Paul Petch

Mcleans Island mountain biking

Spencer and I headed to Mcleans Island yesterday for a few laps and I decided to take the Marin Wolf as I’ve kind of moved away from the single speed over winter. Spencer has been out weekly on his new Kona Unit and I was looking forward to the challenge of keeping up with him! With most of my spare time now taken up my running and training for the Kepler Challange in December- it has been a good 4 weeks since my last ride off road.

With a coffee on route we arrived  to a full car park and some busy tracks. There were walkers, runners, familys, dogs, cats, kitttens…everywhere! :) After adding a few more layers we headed off. It was wet- cold- muddy and slippery out there, but what a huge amount of fun it was hammering around the flowing single tracks. I had considered taking the Fargo- but decided against it as semi slicks and mud don’t mix well…..do they? And what a great call it was too……I could see lots of carnage other wise!

My concerns about keeping up with Spencer were quickly resolved as I discovered that my legs felt great and I had no issues with the trail bikes weight at all on the fast flowing XC race track. In fact, after commuting on the rigid Fargo day after day- the Wolf felt familiar and friendly. I just relaxed into the fantastic geometry and pedaled like I stole it- I just love the Marin….as it can be ridden anywhere.

There has also been an additional 5KM of track added out at Mcleans too- which really added a “ball breaker” section into the mix with only about 5% of the track being straight/ flat. For the majority of the new track it either flows around berms or up and over “humps” or short pitches that as you can imagine really gets the legs pumping! With the sticky clay like surface under the wheels- it was a great work out to get the trail bike moving forward and keeping Spencer in my sights! With a bit of a head wind on the second lap- I could see that this was hurting Spencer a bit……as I dropped down a gear and spun using him to draft :D We did well with a fair pace- in fact we bloody flew around there!

By lap two and some 30KM’s later we headed back to the carpark to wash down our bikes and get ready for the drive home. I really enjoyed the ride yesterday- and It felt good on the trail bike too. In fact I’d say that I was faster over all on the dually vs the single speed due to being able to pace myself. More importantly, I did not feel that I had to work like a bitch to get around the tracks and felt very fresh afterwards. They have also done a fantastic job with the new section of track- so go ride it!

In October there is a 12hr event at Mcleans- and currently we are all looking at entering, while Spencer is looking at a 6hr solo on the SS……

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Related posts:

1. Mountain biking weekend. Porthills & Mcleans Island
2. Night riding at Mcleans Island in Christchurch
3. Mcleans Island 12hr 2009
4. Woodhill mountain biking. North Island trip. Ride one.
5. Mcleans Island – Christchurch

This entry was posted on Monday, August 17th, 2009 at 9:45 am and is filed under Bike Rides and tagged with kona, marin, mcleans island, spencer, Two Wheels. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.