It's been a murky winter here in Christchurch. It seems like every other day when I get up and open the curtains, it's raining. The tracks are a mess, any riding at all results in a lengthy bike cleaning session (which I despise) and the feeling of good singletrack just ain't the same when you know that every little skid you do is going to make the track that bit worse the next time you come through. And heaven help you if you get caught riding in the muck by someone involved in trackbuilding. To add insult to injury, this has been my first winter in Christchurch since I started mountain biking, and I'd got quite accustomed to the nice dry winters in Blenheim. So I've been reacting to the inability to go riding on a whim particularly badly. Yep, I reckon winter is a pretty depressing time for mountain bikers all round.
So I figured, I could sit and whinge the whole winter away, or I could maybe try and do something a little more constructive. Make the best of a bad situation, as it were. It was too wet to ride my tracks. I couldn't head out with a giant hairdryer and dry them all out, mores the pity. If I did one more lap of Mcleans or Bottle Lake on the singlespeed I was going to go postal, potentially turning into a night-light adorned homicidal maniac. So with the continued safety of the masses in mind, I came to the decision that I just needed to find more tracks to ride. And so it was on that basis, that I managed to bully a couple of mates into loading up the dirty old Mazda, and heading out of town last weekend. The destinantion? Sunny Nelson. The excuse? The Fringe Hill Classic baby.
I've been told the Fringe Hill classic is an "Old School" DH race, reminiscent of the "good old days" when riders raced up the hill in the morning, and down the hill in the afternoon, maybe with a spot of trials in the middle, and all on the same bike. Of course, I'm nowhere near enough of a retrogrouch to remember that type of thing, so I'll tell you my impressions of it. The Classic is an old 4wd track, that starts in the Beech forest at the top of Fringe Hill above Nelson, and drops 750m in elevation to the finish line on Brook st. It's only got about 10 meters of singletrack at the top, and then it's into a rocky 4wd track for about the first third of the track, then into slightly smoother exotic forest, followed by a loose section on the edge of the hill below the Dun Mountain walkway, then the final blast through the trees to the finish line. It's not technical, its not gnarly. It's FAST.
As in white knuckle, hanging on for dear life, pedalling till your lungs are burning and hoping like hell you don't make a wrong move because you know for sure its gonna hurt like hell if you bin it. That kind of Fast. I don't have any way to measure it for sure, but I'm pretty certain that my race runs were the fastest I've gone on a bike to date, and tell ya what, when both wheels start drifting at that speed it makes you sit up and take notice! One of the other neat things that I noticed about the classic, due to the non-technical nature of the track, and the fact that there are no compulsory jumps or big drops etc, people were quite happily riding it on short travel XC bikes, and being reasonably competitve on them too. It was nice to see a DH race that was so easily accessible for anyone on a bike.
Now I'm no racer. By stint of bad luck, age, and bike, I seem to have landed in the "Senior Full Suspension" class at downhill races, which just happens to be the one that predominantly contains riders who are absolutely pinned, leaving me in a little over my head. Even if for me and my friends it was a race for the tail end of the pack, we had an absolutely fantastic time. For me, my race runs could have gone better, with my first run being a little sloppy, and my second going really well, right up to the point where I crashed.. leaving me beaten by a mate by 0.6 of a second! Obviously mucking round with your mates is on a whole different page, but racing the clock like that I started to gain just the tiniest bit of insight as to what all those racers at world cup level mean when they talk about their small mistakes on a race run all adding up to the time at the bottom.
Unfortunately, I don't have the fitness or the skill (or the balls of steel) to be competitive at downhill, but man, talk about good fun! We had a great weekend away, got to ride our bikes on new trails, didn't get toooo muddy, and had a crack at this racing business. I'd urge everyone out there, who enjoys riding bikes down hills, regardless of how fast you are or aren't, to have a go at racing sometime. Don't be intimidated by the 16 year olds that ride at mega insane speeds, or the brutal nature of downhill courses these days, because theres always a granny line, or someone else who rides at the same speed you do. Plus, road tripping for a race - is there a better excuse for a weekend away?
Photos courtesy of me and Shanan Cohn
