Tamworth Mountain Bike Club: Racing resumes and the action was intense

From the snap of cable ties latching onto race plates, to the excited chatter, to the crunching of tyres doing skids and tricks, there was so much good about what went down at Tamworth Mountain Bike Park.

Thanks to Ben Marsh, Crummy and Elsie McKenzie for the behind the scenes work.

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It was a pumping double-vaxed crowd of 60-plus riders picking up the fancy new race plates for our fancy pants new electronic timing system.

Of course this has all been part of a 10-year-long campaign to get our tireless timing veteran, Mel Siddons, out from behind the timing bench and onto a bike seat. Your days are numbered Mel.

Thank you to everyone for taking the time to navigate the new AusCycling's on-line rego platform (spare a thought for the rapidly greying Crummy who set this up for the club) and for being respectful of our COVID protocols over the evening.

Soo to racing.

Race co-ordinators Crummy and Ross Aylwin came up with a genius one-off concept for race loops for the night.

For the first time all riders rode the same course at the same time. The chosen course was the popular four-kilometre Roll'n Roll'n Roll'n loop which includes the fast flowy lower trails.

This strategy gave riders, and our commissaires, the opportunity to compare times across the board and more accurately pitch placement in each grade.

It was such a buzz to see the elite riders lining their wheels up for a race start, heads bowed and bodies tense for the call to race.

Six super humans lined up in the elite category. And with 11 to 13-minute lap times they can have that starting line, we say. Elite is a grade where both fitness, technical ability and mental grit are required for the up to one-hour race times.

Training buddies and mates Eddie Willis and Lachie Butters were the only riders fast enough to clock four laps and came in first and second respectively. Anthony Daniels made the step up from A grade to elite and certainly didn't spend winter sitting on the couch, with a cracking third place on his debut.

A similar number of A graders rolled up to the start line, with Ross Aylwin managing to finish on top of the podium and Leon Hysteck and Lachie Marsh finishing second and third respectively.

We were excited to see Laurie Willis step up to the A grade category to give Alyssa Rogan and Annie Buchan some girl-power company. Laurie and Alyssa finished first and second respectively.

Onto our B graders who were riding 14 to 17-minute lap times. With this race category you can expect to be riding for 30-45 minutes and you'll get sent up the mountains from time to time but you'll only ride green or blue (intermediate) trails.

Louis Crossman crossed the line first, with NIAS athlete Ben Shaw making the gigantic leap from junior elite to B grade and totally nailing it to come second.

In third place was Rob McGilvray, whose winter training program paid dividends big time.

Now to our largest race category: C grade.

With 12 riders lining up the competition was fierce but veteran Glen Bramley produced the fastest laps - between 18 and 22 minutes - to come first, with Will Burgess second and Orlando Follington making the leap from the junior field to C grade to come third.

C grade is a great opportunity to test yourself and build fitness in a race environment without the technical trail features or hills. You can expect a 20-30 min on track.

Our only E bike racer, Andy Dehm, masterfully kept his bike rubber side down and spat some serious dust out on the uphill runs with his 14 to 15-minute laps. You can still find some serious ouch factor right there regardless of the magic button.

Now to our fun category. If you are new to mountain biking, or prefer the social fun side of riding, this is for you.

Generally you will ride the same trails as our C grade riders but you get to stop and have a natter, or admire the view whenever you like.

We hope our two rec riders enjoyed sharing their race loop with everyone else, and claps all round to Elesa Crowley and Jayden Young for embracing our Wednesday night race world.

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