Jono’s bike blog

I went back the next day and rode the track I found in my last post about the 10 to 1 rule. The ride up was tough and steep but I only had to push in a few places. But the ride back down – wowee!  3 km of sweet single track. It was a mix of gravel path, rooty rocky stuff, a little bit of duck board and even a flight of steep steps Read more…

I’ve got lost more times and jumped more fences and been chased by more dogs and spent more time poring over maps than I can remember.  And experience has taught me a rough rule of thumb:

‘For every new piece of single track gold I find I have to  stick my nose down 10 dead ends.’

I remind myself of this often when I see an unpromising goat track.  And most of my favorite tracks have started as nothing more than an overgrown gap between trees.  You push through and then push through a bit more and if you’re lucky the track keeps going until it comes out somewhere you recognize.  GPS, Garmin and Strava make it a bit easier but I find the 10 to 1  rule still applies.  Today was the one, and it was very good.

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There were 8 of us going down a rarely used track over the back of the mountain.

It’s a huge descent and a couple of gates, a fall and several obstacles meant the bunch had split into 4:2:2. I was one of the middle 2 trying desperately to catch my buddies at the front. We burst out of the bush onto rural land and a narrow farm track. We were flying. We shot past a farm house as the farmer ran out of his house screaming at us, he looked really angry ( sorry Mr Farmer ). I’m usually pretty friendly and like to resolve issues like this but there was no safe way to stop at the speed we were doing so I kept on riding. Then I thought about the last 2 riders, Huddo and Nath. The most likely scenario was the first bunch alerted the farmer who came outside and then saw us tearing across his land and he would be prepared for the last two riders.

We rode on to the next stop and waited and waited. I feared the worst as Nath is pretty fiery and Huddo loves to argue. I imagined all sort of scenarios. 15 minutes later the boys turned up and Huddo had the biggest grin across his face.

“Did you see the farmer?” I asked. And then came Huddo’s story of one of the best bits of mountain biking ever …
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I have a favorite bike track. It rips down from a lookout along a rabbit track by a fence line, tight, fast steep and technical.  You’d never find this kind of .  It turns to the right goes across the contour and it gets a bit technical but then it’s a push up an unrideable slope.  Some of my riding buddies hate it and I’ve never understood this.  They like fast tight rough single track Read more…

Huddo ditched me. My usual Thursday night riding buddy, Huddo, went for a weeks riding in NZ and I was at a loose end. I don’t mind riding by myself but I’d much rather ride with buddies.  I asked another mate Jerry but he said he was going with the shop ride, and asked if I’d like to ride with them.  I’d never ridden with these guys, would they be too fast, too good or Read more…

The Point To Pinnacle race up Mt Wellington is over for another year. The toughest half marathon in the world apparently although I’m sure there are plenty of other tough half marathons out there. I’m told this year it was a tough race as the mountain weather temperature soared. It’s spring here in Hobart and the weather is generally ideal. But at the start of November only a couple of weeks ago it was a Read more…