triple 000 noosa 12 hour - 1st solo female.

Well, that was a master class in mud riding. Unfortunately mother nature was not up for co-operating and she really gave us some tough conditions. Bike eating conditions. I went through a set of pads around every 2 laps and even managed to grind down a spider.... and I swear I was only using my brakes at about 3 places around the course! Inspection of the rotors revealed gritty clay jammed in all the holes, which would have been grinding pads away even without braking.... Gears were not into it much either! I ended up putting it in middle ring, and somewhere in the middle-ish of the cassette and just riding there. I was definitely considering the merits of owning my own SS. I even managed a jersey malfunction with the zipper dying from the mud!!!


Things I learned:
a) Tyres really do make a difference.
Last time I raced in these conditions I was on monorails and crossmarks. It didn't end well.
This time I had an ignitor on the front and crossmark on the back, and a bag full of spare mud tyres. No need to to change though as I was getting around reasonably well on that combination.

b) The right pressures help.
Coming from AR I have a tendency to way over-inflate my tyres. Less was more.

c) Big Wheels Rock!
I am convinced that the handling of my new bike really helped. It just seemed to go where I wanted, and even when I was rolling some horror narrow ruts that would usually grab a wheel and spit me off the bike it just seemed to keep on trucking.

Happy Days! Thanks Black Sheep -1st solo female.
Next Up... a bit of fun and some base Kms in the 24 hour multigaine.