The Convict 100 is one of the longest running and most challenging mountain bike marathon races on the calendar – this year it was held on 5 May 2018. This event has been able to survive a declining number of events and still attracts people to the event each year, many of these people are new to mountain bike racing.
While numbers where down on previous years, there was a great buzz in the historic town of St Albans – which becomes the Race Centre for this event every year. The event offers a number of distances – 44 km, 68 km and 100 km.
Admittedly a gravel bike is probably not the preferred bike of choice for this event, however I decided to enter the Cyclo-cross category for the 68 km event with my bike of choice being my Curve GXR aka Kevin.
The highlights for me on this day where the first 5 km of the event – I was in the top 20 of the field until we went off road! Nevermind. The other highlight was the final 10 km. This was a gravel section where I settled into the drops and held a strong pace until the finish – there was satisfaction passing many riders as I rode into the finish shoot. With the final highlight being finishing on the podium. Overall result was 77 over the line out of 358 (3:45 mins) – finishing in the top 21 % of the field.
The Convict 100 runs through the convict trail that connects Sydney to the Central Coast and Hunter. The terrain is mainly rocky sandstone, fairly technical in nature and is usually best ridden on a bike with suspension. I chose to run a set of Curve 650b carbon wheels for the race – a great choice considering the lack of suspension. The WTB Nano’s where flawless – set up tubeless I managed to avoid any major mechanical issues.
This event features some great gravel segments. This descent was awesome. I managed to negotiate the next corner – only just – as I had to unclip, dab my foot to take off some speed so I didn’t end up riding down the embankment!
Thank you
Thank you to Maximum Adventure for running this event and keeping the people interested in racing Marathon MTB races. The photos featured in this story where taken by Outer Image Collective. And finally thank you to Curve Cycling for making rad bikes to go exploring on – the Curve GXR aka Kevin loved the event.
Looking forward to racing again soon.
James
Instagram: @jr_w
