akashra
Eats Squid
Event details: http://www.nationalseries.com.au/national-events?year=2012&month=1&view=event&id=4
Mt Buller MTB Trail map: here
It seems worth pointing out that as an MTBA member, a lot of your money goes in to running the national series, yet very few people actually take up the opportunity to go do those races for whatever reason. I firmly believe that if you're from Victoria and you're going to change that, this is the event to do it at.
This is looking like it could be the stage race we've all been wanting - the new National Series 'All Mountain Cup' format making it 3 races rather than just an XCO and then a short crit the next day means we get a full weekend of riding now rather than lots of travel for not much riding.
It's looking like they couldn't have picked a better set of races for Mt Buller though, looking at the revised schedule on the NationalSeries website:
Friday 20th January, afternoon: SD race (Delotite Trail)
Saturday 21st January, morning: XCO Race
Sunday 22nd January, morning: XCP (Mt Stirling and back).
The XCO has traditionally been held using Gang Gangs, Picnic and Corn Hill trails, which are fantastic trails in themselves - I put them firmly in my top 3 in the country. But it looks like this year they may have given us a race everyone's keen to see - would Mt Stirling and back be a race on Stonefly?
Also giving us a SD race on Delotite sounds awesome - though it would be good to know what the expected format/length of this is, as IIRC Delotite is around 22km descending, bringing it to close to 40km for a round trip. IMO that'd be fantastic to have to climb back to Buller as well, though the SD in Perth was a very short race.
Being a three-day weekend you've got heaps of time in there to either watch the Downhill racing or go explore other trails too (I'm sure there'll be plenty of people out there doing runs of Stonefly, River Spur, Misty Twist and Copperhead).
And last that needs mentioning: The entry fee.
The price that's listed on the website is a bit misleading - the $150 isn't including the discount. So if you entered now, you'd be getting race entry to all three races for $112.50! (It's a little bit more for Elite).
If you get in now you'll pay the reduced fee. Seriously though - $112 for 3 races is pretty decent value for a National Series stage race - people were plenty happy to pay $190 for Forrest Festival entry, and are paying $217 to do Bike Buller (which BTW, you're doing on your own insurance rather than that provided by an MTBA license), which is also 3 stages.
If you haven't had enough after that, there's also more riding you can do just down the hill in Mansfield, and you can get a stamp on your 7 peaks passport by climbing from the gates at the bottom back to the summit.
So - who's going?
Mt Buller MTB Trail map: here
It seems worth pointing out that as an MTBA member, a lot of your money goes in to running the national series, yet very few people actually take up the opportunity to go do those races for whatever reason. I firmly believe that if you're from Victoria and you're going to change that, this is the event to do it at.
This is looking like it could be the stage race we've all been wanting - the new National Series 'All Mountain Cup' format making it 3 races rather than just an XCO and then a short crit the next day means we get a full weekend of riding now rather than lots of travel for not much riding.
It's looking like they couldn't have picked a better set of races for Mt Buller though, looking at the revised schedule on the NationalSeries website:
Friday 20th January, afternoon: SD race (Delotite Trail)
Saturday 21st January, morning: XCO Race
Sunday 22nd January, morning: XCP (Mt Stirling and back).
The XCO has traditionally been held using Gang Gangs, Picnic and Corn Hill trails, which are fantastic trails in themselves - I put them firmly in my top 3 in the country. But it looks like this year they may have given us a race everyone's keen to see - would Mt Stirling and back be a race on Stonefly?
Also giving us a SD race on Delotite sounds awesome - though it would be good to know what the expected format/length of this is, as IIRC Delotite is around 22km descending, bringing it to close to 40km for a round trip. IMO that'd be fantastic to have to climb back to Buller as well, though the SD in Perth was a very short race.
Being a three-day weekend you've got heaps of time in there to either watch the Downhill racing or go explore other trails too (I'm sure there'll be plenty of people out there doing runs of Stonefly, River Spur, Misty Twist and Copperhead).
And last that needs mentioning: The entry fee.
The price that's listed on the website is a bit misleading - the $150 isn't including the discount. So if you entered now, you'd be getting race entry to all three races for $112.50! (It's a little bit more for Elite).
If you get in now you'll pay the reduced fee. Seriously though - $112 for 3 races is pretty decent value for a National Series stage race - people were plenty happy to pay $190 for Forrest Festival entry, and are paying $217 to do Bike Buller (which BTW, you're doing on your own insurance rather than that provided by an MTBA license), which is also 3 stages.
If you haven't had enough after that, there's also more riding you can do just down the hill in Mansfield, and you can get a stamp on your 7 peaks passport by climbing from the gates at the bottom back to the summit.
So - who's going?
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