Noosa Enduro - July 15th 2007100km Mountain Bike Race (almost 6 hours for me)
We'd just climbed a fairly large hill, which had come not long after a similar fairly large hill and we were making our way up a ridge which was really just another fairly large hill. At this stage we'd come out of the forest and it was a pretty ordinary place to be if you were a cow. But we weren't cows, we were mountain bikers, we'd been pushing ourselves for about 4 hours and as I felt myself nearing my "brink", I felt sure the two cyclists next to me were feeling the same. I couldn't help laughing and saying to the others, "we're a strange bunch."
And that's kind of the celebration that an event like the Noosa Enduro is. It puts the challenge out there and the people come. I feel really lucky that people have been out there for years, building up the mountain bike scene, so that people like me can stumble into it. Everybody out there today was giving it a go, giving something a go, giving a life a go. It doesn't mean they're superhumans, but in my opinion, they're often interesting people.
It's funny that we like to push ourselves to the brink, it's funny exposing ourselves like that amongst a group of strangers. Really they're seeing us at our weakest but strangely enough they're also seeing us at our strongest. It's amazing howmuch you can know about a person from riding beside them in a situation like that for a day. The same person you don't recognise without their cycle jersey and bike.
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