Mountains to Beach Stage Race

Andy leading Jason and Dylan, stage 7

Day 1 – stage 1, The sun is shining as we make the descent down Thredbo Mountain. All up it is about 16km and takes me about 31minutes to slide down the hill. Starting with the number 1 plate always adds pressure, especially as I was seeded last, with Jason English, Dylan Cooper and Shaun Lewis all in front to me, it would be hard work to catch any of them with the 30seconds between us all! To my surprise I had rounded Jason up just at the base of the hill and had Shaun in my sights after the first little climb, things were looking good. I snuck past Shaun and sat back from Dylan knowing that I had a minute advantage from the seeding. After 31minutes of racing I merged as the winner of stage 1 by a  rough minute.

Stage 3- Lake Crackenback, 2 laps of a 13km? lap. The pace was on from the start with all the boys swapping the lead. I went to the front knowing there was a guard rail ‘climb over’ coming up and managed to get over smoothly and drop down into the creek and crank up the steep little climb surprisingly well, glancing over my shoulder only to see Jason and hear, ‘there’s a gap, go go’ so of we went! That was the last we saw of the others. We worked well and didn’t go to silly, for the last 1km I raced into the singletrack first knowing I could hold it for the win.  Another win, unexpected, but very welcomed! The course was very damp and slick in some sections but held up well considering the course was under water with extensive flooding only 24hrs earlier!

Day 2- Stage 4- Perisher to Eucumber, 57km (shorter due to extreme weather, flooding) Going into today I definitely had a target on my back and it wasn’t long before I came under fire. Lewis went up the road within 3kms and wasn’t seen again until the later stages of the day. It didn’t bother me to much a first because I was still with Jason and Dylan. Then it happened (what cost me the race, really) on the long climb out of the valley, the boys kicked and I simply didn’t have the legs to go over the top with them. I could see them on the top of the ridgeline and it appeared they had picked up Shaun, great, 3 against 1. I went through Nimmo only 2 minutes down, which I thought was manageable. The last 30kms are a mix of bitumen and gravel road so you can imagine the effect of 3 v’s 1 would have, it was about 6 minutes by the end of the stage. Unlucky. Oh well that’s racing and I would have done the same in that situation.

Day 3- Stage 5- The Ay Up Dawn Raid, 2 laps around the lake, in the dark. The dark stage is always important when one of your major sponsors is the premier Australian Lighting company! I missed the stage win by a few seconds with Dylan taking the win! We managed to get away in the first lap, worked together through the windy sections and generally pushed pretty hard! The course was flat, fast and again very wet.

Day 4- Stage 7- The Shotzs big day out, 90kms from Cooma to the Coast! The weather gods haven’t been kind to us all week and today was no exception. The 90km route was cut back to manageable 57km, again very wet! The stage started with numerous attacks by Shaun to try and break Jason, eventually he got away and was looking good for the stage win, unfortunately for Shaun he didn’t quite make it, as we caught and passed him at the top of the days climb. Jason and I went over the top together with the others only seconds behind. The descent down to the finish was crazy. Not because it was technical or rocky, just due to the flooding the area was experiencing, it turned an easy dry descent into a real challenge! Towards the bottom I was able to gap Jason for stage win number 3!

Day 5- Stage 8, the surf safari. Today in good weather is my favorite stage as it follows the beach to the finish in Narooma, but again the weather shortened the day to 12km, from 50. It would be hard to make up 2 minutes in a 30min stage! It was the most intense stage for sure, as Dylan had to make 30seconds on Jason for the win. He won the stage but only by 3 or 4 seconds and I rode into 3^rd for the day and also the week!

A massive thanks to Wildhorizons for re-designing the racecourse as the sections became flooded, they did an awesome job! Thanks to Ay Up Lights, Anytime Fitness/Trek mountain bike Team and Venture Cycles. Thanks to all the competitors for an awesome week away!

NEW WEBSITE

Hey Guys and Girls,

I have just set up a new website for my new race team.

I will be posting on there from now on...

Check it out at
http://www.ayupracing.com/andy-fellows/

Thanks, Andy

2011

Hey guys and gals.

Things have been progressing well. There are some big things in the pipeline and should be out in about a week.

I have had a great break off the bike and am motivated to train once again, but harder than ever!

Race schedules, details all the fun stuff will be released in the coming week!

Wedding

Well things have been quite on the bike, but I have been extremely busy in life, on the weekend I married the most beautiful girl in the world. I'll let the pictures do the talking...

This weekend is the last race for me, for this year, it's the National Round in You Yang, Victoria, hoping I can go out with a bang...

Up coming races..

Hey, well since the WSC I have managed to bag the Sunshine Coast's Cycling Clubs overall rider of the year for A Grade, not bad for a mountain biker!

Also been doing some speed sessions as I head into some XC racing, the calendar looks fun for a few weeks with the following races:

Nov 7th- Bike leg at Anaconda AR in WA
Nov 20th- National round in Vic
Dec 5th- Bike leg at Anaconda AR in Vic

Then some r+r in Thailand with my new wifey!

WSC Report.

The 2010 World Solo Championships were held in Canberra on the 9th and 10th October. It was great to have the champs in Australia, being able to take all the desired equipment and not being stung with huge oversize baggage bills, on the downside it was in Canberra. Trying and compare Canmore to Canberra is like chalk and cheese, lets hope next year is somewhere cool and exciting to travel to!

So I loaded up the Ayup truck (Dennis the Landrover) and started driving down the coast on Monday, aiming to arrive around Wednesday, giving me enough time to scout the track and do some last minute shopping. The drive would have been easy, except they shut down one lane of the highway due to stupid amounts of water over the road, so I had to bypass Coffs and head up to Armidale! Down to Sydney the next day, and onto Canberra as planned on Wednesday lunch time.

Not long after arriving I hooked up with another Ayup Team Rider Sean Bekkers and we headed out to the famous Stromlo for a little looksee. The course was a basic figure 8 and saw riders climbing the mountain twice, once on the frontside and once on the backside, the front climb was mainly singletrack and it was easy to mantain a reasonable rythym and I enjoyed it, dropping down into a gnarly descent, known to the locals as Pork barrel, a sweet section of track, even had a couple of A and B lines. Once at the bottom, there was a steady fireroad climb up to the observatory. You then crossed the trail on a purpose build bridge and descended down into the skyline and luge trails. All in all about 18kms, fastest lap was 48mins and slowest 1hr18min. A lot of people thought the track was technical, especially in the descents, I love technical riding, so it didn't seem to bad, do remember struggling to hold onto my handle bars at one stage late in the race, so it sure was bumpy!

This year I had everthing I needed, in particular, all the people I needed. Mum and Dad had come up from Tasmania to support, my good mate, Richard Quinn had come over to throw the spanner around and hangout, and my fiance Jo had come down and had the title Pit Boss, which soon turned into Pit Bitch! I also had alot of support from friends and family throughout the country, thanks to you all!! So as we headed into Saturday morning the pit was running super smooth and the rest was up to me!

The race started with a Le Man run start, (riders run in bike shoes for 400-600metres to their bikes to start the race) stupid idea if you ask me, especially at Stromlo, especially on the bitumen crit track, have to say my super stiff carbon soled shoes didn't handle to well on the bitumen! When I grabbed my bike I nearly fell flat on my face, I recover, through a leg over and miss the pedal, wow, the pressure, I must have looked stupid! Anyway we set off at a fast pace and nessle into the top 5. It was such a relief to get racing, so much mucking around before the start!

Almost instantly my stomach is upset, so I try to calm it down with some water and lemonade, it works after about 5hrs and start to come good. Not the start I wanted, never the less I start to make some progress reeling in the riders who went off to hard at the start, mind you Mr English is way up the road by now! I think its around midnight and I make it up to Scott who is in 3rd, we ride together for a while and Cory the Canadian has some bad luck (flat tyre, I believe) so we move into 2nd and 3rd respectably.  Things stay like this for a while and we just start discussing the idea of working togther to stay away from Cory, to extend our lead. Funny, only minutes later he catches up. "Hi buddy" "Ay man"  "how you travelling?" "good, except I nearly hit a fricken Kangaroo" and that was it, he attacked, Scott tried to go with him, so I watched them go up the road. 

The next few hours into day break were probably the hardest, struggling to say awake and motivated! It wasn't until English caught me that I woke up, I rode with him for the next lap and eventually we caught Scott. Not long after I dropped Scott and Jason and rode off in search of Cory, I was feeling good and ready to takedown the 2nd position. I passed him in the pits on the very next lap and kept the pressure on, putting 4 minutes between us in the lap. Heading out on my second last lap I still felt good and hoped to put some more time in, I reached the pits for the final lap and was told I had around 4mins to Cory, I can do this I thought as I powered up the first climb, but, near the top, Cory came blasting past and simply couldn't hold his wheel, he was to fast! He ended up taking 2nd and there was about 2mins back to me in 3rd.

The last 5hrs of the races were crazy, I have never experienced that intensity at the end of a 24hr race.

Third again, while I didn't have the race I wanted, I do feel happy with the result.

Thanks must go to the following:

-My Pit Crew- Mum and Dad, Rich, Jo (who I can't wait to marry in 4 weeks!) without my pit crew none of this would have been possible, thanks again.

-The Ayup Crew, especially Andrew Patten, for helping make dreams come true!

-Supporters all over, in particular, Greg and Mark from Noosa, who actually got kicked of the mountain for sceaming to loud!! You guys were great!

- Cognition Bikeshop, the whole team for servicing and taking car of my bikes and me!

-Tomac Bikes, the Carbide's didn't miss a beat, very slick bikes

-Onza Tyres, I run the popular Canis UST version, awesome, handled the rock/rough terrain well.

-Osprey Hydralics- keeping my fluids up the easy way!

-InfinitNutrition- Create and dominate!

-Aussie Butt Cream- this stuff is gold to any enduro rider! get some!

Thanks to everyone!

WSC Report

Ok, it's coming, I have the pictures now,  just getting some thoughts together!