

Sadly it wasn't to be. We were both done. It would come down to the wire for my last lap. I was ready, sort of...

Steele came through with under a minute to go and i rolled out to attempt an amazing comeback.... ha.

Congrats to Dan and Cal for a great race, Dan winning it in a sprint finish.

Thanks to my team mate Steele for shredding the trail all day and the Torq boiz Robbie and Brenton for pushing us all day.

Cool Vid, check the yeticycles.com site for more

RHINO is in Europe

Its great to be covered in European mud again...

Racing down the streets my Sreyr in Austria.

Wish we have a fish eye lens for this one...

Me waining for the start of the 4 day stage race in Belgium.

Rocking......

Hitting up my first race in the UK, jet lagged/cold.....

20 hours into his 24 Hour race in LOFER Austria and I stop for a nice cup of coffee in my YETI MUG....

My YETI getting ready for insane inner city crit action...

Over n Out,

Rhino

Sweet As Upgrades

Had a bit of downtime after the red centre, partly cause i feel rest is good and partly cause my return to melbourne and working has me on the cold wagon. Started with a sore throat, moved on to a blocked nose and now a cough. On the mend i hope, just in time for round 1 of Chase the Sun @ Lysterfield this sunday.
5 Hours of smackdown, I'm teaming up with Steele Von Hoff......

Time to get the ARC back up and into tiptop shape for racing.

I've been looking at streamlining the setup on my hardtail for a bit now and a single front ring has been on the list. Rather than use front derailleur to keep the chain on i decided to go use an E-Thirteen XC chainguide. Easy to setup and very quiet.



Went with a 38t chainring and an 11-32 cassette. Should work ok for the moment. Considering getting a 10speed shifter setup(when the X9 or XO sram ones are available) to increase my options with a 11-36 cassette.

one could go a bit nuts and waste a lot of time with chainring and cassette options but i figure its like a single speed, spin to win or stand and grind it....
So far its working well.

The second stage in my upgrades was a new fork.


Rockshox SID XX World Cup. Carbon steerer, Hydraulic lockout and all the other things that come with a TopEnd fork

The Hydro lockout has enabled me to try an idea that i came up with while building my ASR5. I ended up with a right hand lockout lever on my "custom" rebas... it got me thinking that with a single shifter for the rear gears i could flip a right hand lockout lever to the left and it would be like a shifter.
Works just fine...



So the right hand side has gear controls under the bar and left has fork lockout control under the bar.



Custom...... awesome....

Err....

Skoda Confirms Yeti.....

Made the local paper...

ha ha. Time trial stage. John Jacoby is driving the 4wd...

Cycling news has some race reports too.

And that, is mountain bike racing...

yep. Boo to flats.

Todays stage started with me in 3rd on GC. only 5 seconds to AJ and 3 mins to English. At about 10km in i gapped the group through a sand patch and realised that this was my chance to have a go.

Through the rocky single track i managed to keep a good lead over the chasing group and was feeling awesome.

At the halfway point I'm told i had 5 mins lead on English. Which would have put me into the Lead on GC.

the last 10km or so of the course was rough. essentially an old 4x4 track along a fence line. Still riding well i was pumped to win the stage when disaster struck.

not sure but either a sharp rock or piece of wire slashed a hole in my tyre. I put in a tube but had troubles getting it to pump up.

Andy Fellows and Ben Henderson caught me as i was getting going again but there wasn't enough air in the tube. Off again to pump it up and Jason English caught me. Finally getting my shit together i rode on, up ahead was the 2km to go sign. All i had to do was get in before AJ to keep my third on GC and i did it with a second to spare.....

So, what could have been. But, that is bike racing.....

Stage Win!!

Yep. Stage 4. 98km of flatout in the sand. A group of 3 got a break after a long sand section at about 20km and from there we drove it hard to stay away.



AJ, Andy Fellows and I worked hard together to keep away and at the end Fellows dropped off in the last 5km.




Suitably shattered but winners are grinners...

Stage results are here

Red Centre is underway!!

Bikes preped and ready to rock...



Fancy a GU?




Stage one is all done, and all new course for this year. Hot and rough was the name of the game with rocks a plenty. The ASR 5 was getting a workout and loving it. The race organisers claimed it to be the roughest stage of the week and they weren't wrong. One of the sections of trail was called The Hell Line.....





Feeling good over the stage i ended up in 4th. Awesome start to the weeks riding.


Winner AJ, 2nd Jason English, 3rd Ben Henderson, 4th Me, 5th Andy Fellows.

Mel had a good ride to finishing the tough stage 8th in her category.




Stage 2 hill climb rockin the skinsuit. came in 6th. Think i got the same time as last year. Coughing my lungs up all the way back to the lodge, love the short efforts....



Results can be found here

Twitter the race here, checkout the Specialized Folding bike... Ouch

spy pics...

Yeti. 25th anniversary. Some sweet rigs on the way i hear.... Unreal.