Surf Coast six hour MTB Enduro by Grant Suckling

Luke and I had chatted about the Surf Coast Six Hour as a good prospect for a training ride to keep things mixed up a bit. Beretta’s Bike Hub was keen for us to ride with their team and we were keen to do what we could to fly the flag for them. We both agreed it wasn’t a target event so there’d be no tapering, but we were going pretty well and hoped for a reasonable sort of result anyway.

I was looking forward to participating as I learned that more and more people I knew would be there for the race. Best of all, my brother would be there with the CFA team which was great news.

Beretta’s Bike Hub ended up entering a few teams, and the boys who hadn’t tapered (i.e. Grant and Luke) were to be a team of only two, whoops! Looks like the workload was to be a little more than expected… My late arrival at the start meant that Luke would do the first two laps; we had agreed to do 2 each to start with and see how we went from there.

The place was jumping, bikes and riders everywhere, sponsors tents, live music, food cooking in stalls to tempt us back to transition, it was all happening. Luke went around the first couple of laps in a solid time, keeping within a reasonable distance of the leaders. Then it was my turn.

The course started with a ‘little pinch’ to get the heart rate up (way up if you ride it the way I did!), my first lap was a self imposed shock to the system, any concept of ‘pacing myself’ for later or ‘not pushing too hard’ so I could train the next day was completely gone from my head. I reckon I had the worst case of white line fever that I’d ever had, something was telling my brain that this was an all out sprint race! Silly boy…

As it turns out, the course was a good ‘up and down’ course with no really long climbs, so recovery time was available to help me get over my adrenaline fuelled pace. But the penny hadn’t dropped, after every small recovery I attacked againJ.

Fortunately I ironed out my brain a little for my second lap, the fact that I was hurting (just a little) contributed to the change of attitude. But still not enough to stop me running through the bush to overtake a few more whilst straddling the top tube of my Cannondale Rush (‘Kenny’), I seem to remember people saying something that involved references to their God, and maybe something about an animal as I passed, either they were getting involved with a deeper meaning of what they were doing, or possibly enjoying the native wildlife…? Maybe I was still going to hard…

The course was great with some good little climbs, and obviously the resultant downhill sections were great fun. There was heaps of good single track however some had sandy pockets that rutted up a bit as the race went on which made for some hairy squeezes through the trees as you were pitched back and forth at the ruts whim, but happily accidents were only witnessed on this day.

The riders thinned out as time went on (particularly after the 3 hour finished), so less people to overtake meant we could settle into a rhythm. Our lap times became more consistent as we switched to one lap each, and the night riding was pretty familiar to us from a long winter training in the dark at the You Yangs.

We were going pretty well in the field, the leaders were well ahead of the pack, but we were still within reach of 2nd place (Team Rapid Ascent), running a few minutes behind them for most of the night. Team Rapid Ascent’s John Jacoby and Sam Maffett were both riding well, the gap seesawed for pretty much the entire race, but the positions never changed and we were to end up finishing about 5 minutes behind them in 3rd place.

Of the 145 teams that entered the 6 hour, we were one of only 3 to complete 13 laps finishing 3rd outright. Luke and I were both very pleased with the result, especially considering we had just gone down there to participate. My inability to follow my ‘participation’ race plan earned me some great stats – of the total 1,658 laps timed, I had both the fastest and equal fourth fastest day lap times of 25:31 (49 seconds ahead of the next best!) and 26:28 respectively. I also had both of the two fastest night laps in 27:09 and 27:31. This race was a great confidence booster for the upcoming Anaconda race in Lorne; all going well last year’s bike time would be obliterated!
A special thanks to Beretta’s Bike Hub for organising our entry and providing the fully decked out tent for our racing comfort, and once again, how could we keep the speed up without the most powerful weapon in the arsenal – TORQ bars, gels and electrolyte energy drink, Forrest Fruit gels were made for this event!