What's Up
Mt Annan Turns Up The Singletrack Heat
- Category: Event Wraps
- Monday, 19 September 2011 12:10
Round 5 of the SRAM Singletrack Mind Series headed out to the Mt Annan Botanic Gardens yesterday in glorious spring sunshine. The heat was on early and riders seemed pleased to be riding away from a wet winter with many races having been either cancelled or rescheduled.
There was no chance of that at Mt Annan however and in a welcome change many were commenting on the heat!
With 8 hours of riding to be get through hundreds of riders lined up and were fired off on their starting loop. It was great to see a creative use of the fire roads to break up the field with riders basically circling around the event centre in a wide loop.
Now I wasn’t at the pointy end, rather I was dead last (that’s another story), but from where I was standing the riders were filing past in dribs and drabs so the ‘prologue’ loop seemed to have worked nicely to stretch out the field before the singletrack squeeze.
The Mt Annan Botanic Garden Stage 3 trail had opened up just days before the race. Whilst no one will argue that the best way to wear in a new trail is to get hundreds of tyres on it, by mid race some of dry and powdery corners were a little worse for wear and starting to blow out.
It's nothing that a little trail maintenance love can’t fix though and the garden’s staff are straight on it having closed Section 3 today for maintenance. How good is it to see pro active and positive management! Nicely done!
Sure there were some fast guys and girls out there (results here) but having took the time to chill out in transition it seemed that the majority of riders were there just to bust out some laps and test themselves out. Either that or the heat was too much for some...Better get used to it people, summer is coming and we’ve got Round 6 and 8 ¼ of the series to go...
Round 6 of the SRAM Singletrack Mind Series will be held on the 23rd October at Lisdale, NSW and the final round, Round 8/4 will be held at Awaba, NSW on the 27th November 2011.
More photos: Enduro Pulse Facebook Album
Event website: chocolatefoot.com.au/singletrack-mind-series
