The devestating effect.

A couple of months ago, fire ripped through Victoria, laying waste to many small towns that we all know from riding to or riding with our bikes.

Recently I've ridden back up through Kinglake, the landscape seems alien, it's hard to grasp just what has happened. The melted road signs and metal embedded in the road were so far outside the realms of experience that they seemed un-real.


Taken 12th April, a nice sunny day.


Taken 25th April, from the saddle up it was cold and wet.

Thankfully the Australian landscape is starting anew, grass has sprouted after recent rains. Trees are shooting out, reaching for the sky, aiming to fill the void around themselves. In the absence of competition for sunlight, regrowth is fast paced, the land is on the road to recovery.

I'm happy to say that there are signs that the people of these places are rebuilding as well. Maybe it was just that it was wintery on Saturday, but the hot chocolate at the Kinglake bakery is some of the best I've tasted, especially after the enormous coffee scroll it followed.

Socks are in

The new Baum socks are in


$19 per pair, $35 for two pairs, white for road, black for mountain bike, S, M or L.

100 uses for wood

Waking at 4am to get to a 7am race start is never easy, this morning was no exception. I felt under slept, under prepared and in general under done. After a hard week of training I worried that I hadn't shown the race much respect, my brain screamed "100km on dirt is still a bloody long way". I comforted myself knowing that it was ok, I'd take it easy, the results didn't matter, it was all about races later in the year, this would just be a "training race".

Like most "training" races, the second it started, the mind clicked, the elbows extended and the result very much mattered. A pack 6 wide launched itself down the road, spitting riders out the back, everyone wanted to get to the single track first. I sat in, and as we ducked into the pine forest and the first bit of trail there was around 10-15 riders ahead.

The same riders surrounded me as the first kilometres ticked by 5, 10, 20. A small fall put a big bruise on my quad, concern in my mind, but worst of all it let riders past. I worried that the damaged muscle would cramp, so it became doubly important to conserve energy and avoid erratic movements. I took b-lines where available, a second lost early to the extra few metres was better than minutes lost to a cramp later in the race, I certainly didn't want a repeat of the Otway Odyssey.

During the next 10km I tested my legs and they responded, I began to attack the fire road climbs, standing and driving hard through the pedals things started to feel good, maybe this wasn't such a bad day after all.



As the race ticked past 50km I fell into the rhythm of attack, recover, repeat. Hard out of the saddle efforts up the fire roads, flowing through the single track and slowly I began to see riders in front come backwards. Some had started with me, others in the Elite field had started 5 minutes earlier, once spotted I knew what I had to do.

By the 80km mark I was feeling strong and a little bit of prior knowledge let me time my efforts for maximum gain. I began to catch more riders, each one fuelling my desire to catch the next one. Big ring, pushing hard into corners, I ate them up in 1s and 2s, I drove my body ignoring the heat in my legs, it didn't matter, faster, smoother, attack!

Out onto the road, through the gate, round the dam and a mono over the line... there it was, the thing capable of making all the pain worth while, a free Mountain Goat Hightale Ale, awesome!

At that stage there was only one thing left to do, consume the best tasting $5 hotdog ever.


Jeff Williams had his post race nutrition dialled.

The course was a blast, and the event staff were great! Barring (another) fall from a 2m high bridge I'll definitely be back to race it next year.

I completed the race in 5 hours 22 minutes, which netted me 4th in Open Men and 28th overall.

BMC 100 Results

Today the BMC 100 was held on the Wombat State Forest trail network. We had quite a few Baum bikes competing.

Neil Robinson was the fastest Baum rider home in around 5:20.

Elliot won the single speed category for the race - a great effort. Elliot is a customer who is awaiting deliver of a very fancy Baum 29er single speed. For the race today he rode the Baum workshop demo single speed. He finished in around 5:35. Those single speeders are the hard men of mountain bike racing and he proved it today. At the toughest stage of the race Elliot and a fellow singler speeder were riding side by side, pushing hard and they did not let up all the way to the finish.

David Rusden, on his new 8.1kg Cubano finished in around 5:40 and missed the podium in the Masters category by under 10 minutes.

Steve Clausen on his freshly repainted Cubano was seen trying to push David Rusden off the track!! Enough said.

Changes to our blogs

Hi avid blog readers (or should that be singular?). As you will see we have changed the layout of our blogs. Instead of having two seperate blogs, we have combined the two. We were concerned that all the great writing that Neil is doing was not getting enough visibility, so now you will see his blog entries on the front page.

You can still access all the previous mtb team blogs the usual way.


And now to today's photo. The images from the Mont 24 hour came out today and the one below shows David having just passed Darren....or is that Darren about to pass David?

Mont 24hr, Sparrow Hill

Have a look at the "mtb team" blog for Neils great write up on the fortunes of Baum to be Wild at last weekend Mont 24 hour.

The Mont 24 results can be found at www.mont24.com.au