Convict 100 km mountain bike race - yet another stage in my recovery

I knew that the attrition of age group sport from about 50 on was huge; but things are getting ridiculous now that I am in my 60's.  Its getting to be very lonely!  Read on....

The following is a brief pictorial of my latest venture, the gruelling Convict 100 mountain bike  (MTB) race.  The convict 100 is the NSW round of the Australian MTB marathon championships, attracting around 1500 riders, including the Australia's best open and age group riders.

I finished the 100km in 5hrs 4 min, just over an hour ahead of the next rider in my 60+ age category and over 2 hours ahead of 3rd place.  I was 63 rd overall.  To date, I have not lost an age group race in Australia.

There is also an analysis of what I did wrong and what can be done to do even better next time.  My goal is to be the 2016 60 years-plus MTB world champion.  I am back on track to achieve this lofty goal.

It was not long ago that I was lying on my back with what could have been a career-ending ankle injury.

Here's more about my ankle injury, if you are curious:

http://blog.garymoller.com/2015/01/first-aid-treatment-for-severe-ankle.html

While I still have some trouble walking, things are on the improve daily and function is now about 90%.  Cycling is not a problem and I have even been riding A Grade Cyclocross races that involve some running on very rough terrain while carrying a bike and there are many unplanned dismounts!

Stripped off: Bug-Eyes is ready to get the show on the road!  I'm feeling very confident despite the distance and terrain to come.

Guess who is leading?  Old guys are supposed to be slow at getting going, so what's he doing in the lead!  I slowed shortly after, then seamlessly slotted into the peloton as it whirred past.  Off to the perfect start!

Coming into the finish, feeling really stuffed!  Missed out on breaking 5hrs for 100 km by just a couple of minutes - darn!

No, I did not fall off my bike but I worried I might once I stopped.  A few minutes of restful meditation and I was up and about.  The blood is not from falls during the race; they're from hitting saplings and bushes while hurtling along narrow, overgrown trails.

There was a 3rd placegetter but he was still out on the course, over 2 hrs behind me.  By the way, never once has it been announced by the MC that I am from New Zealand, while on the podium in Australia.  So I could not resist yelling "Go the All Blacks!"  Pity they lost.

What a nice brother Gordon is to hire a limo to chauffeur me all the way from Shellharbour to Sydney Airport.

This is one way to celebrate a victory.  Now where's the bubbly?

An analysis of how I rode the race

Here are a couple of graphs recorded during the race using my Suunto watch.

Heart rate: What you can see here is I peaked at 172 beats per minute early in the race.  I was working way too hard because I had my gearing wrong for the very steep climbs.  These peaks coincided with the first of the big hills and, later, some tricky technical and rocky climbs up sandstone terracing.  It was at about 2 1/2 hours that I began to tire and slow considerably.

Note, for later, that my average pulse for the race was 141 beats per minute for the 5 hours.

The graph above shows that my energy consumption steadily reduced as the race proceeded.

In the first half hour there was a very steep hill that had me almost at a standstill and then there was a river crossing.  Both can be seen as the "stops" on the graph above.  At about 2:40 I had to stop and take a toilet stop.  You'll note that from 3:30 through to 4:30, my pace up hills dropped right off as I struggled with the gearing set up on my bike.  The final sections of the race were pretty flat and this shows in the consistent pace.

This graphically shows even better how I tired quite steadily from about the halfway mark of the race.

Lessons from the race:

I could have gone quite a lot faster.

Take a full suspension bike

I took a light hardtail to Australia.  It is a rocket in a straight line but not suited for the very rough and rocky terrain of the Blue Mountains.  The constant pounding of the rocks wore me out and gave me a raw bum.  As much as studying Youtube videos of last year's race and writing to the organisers is helpful, it can never replace actually riding the course.  The fact is the course was much rougher than I thought it would be.  All future races will have a full suspension bike as the default pony.  I reckon the bike choice might have cost me a good ten minutes.

Be conservative with the bike gearing

I got the tyre selection perfect, along with tyre pressures - Yes!  However, I chose my gearing on the basis that the average speed was going to be a brisk 20 km per hour.  What I did not know was there were numerous short pinches, including stone terraces, that required the lowest gearing possible and I had the opposite!  This meant wasted energy, with strain on the legs and excessive heart rates, especially in the first half of the race that cost me dearly later. I lost a lot of time over the last 1/3 of the race as a result of having to work to hard up the hills earlier on.

Keep heart rate to 140 beats per minute

This means dropping back more within the field for the first half, having better gearing for hills and avoiding the temptation to keep with any over-the-top surges by others.  I think this means making about 150 beats the maximum for a race of that duration.  

In case you are wondering lack of energy intake and fluid were not factors.  I ate well and was hydrated (too hydrated actually!).

Get in more training kilometers or else choose shorter races

Gearing and bike selection aside: Its pretty obvious from the results that I am currently only fit enough to go hard for about 2-3 hours - not 5.  I think I will choose to do shorter races for the time-being.  I am too busy with other things to spend all day training.  The other factor, is the World Champs are July/August next year and I have yet to decide if I will contest the short course or marathon distances, or both.  There is little point in going hard out with big training with still a year to go.

Hey - no complaints at all really!  After all I won my category by a whopping hour-plus and this is after starting the year thinking my sporting days were well and truly over.

Report: My attempt to win the World Masters Mountain Bike Championships, Norway 2014

I am in the business of health and firmly believe in walking the talk. If what I am promoting is good for health, then I should surely be one of the best ambassadors. 

Walking the talk

This is especially important because people seeking my services for their own health sometimes receive contradictory advice from other health experts, including being told that "Gary Moller is a Quack". I say to these people, 

"Look at me and look at the naysayer expert, then answer the question: who is the healthier?" 

"Who do you go with - the health expert with the pot belly, the one with the puffy, ashen face, the one on various drugs for this and that disease, or the one who is trim, strong, full of energy and not in need of any drugs to get through the day?"

As we get older, the best description of a good athlete 

is a very healthy person

Please read this article which gives a little about my personal journey from burnout back to good health:
http://blog.garymoller.com/2011/06/cardiovascular-disease-arteriosclerosis.html

Last year I resolved to take the "walk the talk" to the highest level - to become the World age group mountain bike champion. Why mountain biking? Because this is a brutal sport that challenges the extremes of cardiovascular capacity, strength, endurance, reaction times, balance and - yes - the ability to heal fast and completely! These are all qualities that decline dramatically with ageing and when I turned 60 last year I thought I would put my  anti-ageing nutrition (not medicine) and health practices to the ultimate test - to win the world mountain bike championships to be held in Norway August 2014.

I began my quest for age group world domination about one year in advance with attention to refining my nutrition and preparing my muscles with constant training and massage. I also collaborated with the mechanics at Dirt Merchants of Aro Valley to build one of the fastest and lightest 29 inch wheel mountain bikes.  For this exercise I also gained sponsorship of Laufforks of Iceland which supplied the lightest suspension forks in the world.

My beautiful super fast 29'er Laufforks racer

My preparation could not have been better and I was confident that I was going to be competitive against the best 60+ year olds in the world.  Read this article for example:
http://blog.garymoller.com/2014/03/karapoti-results-are-in-more-evidence.html

Smashing the Karapoti age group record

My final result at the Norway world champs was a mix of positive and negative. 

Lost in translation - Ha!

I got a shock, on arrival at Hafjell, to discover that the course for the Masters was at a different location from that of the Open Championships.  We were on a course above the town of Lillehammer about 20 km away from the course I had prepared for, including having designed a bike!  Far from being a groomed climber's course with a rock garden or two and a drop-off here and there, which I was prepared to handle, the real one was mostly glacial rocks, roots and mud, no drainage and some near vertical drop-offs.  It was not world championship standard, it was a substandard course that the "old farts" had been relegated to.  It looked unfinished and, with 300+ riders doing practice runs over it in the rain for four days before the races, it cut up really badly.  

Worse, it was totally unsuitable for my semi-rigid hardtail with light tyres.  I needed my full suspension bike which I had left in New Zealand.  Other riders were not happy with many of them inadvertently slashing their tyres on the sharp rocks during practice laps. I did not complain but resolved to focus on the race and doing the best I could with the equipment I had, remaining confident that I had the skills and the conditioning to foot it with the best.

In my daughter's NZ race kit, ready to do battle on a very
wet course in Lillehammer, Norway

The Big Race

I began my warm up on the day feeling very confident, despite the torrential rain that had turned the course into a rocky quagmire. I felt strong and this was my first chance to size up my opponents.  I couldn't wait to get the show on the road.

While its hard to tell by a photo, this is some of the easier parts of the
course and some of the riders are forced to run!  

Heeding former pro-elite rider, Paul Bishop's advice, I began the race conservatively, intending to pick my opponents off one by one. Unfortunately, I knocked my chain off in the mayhem over the first rock climb dismount, losing several places, then, at the next drop into a mud hole, which was marginally rideable, the Spanish rider who I was preparing to pass, suddenly stopped and I partially went over the handlebars, trapping a thigh between the frame and the handlebars! It was a struggle to get free and I lost a more few places - darn!  I've had better starts.  But the race was still young.

Things went well from there for some kilometers of bouncing over large, wet rocks and sliding off wet roots and diving into mud holes.  Good ground was made, eventually passing the Spanish rider who caused my flip and then finally catching up with the defending world champion, Linus van Onselen and quickly passing him with an impressive maneuver around a tricky corner. However, he got away on a downhill section, but no matter because were still in the first of two laps and I was settling nicely into my rhythm.  I'll get him later.

Ooh!  I really am missing my full suspension bike.
Talk about a "smash and bash" course!

Towards the end of the first lap I noticed that my rear tyre was beginning to bottom out on the rocks. I can't describe the horrible sense of impending doom!  As I entered the 2nd lap I began to lose ground on Linus, despite my feeling increasingly comfortable physically. Deflated is a very good description of what was going on with my tyre and with my brain!

Not a course designed with my minimalistic bike in mind!

Eventually I was forced to stop and put some gas into the tyre. However, the tyre continued to lose air, eventually forcing me to run. As fate would have it, this was the furthest point away from help. My race was over.

Post race and not looking happy (note even sadder rear tyre), with the only other NZ rider,
Paul McDowell of Rotorua (I think Paul finished a very pleasing 7th or 8th in the 55-59 category).

Linus went on to finish in 2nd place. The winner was Norwegian - the home advantage.

The positive side of the day is confirmation that I am competitive with the best of the oldies, for sure. If only the race had been held on the original course which I had so meticulously prepared for. I reckon I would have smoked it.  Not easily, but I reckon I would have been in with a damn good chance of the win.

Not all is lost.  I am home now and am highly motivated to give the Worlds another crack.  I have some unfinished business.  The champs are in tiny state of Andorra (Yes, I knew of Andorra but had to look it up to remind me where it is nestled).  Apart from the exorbitant cost (Anybody got a spare $10k?), the big challenge is that the race is at altitude.  I am up for that challenge because exercise physiology is my forte.  Further, the experience of the world champs this year and the training that went into it has taken my riding to a new level as evidenced in the most recent results from the local mountain bike series.

Gary Moller: Back to being a Big Fish in a small pond!  But let's not get too comfortable:
World champs 2015 here we come! (If we can afford it).

Clean, green Norway

Sorry, NZ, we are in no way the cleanest or the greenest as the advertising brochures might have us believe.  Norway beats us hands down for a pure and pristine environment.  Of course our economy is very different to theirs and much of their country is alpine in nature.  We have far more cows.

Yoiks - Yonder!  My destination beckons.

"Go this way!" (Fearless explorer).

I was told I could drink the water from any river or stream and the municipal waters are neither chlorinated or fluoridated.  This certainly seemed the case with Norwegians seen drinking from the streams and they sure look like a healthy bunch of people.  Few signs of thyroid problems which is an epidemic health issue in NZ.  I wondered if the lower exposure to toxic halides such as chlorine and fluorine might have something to do with this apparent difference in health? (Fluorine and chlorine damage the thyroid, leading to conditions like fatigue, weight gain, fibromyalgia and osteoporosis).  But I digress - Back to my travels!

Norwegian can be confusing, especially when translated into English

Norway, pristine clean and kayaker's paradise

My incognito camper: Discrete camping, I slept well each night and never got hassled
despite sleeping overnight in places like market and station car parks.
Highly recommended - http://www.nordiccampers.com/ Thanks Arna Hilmar and team at Nordic Campers.

Thanks heaps to Lauf Forks, Dirt Merchants, Leonie Reynolds, PNP Cycling Club, Andy Reid, Bike NZ - and to Air New Zealand as well for the fantastic and comfy service. Best airline.

And thank-you to my Norwegian hosts, Nina and Thor Nagell (foreground) for their incredible generosity and
hospitality (Thor was the coordinator for the very successful Hafjell World Mountain Bike Champs - not the masters xc.
This photo is of dinner with Thor and Nina's family and the management team for the Worlds.

Nina serving wild moose which, I understand, her father shot while hunting in the forest.

And special thanks to my partner, Alofa, and my four children, Myra, Mary-Ann, Kelvin and Alama, for their patience and support.

About this website 

The advice in these articles is given freely without promise or obligation. Its all about giving you and your family the tools and information to take control of your health and fitness.

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