3D Rotorua - Off-Road Winter Multisport Festival
Ussher at the Inaugural Australasian Multi-sport Champs
16.06.2011
It never fails to amaze me how long it takes to drive from Nelson to Rotorua, throw in the ferry and it is a solid 12-13 hours of pretty continuous transit.
After a very wet day prior, race day dawned mainly clear, calm, mild and pretty much perfect conditions for racing.
This race was my first attempt at paddling a K1 in a race and so I was a little nervous about it, I’ve done plenty of training in a K1, but you never really know until you take the leap as to how it will work out.
Right off the start it looked like it was going to back fire, I’d been expecting a count down so when the hooter suddenly sounded I was faffing around and immediately got squeezed from either side leaving me no choice but to seed position and drop back.
I headed out to some clear water and immediately was able to make up some ground, heading round the first buoy in third and quickly joined Tim Grammer in pursuit of Mike Walker who had shot off the start and quickly put 50m on the field.
For the next 8km Tim and I would slowly close in on Mike, just for him to ease away whenever it looked like we were in with a chance of bridging up, the good news for me was we’d gained a small advantage on the other leading individuals, notably Dougal Allen who I expected I would need a buffer over to get into the single track without losing time on the climb. I had no idea of Dougal's skills on a MTB, but I know he has a monster engine on the bike and the thought of having to try and hang on to him up a climb wasn’t the greatest prospect.
Heading off on the bike I decided on a conservative approach, I wasn’t worried if someone was bridging up as long as I could hit the single track in front. Towards the top of the climb I could see a rider catching me, quite fast which was a good cue to put a bit more effort in and the gap seemed to hold for the remainder of the climb.
SleepMonsters
