The club has a number of members who go off road, as witnessed by the recent overseas epic adventures of riders such as Mark Hardy, John Miller, Mike Foster and others at the Cape Epic in South Africa. However not all Manly members can live the champagne lifestyle globetrotting around the world with their bikes. As a result a few took a more ‘beer budget’ approach – essentially the backpacking version of the first class adventures of the Cape Epic and instead slummed it down to Canberra for the recently held 2012 Mont 24 MTB race in the Kowen Pine Forest, somewhere in the sticks outside of Canberra.
Although this was a team only event, Stu Harrington, Ben Edols and Bob Mohan put in some solid individual lap times. The track was approximately 18km in length and chock full of singletrack in stellar condition despite the Noah’s Ark conditions leading up to the event. The track wasn’t super technical but, it was rarely straight or flat and required focused attention from start to finish. Ben Edols made it onto the podium with his team by taking 3rd place in the Brady Bunch category. Bob’s team was unable to defend their title from last year but still ended up with a 3rd place finish in the mixed 4 person category. Bob is a recent convert from Sydney Cycling, so our poaching is certainly paying off.
Plans are already being mapped out to put together a crack team of MWCC members for the Scott in October.
