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Steven Hanley hackergotchi picture Steven
Hanley
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Thu, 21 Oct 2010

SS Worlds, Whaka 100 and the Rotorua Bike Festival - 15:56

Shane half way through setting a fast 52.4 second three laps on the shweeb
 So I am in Rotorua in NZ for 11 days for a holiday, this holiday takes in the Whaka 100 mtb race which I did on Sunday. Then a week long cycling festival and the 2010 World Single Speed Championships. One of the festival activities is a Shweeb championship for all the single speeders to enter. The photo to the left is from Shane's laps today, we are planning to head back for another go tomorrow.

I have not been updating much this week, and am definitely not providing as much entertainment on the blog as Burky and Coops from Swell on their Swell Design Group SS World Tour but thought it worth putting up a photo after riding the shweeb today. (Mikal insisted I get footage of it anyway).

I arrived on Saturday afternoon, the direct flight from Sydney to Rotorua made the trip here easy and I was able to be here in time for the 100 km race on Sunday. That was a hard race, I made my normal mistake of going out far too hard, average HR for the entire 100 km was 150bpm over 6h46m, however most of that is from having my HR above 170 for the first 50 km. I then of course began to realise I had gone out too hard once more and was suffering on the climbs (most of the hard climbs came in the last 40km of this event). Still it was cool to do a race taking in almost every good trail in the Whakarewarewa forest in one event. I had been hoping to come in under 6 hours however with the amount of walking I did late in the race up hills I was well over that.

Monday I had off the bike, wandering around town, settling in, recovering. Tuesday morning I headed out for a 42 km ride with Heather, Shane, Rob, Gaye, Juzzy and a few others. Each night so far here we have all been soaking up the atmosphere (and beers) in the Pig and Whistle and a few other locations. Morning coffee at Zippys every morning has also been a good start to the day.

Wednesday morning we headed out for a lap of the SS Worlds Course (it is a tough one, more climbing then expected, but I guess they have to break up the over 1000 rider field somehow). I grabbed some lunch and ran in to Col and Adam (mentioned above) some other Canberra riding buddies so headed out for another ride with them after lunch, getting 70 km on the single speed on Wednesday which was all good fun.

Today I had a chat to Jeff at KiwiBikes for a while in the morning about a new Cyclocross frame I am getting him to custom build for me (I miss having a CX bike). Had some lunch and was sort of thinking about going for a ride when Shane, Heather and I made plans to go do the Shweeb thing instead. Agroventures (run shweeb) recently were given a Google grant to develop the shweeb technology to implement it as public transport somewhere. After riding in it I can see that it could work out pretty well for that sort of thing. As well as being fast, dry, safe, away from traffic, it is a lot of fun to get around on. We are planning to go back tomorrow and I will get some better video footage then. Fun will be had (especially with some of the costumes (myself included) that I hear may be worn on Saturday for the SS race)

[/mtb/events] link

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