Shack Attach 6 hour - Nowra

At 5:00am on Sunday the 18th of July 2010, Gavin Storey and myself made the long trip down to the Shack Attach 6 hour, which was held at Nowra's Coondoo Road track. The 2 and half hour drive went relatively quick and as the sun slowly rose on our approach Nowra, we were greeted with a fine but cool winters morning, which was perfect for a long day racing.

The race attracted around 200 riders, with the event centre having a laid back social vibe. I personally was prepared for a long hard day in the saddle, as I was feeling the effects of a chest cold, which I had been trying to shake off with some antibiotics for the last couple of days.

Gavin was also nursing a calf strain and I had a feeling that we would be chasing the leaders all-day long. Upon arrival at the event centre, we went about our pre race ritual of quickly catching up with friends, setting up pit, registering and a hotly contested game of paper, scissors and rock, to see who would do the opening lap.

Gavin elected to do the first lap and found it to be steep learning curve, as he had not seen or ridden the Coondoo track before and was treated to endless flowing sections of bermy corners with minimal traffic. The course was significantly different to the "Chocolatefoot single track series", as we raced the track backwards and the track had about an extra kilometre of freshly cut in track.
Gavin came through on the first lap in about fifth position, which is a commendable effort for his first ever lap of the Coondoo track. I set about chasing down the leaders, which were about a minute or two ahead of us. I soon encountered a little track and was suddenly stop by a rider who clipped a tree and hit the ground rather heavy, a quick stop to make sure he was okay and I was back on my way. I found myself struggling to breathe at times as I was struggling to pull in the air due to coughing fits and a severely blocked nose.

The new sections of track were hard to see and ride at the start of the day, but as the sections of track became more worn, the riding through these sections of track improved. We managed to nail down the transition with a Madison styled (track racing) push.

We both continued to do consistent lap times and quickly reeled in fourth place on about lap 4 and were closing in on third. On lap 7 Gavin got us within striking distance of securing 3 third place, so I dug deep to catch 'Team Heathcote' and hopefully smash out a quick lap time. I caught Team Heathcote pushing his bike on the back fire road, with a rear puncture.

I quickly ripped of my tube and CO'2 canister, which he called for and threw it to him on my way past. As I passed him, he also called for the CO2 attachment, which I grab out of my jersey and drop on the ground for him about 10 metres up the road. I set about trying to compete a quick lap time, but never really felt strong or consistent.

At this stage we were still about 6-7 minutes behind the leading pair’s teams, which stretched out as the race went on. We managed to hold our third position and complete a total of 13 laps (133km) in 6 hours and 22 minutes.

The Team Bike Bug - Merida would like to thank the awesome event organisers and Bike Bug for finely tuning Gavin's Merida FLX Team and my super quick Merida Ninety Six.