ViaStrada has competed in the McLeans Forest Park "6 hour blast" mountainbike event for five consecutive years. Following last year's result of third in the corporate category, this year our A team came second out of 102 teams, with the B team a respectable 34th.
This year's event was held on 29 October 2011, with ViaStrada's A team, 'ViaStrada Various' consisting of John Lieswyn, Rick Houghton and John's friend Tim. The ViaStrada Broken Yellows comprised Andrew Macbeth, Axel Wilke, Jon Ashford and Jeremy Phillips. We turned up to a damp and drizzly McLeans Forest Park at 8:30 am to be confronted with an almighty traffic jam. Following last year's similar congestion levels, we thought this might have been be solved and our traffic engineers will work with the event organiser to design a more elegant solution for the 2012 event.
By 10 am the clouds had lifted, the sun was out and the race began with a Le Mans style start, the first cyclist in each team running 300 m to their bikes. No-one told us we needed to train for running too! By mid-afternoon, the A team was looking good to complete 16 laps by the 4 pm race conclusion. As former cycling pro John Lieswyn was completing the team's 15th lap the course was closed with 25 minutes to go. The team was putting in some solid sub-25 minute laps, so was disappointed to not be allowed to continue. Despite this, the team placed second in the Corporate category. Our B team completed 13 laps and came a respectable 34th in the same category. Full results are available from the official website.
All in all, a good day at the office!