From backyard beginnings….

Somehow I managed to get myself roped into riding back to the Picton ferry with Bex at the beginning of the week, she had ridden out to Nelson on Friday through all the thunderstorms! The return trip was far less eventful weather wise although the legs were a bit had it after the weekends racing.

This should have set me up for a quiet week of spinning but I couldn’t resist hitting it hard a couple of times, adding extra hills to my normal commute. It hasn’t really benefited me as I spent the weekend feeling rather lazy and not going near my bike. It’s a bit of a reflection of the effort that’s been put in over the last month, the body was ready to have a weekend off racing, the travel and the need to be somewhere at a certain time.

A crazy Wellington weekend, hugely hot and deadly still on Saturday followed by an early winter on Sunday left me time to have a think about the times that got me started in cycling.

I grew up on a small block of land in Wanganui behind Virginia Lake where me and my brothers (Craig and Nathon) spent endless hours building jumps, challenging each other to ride up the steepest hill, making jumps at the tops of the hills and jumping down them, building cyclocross hurdles and doing time trials on the motorbike. It wasn’t all fun and games with the yearly planting of pine trees to sell as Xmas trees which funding our racing.

Our paddock became a bit of a hang out for the local club riders, we had skills days, cyclocross races and eventually Mum and Dad organised a kids series for under 12 year olds called “Kiwi Kids Mountain Biking”. These started out to be 10 kids having fun to about 80 kids wanting to win over a near 10yr period! Not many people know but this series was the start of many champions, Sam Blenkinsop, one of the best Downhill riders in the world, Jono Hamlin (multiple NZ Track Cycling Champion and now Motocross rider) and Glen Haden (multiple NZ Downhill Champ and now Motocross rider) to start with a few names!

I was super excited when I found out I could ‘race’ a bike. It all started in 1986 when Craig and I rode BMX in Wanganui at the local BMX races in Castlecliff, at the time I was getting laughed at because I was always last on my little blue chopper! I turned up to my first road race when I was 12 on my Mtb bike and raced well but knew I could go faster on a road bike. Brent Anderson who looked after the younger riders said to he wanted me to use a club road bike to see how I went which at the time was a weapon! A white and blue Tarini with tubular tires and old shimano 600. I raced that for 3 years and treated it like my own bike. It got a good clean each Saturday morning so it was sparkling for the afternoon race. Not quite as fancy as the younger riders these days are getting, but damn it looked clean! The following year I got into Track Cycling on the old 500m Cooks Gardens Track before it got pulled down.

I really enjoy going back to the Wanganui Club and racing every now and again, the club was very supportive over the years and there are a lot of nice people still involved. Bex laughs whenever we drive through Wanganui and we see a cyclist as I can just about always name them! Small town!

So that was how it all started for me, backyard beginnings.

And how it finishes for me in cycling? ….. I’ll be cycling until the stars stop shining! Racing will have it’s day, but the sweet feeling of two tyres and a bit of speed will never die!