Primal Odyssey

Well I haven’t put much thought into how I should break the news, it’s come down to this, If you’ve heard the song by “I fought the Law but the Law Won”? Well my race went something like this. “I fought the Tree but the Tree won”, in a nut shell I clipped a tree with my right shoulder. Now for the race run down. Let me explain how it all came to be, remember that I had no intention of attempting anything other then taking home the coveted “Lanterne Rouge”. A sort after prize that a sat on many chairs and drank only a few beers to archive while the true MTB boys took on each other..

The “Riders Debrief” was at 11:30am, so we all strolled down to listen to the “Debrief”. Straight after it was done they were ready to sound the starting horn. None of us where ready so we rolled onto the course a few minutes behind the actual start.

Lap 1:
It was nothing but traffic and not knowing the course I found myself waiting for a spot to over take, I put this down to a recon lap.

Lap 2:
Time to get some open space (after heading back to the car to get rid of the Camel Pack) and time to get the right lines down on the course. Feeling good and warmed up.

Lap 3:
The first of the team riders star to breeze past you, at this point I’m thought to myself… was that “Jeff Toohey”?!? I Google Jeff a few days before the big day, turns out Jeff has done this a bit… and has some huge results under his belt (World 24hr Solo MTB Age Group Champion). It was at this point that while reading the Google search results I had found my true calling for this event. I was to be a “moving chicane”!

It turns out I hadn’t seen the Might Toohey on course yet, then again I couldn’t see the number boards just these insanely fast… young dudes tearing up the track. All these thoughts of Jeff Toohey got my thinking about beer. Here in Oz we have a beer called “Toohey’s New” (not a brand I drink myself but it’s beer none the less) the remainder of lap 3 was all about beer and the cold beers I had sitting back at the car. As a true athlete (which I am not) a beer started to sound pretty good.

Lap 4:
I’m finding my groove, I gotta admit that at this point I wasn’t enjoying the ride as much as the first three laps. I had made the choice to pull in after each lap and have a good drink (non alcoholic). Princey had ripped the cleat off his MTB shoe and was waiting for the expo shop to bring in a new pair of shoes.

I was cruising around on lap 4 when I hear this someone call out my name. Looking back and here comes Daggs up the trail. Daggs asked where Princey was so I told him the cleat story. We started to descend through a sort forested single track. I clipped a tree with my right shoulder. The hit was a fast thud with a slight click, the sort of click that makes you think… did something just break? I held my line until the track open up where I could get out of the way of any traffic and check my range of movement on the shoulder. It wasn’t 100% by a long shot but the bloody thing still had full range of movement.

Along with the tree went my confidence on all the descents back into the start/finish. The shoulder and neck hurt and it was now officially beer o’clock. I got into the secret stash of pain killers and I was off to the showers… my day was done at the 3 hour mark. Sad but true!

On another note. Jeff had a small issue and was whipped off to hospital at 3:45am. He returned at around 9:30am and was still in second overall, he didn’t re-join the race and ended up a close 4th. Not bad for a dude that did 288km’s in 15hours and 45 mins offroad. Bloody machine!