Since we’re in Canberra this week, myself and Tom brought the bikes down so we could get some mountain biking in. On Monday night we headed out with Dean, aiming for Majura Pines. We got to the entrance to the forest when Tom decided he was going back to the hotel as he was still a bit jetlagged and wasn’t feeling too good. Myself and Dean proceeded to ride singletrack for two hours, making it back to the hotel just after dark. We were a bit worried when there was no sign of Tom, or his bike, in the room, thinking that he must have been feeling a bit worse than he thought!

We checked at reception to make sure he hadn’t shown up and were in the garage about to go looking for him when he rang from the room. He’d gotten a puncture just after leaving us, and by the time he’d fixed it he was feeling OK, so he’d gone for a ride after all. Hed’ found himself without a patch, or a spare tube, after a second puncture, so he was forced to walk home, which explained how we’d got home before him despite not passing him on the trails. To be honest, the first place we were planning on looking was Debacle, figuring he’d settled in for some food and a Duvel!

Paul brought us to Kowen Forest, site of the MONT 24hr race, on Tuesday evening. It’s a 17.3km course consisting mainly of singletrack with a few bits of firetrail as joiners. It was raining, but we went anyway as it was still quite warm. I’d given Tom a spare tube, but he was still getting slow punctures, so we’d end up cycling for 10mins, then stopping to pump up his tyre before getting going again. He was getting a bit sick of it by the end of the lap. We opted for the short course as we had no lights and didn’t want to be caught in the middle of an unfamiliar forest after dark, but I’m keen to try the long course the next time we’re down, this time with no slow punctures ;-)

B: 37.3km