23cc Maxxis Refuses had been good to me on the Salsa, so they were the obvious choice. I did a quick google search for maxxis refuse site:au which yielded a few Sydney based shops all within riding distance. I picked the one which wasn’t the closest, nor the cheapest, but one which I’d previously bought bike stuff from before and they’d treated me well. Itching to get out for a ride after my recent sickness I jumped on the Salsa and enjoyed the hell out of the ride to the bike shop.

Upon arriving I mentioned to the bike shop attendant people that I’d seen Maxxis Refuses on their website and asked where I could find them in the store? I was pointed in the right direction, but warned the price in store would be more expensive than the price I saw online. Sure. Okay. I can deal with the tyres being 10-20% more expensive? I mean, running a shop front costs money.

10-20% might’ve been a bit conservative though. Online, the tyres were $40, in store they were $60. That’s half the cost of the online tyre whacked on top again!

Which brings me to the title of this post… the bicycle industry’s business model in Australia is failing. I’m all for supporting local bike shops, but only when they earn a little bit of respect. Previous to this shopping trip, the bike shop in question had always been good to me. Well, by that I mean they’d never really screwed me over. After this shopping trip (and after checking their website and finding nothing stating the prices in store might be different from online) I won’t be buying there again.

It really is annoying when the easiest (if not the timeliness) way of getting parts on my bikes is to buy them online and fit them myself (usually at a fraction of the price). Bike shops of Sydney… I want to support you, I really do… but jeez you make it difficult to do so.

What did the Doctor Lady prescribe? Lots of sleep, drinkable antibiotics and heaps of kitty cuddles.

This was my second consecutive year doing the 50km and I’m fairly sure it’ll be my last one for a while. Why’s that? Well, let me walk you through my day yesterday and then do some explaining.

• 3:45am – the alarm went off. I woke up. Began eating breakfast, showering, etc etc.
• 4:10am – I began waking Liz up.
• 4:25am – Liz finally got out of bed and into the shower.
• 5:05am – With the car packed, we hit the road. First destination was Dural Maccas where I promised to replace the toast component of Liz’s breakfast with a Bacon and Egg McMuffin.
• 5:50am – Dural Maccas. 10 minutes too early. They weren’t open yet. Boo!!
• 6:10am – The sweet aroma of a Bacon and Egg McMuffin filled the car and we were on our way again, this time, destination Webb’s Creek Ferry.
• 7:00am – We join the queue for the Webb’s Creek Ferry.
• 7:15am – Two cycles of the ferry later, we were heading to St Albans
• 7:40am – Dirtworks day parking at St Albans. I found the other BMU guys and began setting myself and the bike up. I’d also spend the next 45 minutes or so wandering over the registration tent 4-5 times, each time asking if they had the single speed registration cards & timing chips. It wasn’t until…
• 8:30am – … when I finally got my timing chip & goodie bag. I attached both of them, said a quick goodbye to Liz and headed off with the BMU guys down to the start line.
• 8:38am – Had a quick chat to Matt. Wished him well for a sub 2 hour ride.
• 8:45am – Rejoined the BMU guys in the corral to leave in the first wave.
• 8:50am – Boring rider briefing.
• 9:01am – I rolled over the start line. Dirtworks was underway.

I’ll stop my annoying time line here as it’s a little fuzzy. Pushing an off the chart cadence while doing 35kph on a dirt road tends to warp one’s sense of time. No matter, the cadence hurt my lungs more than my legs so I didn’t see it as that much of a problem. Besides, my lungs would recover quicker and I won’t be swearing at them for cramping up during the final stages.

It might have been that I left in the first (not third like last year) wave, or perhaps the news that the first climb had been freshly graded, but more people were having a crack at riding the massive hill this year. Mind you, most people around me were walking by the first right hander. It’s a great leveller that hill. Unless you’re properly elite (or crazy), I still see it as silly to ride the hill. Mind you, if you’ve got the legs to motor up it and you can gain some time, by all means go for it. Just don’t do it for the sake of it and kill your legs for later.

As per last year’s review, the ride to the 28km feed station is a bit of a blur. I rode most hills but walked the steeper/longer ones. Single speeding still gives you that brilliant feeling when you overtake geared duallies by powering up a small to medium pinch climb. It’s even better to get to the crest of the hill and keep putting the power down to leave those duallies in your wake. Sadly it seemed the hills around St Albans had grown in the last year, or I didn’t quite have the legs I thought I did as it didn’t happen all that often.

28km feed station and I made my first error of the race (well, second really, but we’ll get to that). Now this is a literal translation of what I did. See if you can spot the mistake. I leant the bike up against a tree, camelbak came off, I dumped the Staminade I’d brought in my water bottle, filled the water bottle, placed the water bottle on water truck, filled my camelbak with water, screwed the camelbak closed, I took my second muesli bar out and put it in my jersey pocket for later, camelbak back on my back and I was away. Looking at my speedo time and the official time, I can tell you I was there for 1 minute and 40 seconds. I didn’t know that at the time, but I did know I was in and out of there damn quick. What was the mistake? I realised a kilometre or two down the firetrail while I was giving myself a mental pat on the back for being so efficient I realised I’d left my Staminade mix on the back of the water truck**. Well done Jarod. Very efficient.

The second half of the ridgeline was more of the first. The track had been dumbed down to the point where there wasn’t any sort of technical challenge. There were major patches of sand and it wasn’t that much fun. With the exception of a few stretches, it’s the sort of firetrail that a cyclocross bike would be at home at. The only saving grace were the downhills which were kinda fun, but still just about picking the well worn line and holding on.

Hitting the road and sprinting for home, I was mindful not to blow up my legs too early. Last year as soon as I saw the road I started sprinting. This year, I was very aware it’s a long 12kms back to St Albans.

My second error of the race occured to me about this time. You see, Liz and I got JellyBelly’s as a belated Christmas present last Thursday and the night before Dirtworks I’d proceeded to eat far too many of them. Add to that the cookie & shortbread batter which Liz tempted me with and by the sprint back to St Albans on Sunday my stomach was a mess. I’d only consumed a bite or so of the muesli bar since the 28km mark and my energy levels were reflecting that. I still had a muesli bar, Gu, energy bar and water (thankfully I’d saved myself the option of staminade at the feed station) but couldn’t bear the thought of eating/drinking any of them. I picked up the pace when groups passed me, if only to jump in their slip stream for a few hundred metres. I was slow but consistent.

Official ride time? 2 hours 33 minutes and 16 seconds. Faster than last year’s time by a shade under ten minutes which I’m happy with. Ideally I’d have liked to be closer to 2 hours 20 minutes, but it wasn’t to be on the day. The silver lining is that I picked up second place in the 50km single speed category (again!).

Liz and I stuck around and I talked bikes with various people I knew. While waiting for the presentation, we bought and ate pizza (oily and messy), hot chips (soggy and average), a kit kat (melted and gooey) and a bottle of water (cold and delicious). About two minutes after getting my second place show bag, we promptly left St Albans for another year.

Massive congrats to Matt for coming within two minutes getting under 2 hours. Jing, Kevin & Brad all put in awesome times for their first Dirtworks. Felix slept in so missed the pain of the 100km race, but still beat his 2009 50km time by almost ten minutes. Gijs and Clifton both did their first 100km Dirtworks and in my humble opinion both smashed the course and exceeded expectation.

So would I go back? I’m really leaning towards no, especially as I wrote that review up. The only reason at this stage that I would do Dirtworks again is that it’s a known benchmark for me. If I do a bucket load more training in the next year, it’d be great to test myself and see how much I’ve improved on the same course again. Yet I still can’t shake the thought that it’s a lot of effort (and money) 30kms of average firetrail and 20kms of mundane dirt road/asphalt.

** Liz later found the abandoned water bottle in a box that got delivered to the finish line by the sweeper vehicle. It was a happy, tearful reunion.

Excuse the Photoshop disaster. It’s up there to illustrate a point, not to win a prize.

It’s something I’ve considered for a while now, but yesterday’s ride certainly brought it back to the front of my brain. It is in short, it’s a hair brained idea to run a 1×9/1×10 geared setup on my Salsa Casseroll. I mean, I can make the whole single speed thing work, but sometimes it’d be nice to cruise around and not kill oneself climbing hills.

The switch should be fairly simple^.  It’s just a matter of grabbing the following parts…

• Rear Wheel
• 9/10 Speed Rear Derailleur
• 9/10 Speed Cassette
• 9/10 Speed Downtube Braze On Shifters
• 9/10 Speed Chain
• Bottom Bracket Gear Cable Slider Thing

… and bolting them together in a fashion that resembles a geared bike.  It shouldn’t cost that much either*.

Anyway, this is just me thinking out aloud for the time being.  Damn yesterday’s Waterfall ride for getting it into my head again.

^ I cringed as I typed this. Writing it down is like the kiss of death and will surely make it a nightmare.
* Another cringe. I wouldn’t be surprised if it costs me the price of a new bike for writing that statement.

Firstly the quick stats. During the weekend I…

• drove about 300kms (the way down)
• rode about 90kms
• consumed well over 15L of fluids (including water, beer, sports drinks, coke and mcdonalds thickshake)
• got around 30 minutes of sleep
• had massive amounts of fun.

It started with Liz and I arriving at about 10:30am on Saturday morning.  Andrew showed Liz and I to the Red Butt Racing camp site (the only hitch being me driving over a sizable tree stump with 20 metres to our parking spot) and I was officially home for the next 24 hours.

Being our dedicated marathon runner, Chris started us off and ended up finishing the first leg about mid pack.  Andrew went MIA at transition, but after a 5 or 10 minute delay he found Chris and set off for the team’s second lap.  I was next in line and headed out at about 3:15pm for my first lap.  Now let me preface my description of lap 1 by saying that I’ve never ridden at Sparrow Hill before.  I’d been told it was very sandy, with lots of switchbacks.  On the advice of others I’d chosen 32:18 as a gear ratio.

Lap 1 was a blur of craziness!  The field still hadn’t thinned right the way out yet, so transition was still fairly hectic.  Andrew found me with no incident and before I knew it I was stomping up the few hundred metres of inclined fire trail.  A quick left hander into the single track at the top and within 50 metres I’d realised that it wasn’t going to be the equivalent of Loftus’ rolling fire trail.  Accelerate, brake, turn, accelerate, overtake someone, brake, turn, accelerate, let someone overtake, brake, turn.  That’s pretty much what my first lap consisted of.  It was an awesome feeling constantly weaving between pine trees and never knowing where north was.  Switchbacks down a hill, cross a bridge, then mash it back up a fire trail on the other side.  I ended up putting in a 1:03:00 according to my speedo.

Back at camp I did some half assed stretching, ate some food, drunk some water and generally relaxed.

Lap 2 was my first night lap.  As with all tracks, Sparrow’s Hill is a totally different beast at night.  My first priority was always making sure I wasn’t hitting one of the hundreds of pine trees that line the course.  Second priority was making sure the ground under my wheels wasn’t overly sandy or rocky.  Third priority was feebly attempting to see through the current corner to work out the best line to take into the next one.  The highlight of lap 2 was riding the hill that had forced me to walk during Lap 1.  Admittedly it was mostly cause I didn’t know it was the same climb ’til I’d already passed it.  Once again, according to my speedo I was on the bike for 1:07:08.  4 minutes slower for a night lap?  I’ll take that any day of the week.

Back at camp I skipped the half assed stretching.  Instead deciding a monster bacon & egg sandwich and a beer was far more important to my finely tuned athletic body.  That was eaten, then I proceeded to chill out some more.  I got in a half hour of sleep somewhere around 4am, but that was rudely interrupted by rowdy Steve coming back from a lap and announcing to anyone who’d listen about his crash.

Lap 3 was initially tough.  We’d estimated that Andrew would finish his lap at 6:10am, so I dutifully arrived at transition at 6am.  Despite my attire (jersey, jacket with arms on, knicks, full length gloves, leg warmers, helmet) I was absolutely freezing!  It makes sense when you’re riding at 6am to only be in knicks and a jersey, but while in transition it’s an express train to hypothermia.  Blah blah blah, stop whining Jarod.  Out on the track I was warm, then quite warm, then hot.  The reason for all this?  I’d left the jacket’s removable arms on.  There were parts of this lap that I felt okay and other parts I felt horrible & nauseous.  Yet somehow my mental capacity didn’t extend stopping and taking the arms off. My sleep deprived brain thought that’d be a waste of time. On the bike I felt as though the lap was going to blow out to 1:20 or 1:30, so I was quite pleased when I rolled through transition in 1:11:53.

Between Lap 3 & 4, well, I didn’t know if there was going to be a Lap 4.  I went back to Liz’s motel room, had a piping hot shower and generally got cleaned up.  When I arrived back at Red Butt Racing HQ, Chris & Andrew had crunched the numbers and told me that if Steve (who was currently on a lap) and them all put in good times I’d be out for my last lap with a few minutes before the midday cut off.  I had mixed feelings about going out for another lap.  I mean, it’d be another lap of a great track and I’m sure I’d enjoy it, but I was clean dammit!!  One by one Steve and Chris came back to camp and updated the white board with the time they’d sent the next rider out.  We were all lapping between 1:02 & 1:10, so when Chris arrived at transition at 10:51am it was looking like I was doing one more lap.  I got ready and all the team went up to transition to see if Andrew would make it.  It was already touch and go, but one crash or puncture and it’d be all over… and at this stage the only thing worse than getting dirty by riding again, would be Andrew not making by mere seconds. In the end he stormed home with two minutes or so still on the clock, so I was out for another lap.

Lap 4 hurt.  A lot.  I’d decided that if three guys on my team could set three personal best times to get me out for another lap, then I was sure as hell going to do that lap justice.  Adrenaline got me up up the fire trail and about a quarter of the way around the track, then I hit a metaphorical wall.  I downed an expired Endura gel and thankfully that combined with constantly eating small bites of a power bar kept me going for the rest of the lap.  Cramps in my thighs came and went, but the pain was equally offset by the thrill of pushing my bike and body to the limit.  There were less riders on the track, and those that were there were similarly determined to give the last lap 110%.  The result was that my final lap was easily the most enjoyable of the weekend.  I rolled over the line with a speedo time of 1:03:53.  That’s 53 seconds slower than my first lap, despite my legs already having done 60km and sleeping for a mere half and hour.  I was shattered.

So that was the Mont for 2010.  At this stage I’d love to go back next year, once again on a single speed.  Time shall tell whether that happens or not though.

Speaking of riding, today I rode the Salsa to Heathcote with Andy, Matt and a dozen other Fixie Riders. They were all heading out to Garie Beach in the Royal National Park so I tagged along til about halfway then headed for home.

Sports Tracker Workout Details are here. The all important elevation profile on that page reveals that it’s a big climb to Heathcote. 225metres or so. To use Andy’s word of the day… epic.

Highlights of the ride were:

• Fixie riders spinning out their gearing going down anything resembling a hill.
• Matt Meat with the worst water bottle holder in the world.
• The climb from Sylvania to Heathcote. It’s constant and has a few good pinch climbs for good measure.

The long version includes some quickfire stats…

• In the first 70 days of this year, I’ve ridden half of what I did in 365 days last year. (1230kms for 70 days of this year, 2389kms for the whole of last year)
• Last year I did 101 rides in the 365 days of the year for an average of 23kms per ride. This year I’ve done 37 rides in the 70 days already gone for an average of 34kms per ride.
• If I continue at my current pace (which I won’t, winter for one will slow me down) I’ll be heading towards 6000kms for the year. Truth is that I’ll be cutting back in a big way after Dirtworks in May.
• The Salsa is still my favourite bike by far. More than 60% of my kilometres this year have been on it. Need to start to get on Greeny more.
• As the following graph shows, I’ve made a distinct effort to ride further in the one sitting than I did in 2009. In 2010, 40-50km rides are the order of the day, whereas 20-30km rides were more common in 2009.
  

I’m still going okay with that fine balance of not riding enough (and being horribly unfit) & riding too much (and over training). As Paul Petch says, training is the easy part, it’s forcing yourself to rest that’s difficult.

The Hurt Locker
Now I’ll be honest here… I really really don’t understand the hype. To me it’s just another Hollywood war movie glorifying war. Jarod’s rating? 2 inconceivable bomb defusings out of 5. I can’t embed the trailer, but if you’d like to waste your bandwidth, head here.

Men Who Stare At Goats
This is a very very strange movie. I saw this after watching the documentary of the same name a few days earlier and I’ve come to the conclusion that to see them the other way around would be disastrous. Always get to know the truth* behind a story before watching the Hollywood movie based on it.

It would be fair to say it’s a modern day, semi true HotShots. I give Men Who Stare At Goats 3 conspiracies out of 5 (if only for Ewan McGregor constantly talking about Jedi Warriors).

* I use the term truth loosely here. Cause lets face it, we’re talking military conspiracies here.

Tron Legacy
Not so much that I’ve watched it, but more so that I’m still eagerly awaiting it’s release later this year. Another official trailer got released yesterday…. so enjoy!

So, I called the department of immigration this morning and was told the following:
Regardless of what it says on Form 119, I would have gained Australian citizenship on my 10th birthday if I had been a resident up until that time. (Luckily, we moved to New Zealand just after my 10th birthday, so I satisfy that point).

I have been advised to ignore ‘Category 4′ on the above form (kids born after 20 August 1986 to NZ citizen parents) and apply for proof on the grounds of living here for my first 10 years (‘Category 3′). But, here’s the catch:

- I still need to prove my parent’s residency status at the time I was born (difficult to do as they do not have their passports from that time) AND
- I need to provide documentation for every year up until my 10th birthday to prove I was living here.

Both of which MUST be in some kind of governmental record somewhere, but I assume systems can’t talk to each other (or they want to make it difficult).

So, between the ages of 1 and 4, I’m not sure what I have to prove my existence in Australia. From 5 to 10 I may have school report cards. Except that because we moved so often I threw a whole bunch of them out as I didn’t see any reason to keep them. Well done me.

What I have done so far:
- Asked my parents to search for any documents that may have survived the time when I threw most of them out.

- Called one of my old primary schools (I think there are 3 different schools I attended before I was 10) and asked about records. Legally, schools are only required to keep the records for 7 years, and they had no idea how to help me.

- Called the Commonwealth Bank to see if they had a record of my school saver (dolomite?) account. Completely unexpectedly, they do. If I visit a branch they can give me the account number and the length of time it was held, but not much else. But, seeing as I had that account open for one whole year, that might count for one whole year’s worth of proof I lived in Australia.

A smart friend has suggested I try the Dept of Education to see if I can get any records from them, which I will do in the coming days.

Does anyone else have any smart ideas as to how I can prove that I lived in this country for the first 10 years of my life?

Part One