It was time to get back on the bike for another epic - the 2008 Angry Doctor 100km MTB race.   The race was on the 7th Sept, and hosted in the little town of Mogo, just out of Batemans Bay.  This is well known as one of the best but toughest events in the 100km MTB calendar, but Bryan and I again convinced ourselves we were ready for another challenge .... we latter spent about 80 of the 100km being told otherwise by a very Angry Doctor.

The Saturday before the race was a misserable day in Sydney and left us wondering what kind of muddy hell we had signed ourselves up for.  A quick look at the satelite on the www.bom.gov.au showed that things weren't so bad down south ... not sure Bryan believed me, but he'd never be the first to pull out.  Sure enough we arrived down in Mogo for registration late on Saturday to find dry ground and sun shining - "how good is this" we commented.  The was a hiveof ativity around registration with some of the supporting races run on the Saturday still finishing up - we noted plenty of clarrot on the riders from the Saturdays events - always a good sign of some good trails.  We got ourselves registered and headed back to Batemans Bay to find our bunk for the night.  We pumped ourselves up by watching 24Solo before dinner - those guys are crazy.  We adopted Gordo's saying of "in the dog", but agreed the dog wouldn't get much use from us on the next day - so decided to call the middle ring "the puppy"  and small ring "the weasle". 

Bryan woke up not having had the best sleep with an end of season rugby function going on down stairs, but for me - with no crying baby - it was the best sleep in weeks !  It wasn't long and we were back in Mogo and on our bikes waiting for the start - there was a little bit of rain overnight and it was a chilly morning but otherwise the day was looking good.  We decided to start where we would finish - up the back of the pack- the race was about survival for us punters.  The elite and prefered riders made a start and then after a pep talk from the starting official - "I hope youv'e done some training for this cos its a bloddy hard ride.  I've never done it all in one go.  Its going to rip your legs off!"we were off.  The pace was slow out of the gate, which I was happy with and then it was a bit stop/start on the 1st single track as the crowd dispersed.  The course started and continued with a common theme up-down, up-down, up-down.  You were easly distracted from this by some winding single track - I can't say it was realy well flowing single track, but we all love single track so it was still good.  The up-downtheme was relentless, soon it felt like it was just up and we were only just reaching the 1st feed station at 30km !  We pushed on at a fairly slow pace and hit the 50km mark at almost 4hours - this was going to be a long day.  We enjoyed a bit of the sun and had a rest on the grass at the 50, before pushing on - the legs felt refreshed for the break, but only for about 5 min.  

There was more of a mix of single track and grindy fire-trail in the second 50, Bryan and I kept each other moving as we pushed along at what flet like a snails pace - the weasle was getting a good work out now.  Despite pushing my untrained legs to the limit and wondering how I was going to make it - I was loving it - good trails, tops day, good company and a challenge.  We were happy to find the last 15km or so, the downhill runs got longer and we covered the some ground a bit quicker.  We didn't realy need the knee deep river crossing followed by a deathly hill at about 95km - but we laughed it off as we heard the groans behind us.  Crossing the line was a bit of a anti-climax - we had been out for 8hours 40min and most riders had been finished for some time and the presentations were raping up.  The downer of crossing the finish line was short lived - we put things in perspective - we're only a couple of punters and would rarely do a ride longer than 50km and we made it through the toughest 100km on the MTB calendar and what a tops ride!

The Angry Doctor ripped my legs off and hit me with the soggy ends - but I zipped tied them back on and made it through.  See you next year for my annual check up Doc.

To see the course (from my Garmin 305) on Google maps - click here.

Course Profile