3rd in Super D, All Mountain Cup (Race 1):

Race 1 of the three race weekend is done and thankfully I had a trouble free run and got from the top to the bottom of the Super D safely and smoothly.

I managed to slot into 3rd place after the mud and dust had settled from the Elite mens race runs. Here is a photo that Russ Baker captured near the top of the run. It is a classic shot with the contrast of the white clean top and the filthy muddy puddle roosting out the side of the bike.  

Lets hope the weather holds off today with a high chance of more random and sudden showers forecast like we had yesterday just as racing was scheduled to start.

Keep it clean :-)

Getting Wild @ Wildside... Pumping some life into the legs and website!

The Wildside MTB has been run and won for 2012 and it did not disappoint. I will post a full stage report summary when I get a second, but know that for all involved it was an absolute blast with typical Tassie weather from scorching hot to bitterly cold! We had our ups and downs in the racing also, but luckily for the most part I was on the ups. 

These photos are from each stage @ Wildside. I managed to win 2 stages in the overall and all 7 in the u23 category.   

 Stage one sprint finish with 'Team mate' Andy Blair with Sid Taberlay getting a face full of dust coming across the line. A very hectic finish to a tough first stage.

 Stage 4 and the rain came rolling in off the west coast... THis was coming out of the 'spray tunnel' and onto the filthy false flat fire road climb.

 The beach section of stage 7 is Famous in Australia riding through Hells Gates and back into the coastal town of Straun.

Completing the Wildside MTB how I started with a stage win! Only just slipping past Max Plaxton in the final 50m... Little did I know that Sid Taberlay had a Flat Tyre and I almost stole the overall win from the Local Favourite. Sid won by just 2 seconds after 6 hours and 7 stages of racing!

Thanks to Christine and Mum for being such a well oiled support krew. Thanks to the Felt-Oetztal-X-Bionic world cup team and associate sponsors. Also to my new sponsor Fox Suspension for the Amazingly smooth forks and shock!

Thats all for now but I will try and upload some more reports from the race when I get a min....

Breathing some life into the website after some time away from the keyboard feels good. I just need to get into the groove of updating again.

Cheers :-)

Stepping it up to the Elite level in 2012!

Here is a bit of a run down of what I have been up to for the start of 2012. This report is thanks to the Kiewa Valley Observer and the good work by Scott Anderson. It is good to be back up and racing. I will try to keep on top of the race reports from now on.... more photos possibly to come. 

Cheers, Paul van der Ploeg.

LIMBC stage 4: The King of the Mountain is....Dan McConnell!!!

With an early start of 9am for stage 4 and all competitors taking on the course at the same time chaos was all part of the fun of the 14km of rolling hills before the main 14km climb.

Dan asked if I wanted to go on the attack with him before the hill and with the legs that I had strapped on this was probably a good idea. Dan and I had been violently ill on stage 1 and have been in full recovery mode since then. So we both thought 'what the hell' and I followed Dan's move off the front.

We had a sneaky disguised helper of Andrew Mock slowing the bunch up a little for us which was very appreciated as Dan and I swapped off to get a gap on the main bunch of MTb riders and a guest appearance from Chris Froome. We managed to sneak away to a handy lead by the 14km mark and then we hit the hill...

I instantly knew that the legs didn't have the go in them required to fend off the chasers and told Dan to give it what he had and see if he could snatch the stage away from the big boys.

I was caught at around 8km to go after riding to my heart rate and keeping it under control. I then tapped up the last 7km or so to save the legs for the short track tomorrow. As I crossed the line I herd that Dan had got the stage by 30seconds and the KOM Jersey. Another successful day in the Aussie camp showing that we would have had some real GC contenders if the sickness and mechanicals hadn't plagued our camp.

So that is the latest from Langkawi. Lach stayed in the main bunch and had a few attempts to get off the front but Karl Platt and Burry Stander were all over him. Karl got 2nd and Burry got 3rd on the stage in the end.

Ciao for now, I hope the Aussie crew can light it up again tomorrow :-)

LIMBC Stage 3: Lach goes for the win!!!!

Today Lachlan Norris managed to attack off the front with a little assistance from my shell of a body. The idea was to hit the other main contenders and make the race tough so Lach could try and get some time back on 4th overall. I sacrificed my own race in a hope that Lach had what it took to hold off the challengers which included cape epic champion's Karl Plat and Burry Stander (Also 6th ranked in the world UCI rankings). It worked well at the start and the gap started to open...

Lach rode strongly after I popped on the 3rd of 8 laps! The body was pretty much running on empty and I ddi what I could then just rode to the finish rolling in just in the top 20. Lach on the other hand kept the pedal to the metal and rode off to victory over the fast finishing chasing pack!

It was a good result to get an Aussie on the podium for the first time in the tour of Langkawi and the top step is oh so much sweeter.

Tomorrow is the Hill Climb stage which is only 30km long but with a 13km steep road climb. Hopefully Lachie can back it up tomorrow after he has tuned his legs up in the warm up 'Sun tour' ;-).

Stay tuned for tomorrows report....

LIMBC Stage 2: XCO

Stage two is complete and I was just lined up so I could get pulled out after one lap on the 80% rule. My stomach sickness was still effecting me and I hadn't eaten anything for 24hrs. I tried a little bit of breakfast and it didn't sit too well, but I needed to line up today so I could start in the following stages when I will hopefully be feeling good.

Up at the front of the race Karl Plat and Burry Stander had a head to head battle with Karl turning on the afterburners and kicking away to almost a 2 min lead at the finish over Burry. Lach Norris rode well again today and finished 4th with Ben Hendo making up for his epic flat tyre and finishing 8th.

Tomorrow has been changed from a 6hr to a 2hr race on a 4km course that is meant to be relatively flat... I hope that I can fuel up the body and be ready to push myself again.

Fingers crossed.

Langkawi MTB Challenge stage 1:

On the morning of stage 1 I woke up at 6.30am am felt very sick in the stomach and then soon after I vomited!

This was the start of a very long day which involved vomiting all day until I was convinced by Dan McConnell at 2pm to go to the Hospital (Dan had also come down with food poisoning at 2am and visited the hospital that morning). I made the trip to the Langkawi Hospital and was hooked up to the IV dripper and injected with anti nausea and vomiting medication.

I still continued to vomit until around 6pm and counted my 14th spew for the day! I obviously was unable to race the first stage....

Today is stage 2 and the plan is to start the race and get lapped out so I can race in the later stages of the tour. If I don't start today then I won't be able to compete in the last 3 stages.

So it was a very frustrating and long day of feeling horrible yesterday, but today I woke up feeling a lot better. Andrew Mock was sick last night with similar issues. So the food poisoning is getting around and I will be very careful on what I'm eating over the next few days.

In the racing side of things the Aussies in General had a very unlucky day. Lach Norris was flying, but had his wings clipped with two flat tyres. He still managed to minimise his losses to 5min and finish 6th. Ben Hendo had two flat's also and had to walk 13km to the feed zone! Many riders were effected by the heat and blew up with no water at feed station 2! Kyle Ward was selected for random drug testing and was so dehydrated that he had to wait 7hrs to get enough of a sample out for testing!!!

So it has been interesting so far here in Langkawi and I guess things can only be on the up and up from here. Oh and I also lost 4 games of Backgammon this morning over breakfast which was very crushing ;-)

I hope I can upload some positive stories and photos tomorrow.


cheers.

Day 1 in Langkawi tropical island...

So yesterday was the first day of the Langkawi island holiday and 5 day MTB stage race.

Andrew Mock (cross country skiing friend) and myself decided to start. The trip by doing a full lip of the island in style...scooter style that is. For just $10 we hired a scooter each and set off to find the sights of the island.

It was unbelievable to be racing mountain bikes on the tropical island and something that I struggled to come to grips with all day. I found myself laughing out loud and smiling uncontrollably for most of the day :-)

Racing starts tomorrow with a 65 km marathon. There are some big names here like south African Burry Stander and Chris Froome from the roadie world so racing will be hard and fast. I'm trying to enjoy the calm before the storm :-) I chucked up some more photos bellow and hopefully they work :-) internet here is a little sketchy.

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Typical island gateway to paradise

This was the stop overwe had while on the tour of the island, scooter style. Awesome view and amazing banana zest smoothie :)

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The waterfall....

So we managed to stumble into the waterfall and the water was amazing temperature. Later we saw this sign though...

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Don't swim in fresh water with cuts or you could die!

I'm still alive so should be sweet...

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Sandown Raceway twilight criterium:

Tuesday night was my first Carnegie Caulfield Cycling Club Criterium at the Sandown raceway. It was a windy and chilly night for the 6.30pm start. I was shivering on the start ramp and many riders were still in line for registration...

In the first few laps the A grade field was trying to warm up the legs and after rolling around the attacks started to come. I was in good position and followed a few moves over the first 15min. Late rego riders jumped in a few laps in and the bunch grew to 70 strong riders. 

The wind played a major roll in stringing out the bunch in one long line and with around 30min left of racing I surged off the front of the strung out peloton. I was accompanied by a few riders at first then they disappeared when I picked up the pace to hold off the chasing pack. 

I was solo for a few Km's then a group of three kicked over to me and we started to work together efficiently. The tempo was high with a strong head/cross wind on the start/finish straight and a roaring tail wind on the back straight and slight climb...

Our break away group was under pressure for the next 20min with the chase group hunting us down. I tried to keep the pace high and encourage the others in the group to work together. With 3 laps to go our gap went from 100m to 400m+ and we seemed to have cracked the others behind.

Coming into the final lap I was cautious of attacks from the fellow riders and sure enough on the tail wind climb a big attack came from behind catching me off guard and forcing a big effort to chase down the gap. The other two riders were sitting on using me up for all I was worth and at that point I almost lost hope as I caught and passed the defeated rider.

I hit the last corner first and was watching out for the final kick hoping that I could jump on the wheel of a rider that kicked too early. Luckily for me the BMC rider went hard and fast and I jumped into his slipstream and managed to do a second kick over the top for the finish.

So my first win in Sandown tuesday night crit and I was very happy that my legs were feeling strong after Tassie. 

On Saturday morning I fly out to Langkawi for a 5 day MTB stage race. It should be awesome as the weather is meant to be warm and nice. Follow the updates on www.cyclingnews.com or www.mtbmalaysia.com

Hope that it goes well. Should be good to catch up with everyone on a Tropical Island.

Getting pinned down by the local paper:

The local newspaper of the Alpine shire caught up with me last week and got all of the latest news on my adventures...

The article is well written and Scott seems to know a thing or two about Mountain biking.

Recovering in the nice sunny weather of Melbourne.

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stage 10: Gutter, Gutter, Gutter...Climb! Gutter, Gutter, Gutter...Climb!

Tour of tasmania final stage done! Luke and I managed to hold into the front bunch and we spent 90% of the 50 km race in the gutter with string cross winds on the sea side of Devenport.

I'm happy to finish and this week has been a really good learning experience :-)

I have one week rest then off to langkawi for a MTB stage race.

I might get some more updates on the go this week but can't promise anything...

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