Changes for 2010

We have some exciting news.....

We want to start by saying a huge thank you to everyone who has supported us to date so a huge thank you to bikefix (Carls shop) in Rotorua and Bikesmith and elsworths without the support the results we have achieved over the last few years would not have been possible. Both of these shops are owned by great people and have top notch mechanics to look after you. So thanks!!

This coming year 2010 has some changes in store for us, We will be riding for Bergamont on their speedy bikes and getting looked after by Bikeculture in Rotorua (who put our bikes together today and had them ready to go as soon as they arrived).

Today our road bikes arrived we are both on Begamonts Dolce LTD road bike, and not only do they look cool but they are fast, responsive and sweet all round. Our mountain bikes come in January Carl is on the platoon team, which is a hard tail and for me I'm on the fastlane team begamonts full suspension bike. check the bikes out on http://www.bergamont.de/

Tour de femme is under a week away now and vine yards follows a few days after so we are now ready to go on our mean as bikes!!!!

Mid NI final

Hey Every body that follows us must be some of ya cause it came up 1st on google for a change (had to go through there cause i forgot the addy haha :) mint.
Sorry there was no update last race (mid North Island final in Napier). To sum it up i had a ripper 1st 20min haha then blu my butt probly because i had an infection running through my body (BMX track and jumping jumps backwards dont work). And Katie won open woman.
Any way we have both split Rotorua for the week, im at the farm working for Evan and just brought a cool ute. and katie has gone back to Auckland till next week.

The next racing coming up for us is Tour de femme for katie and I'll be doing vineyards, so we will be turning into Roadies. Waiariki has been awesome as usual and have sorted out our whole trip so no worries we just pick up the van on boxing day and drive!

Cheers Carl

Testing and Mid NI #3

We thought we better get into the habit of keeping this blog site up to date. This week has not exactly been jam packed considering its holidays from study and no jobs as of yet, just a lot of job applications we have a bit of time on our hands... good for training, but driving us slightly crazy.

On Thursday this week the Waiariki mtb squad made a trip to hamilton to do VO2 max testing, this is one of the many awesome perks of being in the Academy, we will be getting to analyse these results in the coming week, but are feeling really good about our tests so hoping that the results show this.

This weekend on Saturday saw a muddy round in the Mid NI series held in Rotoura and on Sunday a Looooong endurance road ride. The road ride turned into a moutainbike after a couple of hours as we ran out of spear tubes after a few flat tires on the road bikes.

Here are our race reports..

Katie - ladies first, Gavs suggestion :)

The Track was good, a nice length for a lap race and coming through the start finish half way through the lap was a good chance to hear some support. The mud was fun... To an extent, aside from the gears hating it from the start which got worse as the race went on, but this is goes hand and hand with a mudd race and every one suffers so I had to keep going no matter how frustrating it got! I finished up in 2nd place behind Fiona Macdermid with Monique rounding off the podium in 3rd.

Carl

hmm well I had no forks on my bike the day before the race, so I found my old old Manitou forks. I went for a burn in the forest after to see how if they would be sweet but they only had about 20mil of travel. Bike fix was still open just so quickly stopped in to see if the guys could fix them, where Pete offered me his single speed to ride so I would just roll this for the race. In the end Marty rang at about 7.30 and said he had fixed up the forks.

before the race the forks felt alot better than yesterday but not the same as my usual race forks. The race started hard and it felt and looked like I was riding a pogo stick as the travel went back to what it had the day before so I got tired fast as, I wasnt to fussed as our coach doesn't want us to be concern with the result but just to go hard at the start and climb hard so yea i was trying my hardest but wasn't going to fast haha. So after a solish start everyone started coming past me, I got chain suck a million times my arms felt like lead from all the bouncing and it was a hard day. Think I ended up 4th in open and I think it was out of 4 of us. Can't wait to get my forks back....

Next weekend the Waiariki riders are taking a van and we are heading to Napier for the final round of the mid NI series. Napier is pretty sweet riding so we are looking forward to a road trip and riding down there.

We finally made a blog

Thought it was about time that We made a blog, which would promote our sponsors and give everyone who wants to know up dates on our racing, training and just whatever.

so here goes... Round Taupo was on this weekend, we choose the huka XL race which was a 83km mountainbike race.

Carls race..

I started trying to race cabins race, trying to keep up and forgot about eating. so after a hour hit the wall got dropped and decided shit i haven't eaten so started eating every 20mins and came right then had a big crash which hurt like hell got past by Brad Tilby, when i got up i picked up my food off the track and stated hurting as i rode off it took me over a hour to catch back to brad. after riding with him a bit i took off i maybe should have stayed with him and we may have caught ash (hough) and scott (green) but i thought i could do it on my own so off i went at the end brad started catching up so i kept the pace on and could see ash but was to late finished up in 6th I'm happy with that both me and katie are riding faster than we are this time last year so happy as

Chur Carl

Katies race...

4am start was very painful especially after the bay of plenty sports awards on Friday. The Bay of plenty sports awards was a great night, seeing talented athletes in the bay of plenty region and even being a finalist for the jnr sports women of the year (pretty cool to think I'm now a part of this) Luuka Jones a Slalom kayaker took out this category, a well deserved win, other awards were presented and the overall sports person for 2009 was Sarah Walker.

So after an exciting night and about 4hours sleep we made our way to taupo, i must admit i continued to sleep on the way down and arrived in taupo half awake. the 7am race start came around really quick and we were off, i didn't get a very good start (probably still half asleep but mainly because i haven't done much speed work yet) i managed to pic off some places before entering the single track tho and got to warm up into it. off the start line i could feel my gears slipping which made me a bit nervous with the exact same thing happening last year resulting in a very slow ride, but about 30minutes in i decided it couldn't get much worse so i started to play around with the gears and by fluke i made it alot better, so along with my great mechanical skills (or luck) i fixed it up enough that it would only skip when i put alot of weight through it so i just rode a little differently and it didn't bother me. apart from this my ride went well I just sort of rode in my own little zone, some times i felt like my heart rate was through the roof and i was pushing it like a normal cross country race and other times i felt like i was riding smooth and comfortably just in a random little zone! in the end i finished up 2ND behind Arnika, Nic leary was also in fornt of me however had to stop racing. I am pretty stoked with how i road because it was about getting in a long solid training ride in and i definitely achieved this and got to win some money at the same time!!!

well thats all for our first post.