DAY TWO – Stage 1: 69km, 1636m climbing
The first few days of the race looked to be heavily focused on single track as we were in the Queenstown area and not out in the middle of nowhere, yet. This was a good thing for Rohan and I on our hardtails as we were dreading the rough 4WD tracks to come. Stage 1 began with a fast section along the Queenstown trails which we had ridden on before the race began. This was hectic as it was the first bunch start so everyone was a bit on edge and there were bollards in the middle of the track along the trail. We quickly turned off the trail and into some single track which created a bottleneck affect as a massive bunch had to squeeze into single file. We then began the day of climbing by going up the side of a cliff. Yes, I mean that quite literally, riding up narrow rocky single track with no land to break your fall to the right. With a bit of running with the bike (no problem for my CX background) we made it to the top without falling down and then descended into Moke Lake. This was followed by some rolling fire trail climbs, some of which were very steep, but we managed to ride it all. After the fast fire trail riding, we rode into 7 Mile Track for some amazing single-track riding which was a relief as it gave us a break from the climbing. Coming out of this we rode up some steep roads in the suburbs around Queenstown thinking we were almost home and just had to descend down into the finish. We were very wrong. Turning into a forest we then climbed some stupidly steep fire trails to get to the top of the skyline. We then finally descended into the finish down some awesome trails that are more or less made for enduro/downhill bikes but we still enjoyed it.
The end of this stage was made more stressful as the cleat became loose in one of my shoes. I thought nothing of it early on and kept pushing thinking it would be fine. It was not. Down a crazy descent I had to stop to get off, unclipped one foot but the other wouldn’t come out. I panicked twisting my leg trying to get out before Rohan and I agreed, my cleat was not coming out. This meant from here to the finish anytime I needed to walk the bike (which was 3 or 4 times) I had to take my shoe off and run with one shoe on and one off then put my shoe back on every time. Finally, we got to the finish and twisted the cleat bolt off my shoe releasing the shoe but leaving the cleat in the pedal. Because of my irrational panicking I had now completely ruined the soles of a beautiful pair of blue Shimano MTB shoes. Not how I wanted to start my Pioneer journey. Despite the shoe problem, we got 19th overall on the stage which was awesome for us but made us think, had we gone too hard too early in the race?
Declan Prosser - Cycling 