the Blower

BOOM…. Solid weekend of local racing, stoking on not having to drive any where!

Saturday was the Hamilton City Criterium, hosted in the centre of Hamilton funnily enough. Entering B grade I was keen to animate the bunch instead of swinging off the back in A grade so I figured a win could be in order…. The race unfolded pretty normally, Jim Mcmurray and Andrew Webbly (sp?) managed to get off the front and unfortunately for the rest of us we figured we’d be able to wheel them back in, we couldn’t have been more wrong.

Smithy on my wheel took the bunch kick for 3rd place while I was left drifting in airless.

With our bunch not really chasing as such, more like attacking each other, we didn’t manage to reel them back and heading into the last two laps I got myself positioned up front and was feeling good, then into the last lap on the 3rd last corner I realised I had a flat rear tire! Trying to hang on to the bunch I managed to drift my way through the next turn but on the last corner I had nothing and couldn’t take the turn at good pace, so….. Dead last. Super gutted! Ah what do ya do.

If you had planned on riding and didn’t or thought about spectating and didn’t, dont miss the next one!

Thanks to Coxy, Nathan and the team from Dynamo events for a sweet event, awesome fun!

All pics thanks to Justin!

1 month since an update, what a slacker!
Here are a few pics and some words to bring things up to speed….

Spring Fling: September. Muddy, fast and hurty. Pretty good first run, crashed out and DNF the second run with a big down the bank over the bars and get tangled with the bike crash. Basically 2 weeks off riding with internal bruising in my knee. Bad times!

With the weather being on again off again over late sept/ early oct I resorted to some roller interval sessions. Not really sure they did much except make puddles of sweat on the garage floor!

Thanks to Matt @ Velo Espresso, Hamilton for servicing my wheels prior to Spring Fling. Collapsed bearings are not ideal! On a side note this wheelset (Ritchey WCS XC race) are about 2 years old and have had a thrashing but have NEVER needed a tension or true. True story. Bro. and

A quick spin from home to Pirongia and up Sainsburys road on the fixed gear (yeah, thats a front brake so what!). Staple through the front tire just in Pirongia, fixed in the bright sun. Not long after, just as I started the descent from the top of Sainsbury the heavens opened and it poured with rain, now thats why theres a brake on there

Kicks! Livestrong Air Max'as arrive a couple of weeks back from Jason @ Mellow Johnnys - cheers bro! Order coming your way soon

Tony from Masi sent down my new Cyclocross frame, it's a minter! As soon as my new road bike turns up (next week, fingers crossed!) this will get a build....

The boys at Wide Open hooked a brother up with a good deal on some FSA gear for the cross bike... Cant wait!.

This is the only pic I got at K2, and its basically of nothing! "Can you go the distance?" nope, I almost can though. I managed to hang with the front bunch until Whangapoua climb, 146kms to be more precise. Then POP I blew and dragged my carcass to the finish, slowly but surely. The only upside was I smashed my previous time and managed a 5hr, 38min and 40th overall. Riding with the elite guys was good while it lasted

Bike The Lake was next on the agenda (weekend after K2). Form was reasonably good but with a pretty much flat (apart from 1 climb and 2 bumps) the field wasn't splitting up, and after a break of two got away early on everyone was left looking at each other and the race turned pretty negative with not many people keen to get their faces in the wind. The race was pretty sketchy with people taking all sorts of risks coming into the finish, a bit of argy bargy and plenty of touching wheels going on. Dodgy! A couple of breaks got away coming into the last 10km and managed to stick but in typical fashion la lack of workers meant they stayed away. I jumped early and managed a 13th, scraping to the line just as the bunch swamped me. Dont think Ill bother with that one again

Tour Of Southland was pretty sweet to watch with highlights every morning and night. Conditions were terrible as usual, anyone who finished is a hard ass!

On Your Bike Expo went down last weekend and it was rads to see heaps of crew in Hamilton for once! The event was super fun to hang around and catch up with peeps, ride some pump track and generally lurk. Unfortunately it was a pretty busy weekend so I didn't manage to take part in any 'out of show activities' This is Caleb from Spoke getting his Fixed Gear Freestyle on!

Last Sunday (day 2 of the Bike Expo) the Maunga Cycle Challenge went off in my home town of Te Awamutu. The weather was clear but windy & not wet which was nice! After a couple of Km the pace was on and attacks were flying from all sides, with all the fast guys (pure black etc etc) trying to get a break away. For some reason I thought Id get in the mix and went with a couple of the attempts but it was pretty obvious if a break was going to stick, I wouldn’t be in it!
From 20k in I was swinging off the back and took another 20 to start feeling ok. Unfortunately after the main break had gone the main bunch decided to race for 8th place and were diddling around looking at each other with only a small group really willing to work at all.

Pretty negative considering there were some strong riders happy to sit and wait for the sprint when if everyone lent a hand and worked we could have closed a lot of the gap to the break, maybe even caught them….. No glory in sitting in all ride and sprinting to scrape into the top 10.

I rolled in with the main bunch, happy with my ride – although a little concerned how terrible I was in a couple of areas!

Two weeks ago we farewelled a good mate of mine, Rowan Humffreys. Its been hard to put into sentences just how this felt for me, mixed emotions, memories and jumbled thoughts.

All I can say is that every time I spent with Roski was a good one and his passing has left a hole in my life and certainly in my social schedule too!

Rowan was integral in helping organise the Hipster Hundred fixed gear races and had recently become a prominent  figure in the local scene. Track Tuesdays wont be the same without Rowan to pull everyone together and make it happen thats for sure…..

There’s countless other things that I could write and I probably will as they come to mind…

Rowski…. Im gonna miss you! Shakka Braaa!

I just wandered back in from a quick film shoot with Ryan McCrae. All 2 seconds of vid will appear in a TVC for the On Your Bike Expo coming up in November.

We headed out to Sanitorium hill just out of Cambridge just as the sun was setting. With limited time we got to work and in a couple of takes we were done. Wam bam thank you mam, 2 seconds of vid in the bag! Haha…

Here’s some snaps….

Ryan at 'work'

Fresh new Masi kit.... New bike is on the boat!

A few months back Gemma got an email from a travel agent we once booked a trip through offering us a killer deal on a package deal to Thailand. Having visited a couple of times before we jumped at the chance to get back and take in the warmth, friendliness and food that is Thailand. We managed to juggle our plans to fit in 8 nights staying with Gem’s brother Matt in Macau, China which was a trip!

Our itinerary was simple, fly Auckland to Bangkok, overnight there, fly to Macau, spend 8 nights with Matt then fly back to Phuket via a stopover in Bangkok again, then spend 8 nights at Indigo Pearl resort and chill. While in Macau we also shot across the China border to Shenzhen for a night, and also Hong Kong for a night.

Some great times with great people on every leg of the trip. Tomorrow = Home to NZ. Looking forward to getting back on the bikes, K2 looms in 6 weeks!

Check out photos and words from tripping around:

Taxi's are the go for getting around in Asia, super cheap. The only real challenge is communicating where you want to go to a driver with basically no english.

read more…

4 weeks or so since an update. While Im disappointed my ideas of consistent updates have gone by the wayside its not really surprising. The last month has been pretty lack lustre to begin with and has ended on a define ate high.

Early August was spattered with sickness for me, with what seemed a never ending two week cycle of get a cold, turn it into a chest infection, fight back to health – be healthy for about 3-4 days and repeat, this time possibly with the flu, repeat again but this time throw in a stomach bug and you get the idea of most of August.

On the riding front things were quiet. I managed a hand full (literally) of rides. One race – the first of the Wacaroc series out in Gordonton. This race was tough. Windy as and rain was threatening the whole time. Im not even going to get into it really, but about half way (or so) around the loop I did a good turn into the wind, hit a small rise (basically the only one in the course) and pulled off the front for a rest. By this point I was in the 2nd bunch on the road, and in a matter of seconds that bunch rode away from me. All over red rover, dropped. A couple of days later I was sick again.

August was pretty demoralising as far as clocking k’s goes and with summer looming I was really hoping to have banked some good training over the colder months.

The upside to all the downsides over August was that on the 24th, Gemma and I jumped on a plane to Asia for a bit of a holiday…. Choice!

I stopped by the new Cambridge BMX track the other day for a no-bike look – well, I had my road bike on the car but that just wouldn’t have been right! The track looks pretty sick, pretty psyched to ride it actually! All they need is their start ramp up and she’s a 100% runner, good for a roll in the meantime though by the looks… MEAN.

Yeah, yeah Ive been lagging, lagging, lagging…..

Prep for the start.

The last few weeks have been hectic yet quiet at the same time. On one hand Ive managed some good road riding while on the other I’ve spent days off work in bed and done more days couching up a lung with chest infection, laying low with flu (again) or dealing with a stomach bug!

Team Ralph x Vintage Swag post race cuppa soup and free coffee... Yeeeeaahhh.

On the 31st July I teamed up with some of the other Pavement Panthers riders – Rowan and Richie to form ‘team Ralph x Vintage Swag’ for the Okororie “fun” ride…. Well by teamed I mean, the rode together and I didn’t. The boys hit the 40km option and I did the max 80km course, short and sweet, and mostly flat.

The race is kind of an early season Waikato/BOP get together. It usually marks around about the time most people are trying to get back on their bike after some down time over the colder months, and as usual it was obvious who’d bee training and who hadn’t, who wanted to do work on the front and try smash people, and who was happy wheel sucking, being weak and generally annoying those up the front.

The course is pretty well flat to rolly, with one “climb” thats short but a decent gradient. The usual way things roll is, cruise out to the climb, see the fireworks happen, split the bunch a bit but get left with about  a 20-30 rider group a couple hundred meters over the top. Then the same guys who were on the front before will get back on the front, pull hard while everyone else sits in and waits for a mass mashfest sprint finish at the line, this is basically exactly how things played out this year…. Just like all the other years.

One  slight change was made this year, with riders hooking a 90 degree right hander with about 80 meters to the finish, that coupled with the lead group meeting some tailenders from the 40km group made for a bit of a luck of the draw come the finish. Riders were everywhere and it was a lottery for the top 10.

With 400+ entrants it was standing room only with spills of people out the gates and around the sides.... Plenty of good prizes were dished out, none to any of our crew tho!

I had a good ride and Im happy to say I was one of the ones doing the work, pulling my weight and pushing on, along with about 10 others. Local old but fast guy Jim McMurray got thru for the win and had a super strong ride as usual. No idea who else finished where, the timing and finish management for this ride is pretty comical but it really is a fun ride so no biggie. I pulled into the top 7 or so but was left off the “official” results (I think Jim was too?)  along with a few others.

A mint day, good weather, some good racing in amongst largely negative and a 38k average, not slow but not too flash neither.

Good to see Richie and Rowan have a good ride, cleaning up lots of people on proper bikes while they skidded and grunted around the course on fixed gears. See you at the next one boys?

Lynton couldnt handle the gales at the top of the divvy (he weighs 15kg after all!) so had to walk 100m over the top!

The last few saturdays we’ve managed to gather a bit of a rag tag bunch together and go hit ‘Big Naike’ one iconic Waikato loop. From Hamilton central return is 140km with lots of hills. Basically we start from town, head out over the divvy towards Raglan, a bit before Raglan hook a right turn north towards Waingaro Springs and wind our way around the coast for a while heading north wards, missing Waignaro and ending up out the back of Huntly then a straightish line with lots of hills and we roll to Huntly. A 15 minute stop at the bakery to stock up on Coke and cakes and we make our way back to the mighty ‘tron.

The first week we went out we got caught in the worst weather Ive ever ridden in just as we left Huntly, on the main road, torrential downpours and howling gales… sketchy!

Craig 'Mr Rapha' styling it as usual!

Click gallery images below to view full size.

Choice! I managed to win myself this sicko timepiece from G-Shock last week. It wasn’t easy though – they wanted to know the exact model of the G that David Dallas wears in the video below. After some frantic googling and guesswork I managed to get the right one and BOOM, a couple days later this bad boy turned up. Nice and chunky and matte black, what more could you need?! Check the G Shock NZ facebook for more competitions and get one for ya self, or go buy one – the range is ridiculous!