Well it is always fantastic to get out and about and even more fun when you can be blasting around the tracks racing with so many like minded athletes/people. The Deans Bank 10 hour MTB race was the event of choice for me over the long weekend. I had raced in this event last year and was heading back this year to strive for continual improvement with the goal of pushing the body to its limits and seeing if I could get a few more km clicked up within the 10 hour allocated time!

I was all set up and ready to go with a chilly bin full of nutrition for the day, my mighty Fuel EX9.8 tuned, lubed and ready to roll through whatever I pushed at it for the day. During the day I was to be backed by the support tent of the awesome Racers Edge Torpedo 7 crew who would tend to any bike lube needs etc as I stopped in a couple of times for refuelling throughout the day.

The course was a lap of the well known and ridden Deans Bank MTB track here in Albertown / Wanaka, a lap is just over 10km and As we started it was a couple of fast laps before people settled into a bit of a rhythm and knuckling down to shredding the trails and maintaining good fule and fuild intake for the day. I was getting along nicely and feeling great for the first 4 hours before I hit a real low period from about the 4:30-6:30 times until I was able to get my food and fuilds all back in check and come back from what was a couple of really challenging hours both physically and mentally. When you ‘hit a bit of a low it takes a good amount of psycholigical coaching to yourself to get back on track, which I feel I did well at and perked up and sped up a little for the last hours to end up rolling over the finish line in 9hours 29min, which left me a little short on time to get one more lap in. So my total lap count for the day was 12 laps which equalled around 130km and I was pretty happy about this. Down one lap on last year, perhaps this was due to the windy conditions slowing up one leg of the lap or the little period of low in the middle of the day, all up it was a fantastic #seeyououtthere day and a great opportunity to get amongst a great event and have fun and challenge put before me in doing so. The Trek Fuel EX9.8 was awesome to be riding for the duration of the day.

So to follow on from this I have been asked to speak this afternoon to a group of our Year 13 students studying Physical Education and their current assignment is based around perseverance in sport. I will talk to them about what motivates me to keep going, the positive values and experiences that come from challenging and sporting pursuits and how I keep focus and balance in all that I do. It is always neat to be able to share experiences with others and promote all of the positive benefits of the outdoors and sports and adventure. I was surrounded by some great support during the race as many students from school that I know, teach and work wiht were there cheering me on and a few of them racing me hard on a few of the laps!