Event

31
Jul
2015
Kempsey Rollercoaster

Kempsey Rollercoaster

It’s been a while since I have been out shooting any races but last weekend I was back at it under the guise of Outer Image. We were off to Kempsey to cover the fourth round of the Gravity Enduro Rollercoaster series.

Kempsey is about 5 hours north of Sydney so I decided to make a weekend of it and spend time camping at Hat Head National Park. This is one of my favourite campsites due to its stunning natural beauty and the fact that you set up camp among the kangaroos.

This year 2 more tracks were added to the course and another day of racing was added too. Day 1 was 2 tracks and then on the second day the tracks changed. There was a little bit of something for everyone in the tracks. I heard some say that there was too much pedaling in parts of the track while others said they loved those same sections for the rolling rides through the trees. The tracks were nowhere near as dusty as they were last year which although is good for the riders There was around 120 riders this time. Not such a big turn out for an enduro but considering its 5 hr drive from Sydney it was more than we expected. It’s a great track and good to see it’s expanded to include another 2 tracks this year.

Enjoy!!!

Posted by Richard in Bikes, Events
26
Oct
2013
Thule B24 Mountain Bike Race

Thule B24 Mountain Bike Race

Last weekend Gil and I travelled down to Bright, in Victoria, Australia to cover our first 24hr race under the guise of Outer Image, the Thule B24 enduro. This was our first 24hr race together and it was certainly a lot of fun. The trip down was an adventure in itself as we were detoured due to bushfires then another due to a nasty crash which together put us about 6 hours of course (always good to take the scenic route though). We arrived in Bright midday on Friday and quickly set to walking the track and finding our locations.  Bright is a mountain bikers paradise with mountains all around and trails weaving up and through the forest everywhere. It certainly was not hard to pick our location, the problem was more what locations would we not have time for.

The organisers added a new category called the Esprit De Corps. I haven’t seen this in MTB races before but I imagine that we will be seeing it a bit more in the future. It added a more social aspect to team riding. Your team needed to complete a certain amount of laps over the course of 24 hours but you had the option of all riding as a group. So if you were in a team of 6 and you do a lap with all team riders it actually counts as 6 laps.

The race kicked off at 12 on Saturday. It was quite a long weekend but well worth it. Probably not as long for us as it was for the riders though. We shot well into the night and were up again and into it before dawn. In the last couple of hours things became rather hectic again as all the riders crammed in the last few laps. The smiles which had faded in the early hours of the morning were back too with some riders even going past me giggling Delirious or just very happy I wasn’t quite sure which)

All in all a great weekend away. I will be heading back down to Bright in a few weeks and I’m looking forward to it already. I have a few plans in the making.

Oh and just in case you were wondering, the winner of the solo category was Shane Roberts who completed 22 laps or around 374kms.

Posted by Richard in Events, Sports, What's going on