Good
Riding four laps
Our team coming third
Winning treasure
Nice hard fast course
No mud!
Less good
Dry course = dusty course
Dirt in eyes
Inhaling half the course = speaking with husky voice for the next day
Bad
Putting a tear in the floor of your tent nearly a metre long
A puppy
A teammate in a stackhat
The washing of the bike
Step One: Go on a 20 km mountain bike on Saturday morning
Step Two: Go on a 7 km run (street-orienteering) on Saturday afternoon
Step Three: Go to Mt Buller on Sunday and have your first day of telemarking for the season
Pleasant views while out a-mountain-biking near St. Andrews on Saturday morning. We were going to be in Kinglake National Park, but they were shooting goats apparently. Despite our lack of resemblance to goats, we decided to go and ride our bikes elsewhere.
Meanwhile, I have come up with the brilliant plan of teaching myself to knit so I can knit myself a Doctor Who scarf for the Winter (yes, I had trouble believing someone has devoted a website to the subject too – then I remembered it was the internet).
So Saturday saw us competing in the Gravity 12 hour, hurling ourselves round a 13km mountain bike course – single-track, firetrail, and swathes of mud.
Three teams of us competed, I was in a team of three that became a team of two after losing Nick to injury. Lap times, all around an hour. Final laps completed in the dark, complete with bikes covered in red LEDs and tinsel.
In short, it was muddy, and lots of fun.