BMC Mts to Beaches Clean sweep

Just as the title reads, Team BMC Wins the Overall & Open Pairs @ the Inaugral BMC Mts to Beaches stage race from Thredbo to Narooma.

With Jason going right down to the wire to snatch line honours from Andy Blair for the overall win,
to see how the battle went down have a read at, www.jasonenglish.bigblog.com.au.

As for Joel & Myself we managed to take the pairs out by a convincing margin of almost 2 hours.

Whilst the pairs was not a hotly contested category this year, I'm sure it wont stay that way in years to come, as we along with most other teams found it a very enjoyable way to do a stage race such as this.

How it went down,

Day 1
2 race stages,
1st stage basically consisted of a time trial Bombing a slightly tamed version of the down hill course at Thredbo with a couple of punchy pinch climbs thrown in for good measure, fun times, I picked up 4th overall with Joel about 20 seconds behind.
2nd stage was a mass start cross country race on the single track around lake crackenback.
With our times combined we were already 55 mins up.

Day 2
68km race stage,
Starting at Perisher with some classic monster alpine climbs through Blue cow & out the back of Guthega through some real man from snowy river country, with no pressure on us, we road tempo all day & ended putting another 25 mins into our nearest competitor, the race was followed by a 20km cruise stage down to Buckenderra resort, during which we saw a pack of 5 real life Brumbys on the fly.

Day 3
26km sprint race,
4.45 am riders briefing for a 5.15 am start, with the aim being a sunrise finish, with Gu being the order of the day for breakfast, I had a great start with my Night lightning I blast providing oodles of light, holding about 5th overall for the first half a lap of a 2 lap race on some pretty rough a ready 4x4 track, when I picked up a thorn or such like, enough to pierce the sidewall of my rear tire,
Whilst the Stans did eventually seal the hole, the bunch was well & truly gone along with my gas cartridges, therefore only getting approx 20-25 psi in, on the very next descent whilst overtaking the masses I hit an unexpected rock pinch flatting the tire.
Forcing me to throw a tube in & in the process dropping around 12 mins from both incidents.

Followed by a great spread put on by the local country folk for breakfast it was leisurely 41km cruise stage down to Cooma.

Day 4
86km Race stage
Starting with a lap of the local horse race track with a sprint across line picking up fellow BMC rider Andrew Lumley a set of A-UP lights, I may have given him a bit of a help with a handy lead out.
Then i proceeded to drive the bunch helping Jas & Brett shell all butt Andy Blair in Chase of Dennis who was dangling a few hundred metres up the road on his own, on board his 29er.
With a couple of very descent climbs & some undulating windy sections which Joel went to the front to help me recover from my earlier efforts.
We managed another stage win & another 40km cruise stage down to Burmagui on the beautiful south coast of NSW.

Day 5
45km Race stage
With the start prologue across a grassy cow paddock before entering the Bermagui Mtb park with some great fast flowing single track, then headed north along some of the most picturesque coastline you'll find anywhere, even having to run across some soft sand on a few beaches along the way, which my calves still remind me of.
Following my double flat the day before yesterday, I had to make 4 mins on the guy ahead to get back into the top 10 overall gc & knowing it was the final day I gave it everything with Joel hanging on for dear life,
Mission accomplished, ending up 7 mins ahead of him in the end, therefore all 5 BMC riders ended up in the top 10 overall gc.

So a good time was had by all.

Thanks to the Dirtworks crew of Rick, Pat & Milly for supporting us all the way, along with keeping the bikes spick & span with the best cleaning products money can buy (MUC OFF) Mark for taking care of the tucker, BMC for a bike that was faltless all week, Ritchey tires & components, Hayes brakes, Manitou forks, Stans no tubes, Crank bros, DT swiss, Night lightning Lights, Andy at Kaos for superbly race prepping the bike, Joel for riding well all week & Jac for dropping me to the airport & picking me up from Narooma.

Live to ride, Ride to live,

Troy