A hot and sunny day came upon us at the dusty Mt Stromlo mountain bike park. The day of the ACT School Mountain Bike Championships had come around once again. This time more competitors and harder competition lay ahead for all 546 riders from the 62 different schools.

    The race was run as a 4 hour endurance event with three major categories, Junior (years7-8), Senior (years 9-10) and College (years 11-12). I raced as a team in the College male category representing Chevalier College with Lachlan Durie and Taite Beeston.

    Although we were feeling confident on being able to defend our title from 2007 we knew 4 hours of racing lay ahead of us and anything could happen in that time. We just had to take every situation throughout the race as it came.

    Mt Stromlo once again offered a track winding around one side of the hill. With a dry, loose surface the dust soon picked up making the race even more challenging.

    At the 2 hour mark we were only 2 minutes ahead of the second team, from this we knew the final result after the 4 hours was going to be close and it was not going to be easy to hold first place. Another results reading at 1 hour to go showed us we were now only about 40 seconds in front. Through the last hour we fell back into second at some stages but were able to regain first place by 50 seconds at the end of the 4 hours.

    A very big thanks to BMC who once again supplied me with a BMC Fourstroke which I was able to ride in the race due to my current bike still situated in Europe. It was an awesome ride not to mention how well it handled. Also a big thanks to McGee’s Cycling Store for supplying me with a loan pair of shoes as my original pair were also in Europe.