A big contingent of MTBOers competed in the Sydney 24 hour mtb cross country race last weekend. The race is for solo riders and teams and started at 1 pm Saturday and finished at 12 noon Sunday (think about it! It’s the adjustment for daylight savings).

The format of the event is to ride the most laps of a 10 Km cross-country course near Wiseman’s Ferry. The course is a mixture of fire trails and single track around the Dargle Farm property and is great fun to ride. The toughest riders ride solo and spend as little as 15 minutes off their bikes in the 24 hours. Most competitors ride in teams and share the fun (pain?!).

The stand-out performance of the weekend was NSW MTBOer and XC endurance racer, Katrin Van der Speigel (Clarence Street Cyclery – Trek Bikes). Katrin rode solo and smashed the small women’s field. What was even more impressive was that Katrin placed 6th in the very strong men’s category. This follows her win at the Australian titles in the Mont 24 hour last October and is part of her preparation for the World 24 hour championships in Atlanta in September later this year.

MTBOers also entered an OZMTBO.COM team to try and defend last years outright 3rd place but were slowed to a crawl by the loss to injury and illness of 3 of the 6 team members. Nevertheless Emily Viner, Tom Walter (MalAjusted) and Paul Darvodelsky (Netti-Scott bikes) clocked some of the faster lap times against a field which included a number of the Commonwealth games XC representatives.

Fast, high-level XC competitions of these types are critical preparation for MTBO and the results show the continued improvement of the Aussie MTBO riders.