NSW 2013 SRAM SINGLETRACK MIND SERIES - The 4th year of singletrack shredding!

Mr Pants

skanky media ho
Hey Singletrackers,

The 2013 SRAM SINGLETRACK MIND SERIES has been launched and entries are now open for all five events. The series is set to kick off on the amazing new trails built by the Manning Great Lakes Tip Riders at Taree. The rest of the series info can be found here: http://www.chocolatefoot.com.au/singletrack-mind-series/series-information

We have Cyclogy Gear on board again this year and they have designed us an awesome t-shirt which you can order with your race entry: http://www.chocolatefoot.com.au/singletrack-mind-series/series-information#shirt

A new sponsor for this year is OnTheGo. These guys are really into MTB and along with sponsoring the series they also sponsor a team who you will see at all the rounds. OnTheGo have also designed us a great jersey for the 2013 series, it features our iconic "singletrack on the brain" design: http://www.chocolatefoot.com.au/singletrack-mind-series/series-information#jersey

*Re: merchandise, we're placing an order for these next week so if you want to guarantee yours to pick up at the first few rounds, get your entry in or just get in touch to make sure we have your order!*

We've also added the "Fab Fours" category, for those who might be new to racing the focus of this category is on participation, and we'll do our best to help people find teams for this (and other) category.

Within the Junior category we've added a "School Shredders" sub-category which we hope will feature lots of school teams duking it out for the Shredders Cup! For the more robust soloists, as well as the regular Clydesdale special category you can also compete in "The Biggest Winner" competition.

We've tweaked a few rules, mostly in relation to Series points and mixed pairs, so make sure you check those out too.

The Series features the latest in timing technology with instantaneous live to the web results enabling competitors are able to check times and positions during the race at the results café or via their smart phone. All this information being readily available has led to tight and thrilling racing right throughout the Series.

Series mascots Gumby and Pokey are raring to go in 2013 and the events will again feature kids’ races, demo bikes, chocolate eating comps and all the services you could want for a great day out on the bike!

Entries are open now for all 5 events and we have our "Serial Offenders" deal back again, so get it to it here: http://www.chocolatefoot.com.au/singletrack-mind-series/entries
 
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Fi

Chocolate Foot
Sponsor deals for competitors

Don't forget, you can score 20% off your Flow Membership by entering the SRAM Singletrack Mind Series. And Hammer Nutrition are also offering our competitors a deal on their fantastic nutrition products (which just got Joe and myself through the rigours of the Bike Buller stage race!).

Details on the Series Information page.
 

Fi

Chocolate Foot
Taree Preview Vid

A bumper edition of our newsletter Footprint has just been released which gives loads of details about the upcoming race at Taree, plus a bunch of fantastic offers from our sponsors and some great news from Clubs around NSW - grab a cuppa and check it out here!

We've already got a heap of entries for Round 1 of the Series at Kiwarrak State Forest on 28 April, with lots of people taking up the Serial Offenders offer - sign up for the Series and you'll get discounted entry fees plus a free tee designed by sponsor Cycology! There are also 40 bonus series points on offer so this one is not to be missed!

The Manning Great Lakes Tip Riders MTB Club are ridiculously excited about hosting the race - lately they're been pretty much living in the forest tweaking, raking and buffing up the trails for us - it's going to be a cracker of a race!

We'll have all the great services you have come to expect from a Chocolate Foot event: transponder timing, live-to-the-web results, great coffee & food, SRAM mechanical support, Giant demo bikes, Finish Line lube bay, Hammer Nutrition product to test & purchase, wine tasting from James Estate ... and Gumby is celebrating his birthday so who knows what kinda high jinks he'll be up to!

We've just taken delivery of a massive $11,000 of prize schwag from our fantastic sponsors for Round 1 - which includes a RockShox SID RCT3 fork worth $920 as a draw prize for one lucky winner. We've got boxes and boxes of quality product and vouchers and can't wait to give it all away!

Check out the course preview vid below and some pics of the other Kiwarrak trails on Facebook (there's so much to explore ... 47km of singletrack, to be exact!). Hope to see you there!

[video=youtube_share;JWFzv96EC44]http://youtu.be/JWFzv96EC44[/video]
 

matt36415

Likes Dirt
I am going to camp, can anyone tell me how long it is to drive from the race site to a pub etc for dinner?

any local knowledge would be appreciated - including reccomendations on a good place to eat.

thanks
 

Fi

Chocolate Foot
Our caterers, Snax on Trax, will be offering dinner in the forest from 6.00-8.00pm or so (see the website)

The event centre is perhaps 7km from Taree town centre. We were there over Easter so dining options were limited, but we did get a good feed at the Taree Golf Club which is a few km north of town. There are the usual assortment of Thai, Chinese, Pizza of course. We had breakfast at The Sicilian Restaurant which also does dinner and seemed pretty up-market.

Hopefully one of the locals might chip in with better knowledge than mine!

Cheers

Fi
 

matt36415

Likes Dirt
thanks, thats all i needed, just not to keen on starving, dont want to risk losing valuable kilos before a race.
 

NullaTroy

Likes Bikes
Folks,

Can someone let me know about roads into the camping / start site. Is it gravel or sealed ? I am just trying to work out if I can drive the normal care or whether I need clearnace etc

thx

Troy
 

charltons

Likes Bikes
Great race yesterday congratulations to the Taree guys for putting on such a great track, chocolate foot and everyone involved. Really friendly and supportive bunch of riders as well. It was well worth the 14 hours drive to get up there and back!
 

Fi

Chocolate Foot
Results, Reports, Video & Pics ...

... all contained in the Chocolate Wrapper report, check it out here!

Fantastic weekend at Taree, keep hearing from people that they're still frothing about the event and the trails ... stoked! Look forward to seeing everyone at Nowra on 26 May!

[video=youtube_share;zw6p62dqv18]http://youtu.be/zw6p62dqv18[/video]
 

Fi

Chocolate Foot
Round 2, Nowra - postponed

Update: Friday 24 May, 7.23pm

Dear Singletrackers

We're extremely disheartened to have to give you the news that we must postpone this weekend's race at Nowra. We did all we could to keep abreast of the current weather conditions - reviewing several different forecasts, speaking with SCUM and other locals, and as of this morning everyone was confident that should the forecast be correct i.e. rain easing through the afternoon, the race could go ahead with no problem - the trails would hold up well, the access road would be passable and if not, the private property access could be used.

However, Mother Nature had other ideas and the area has received far more rain than forecast and it is still falling now. The latest forecast is showing rain to continue overnight and ease tomorrow morning. This means that, although a good day of drying weather would mean that on Sunday the trails would be perfectly rideable, we simply won't have any access to the event centre. The normal access road is wet and won't dry out, and the paddock through which we were to pass as our Plan B has too much standing water and would end up a deep boggy mess and we would not inflict that on the property owner.

We haven't taken this decision lightly - and we're so disappointed that the weather has not played out as forecast. But our concerns for the track, and surrounding areas including the private property, safety of participants and possible damage to your vehicles, and the overall race experience for our riders, are too great to risk going ahead, and we need to make that call now.

The event will be rescheduled and we'll announce the new date as soon as we can. We sincerely hope that you can all make this new date - as the huge field of 370 riders registered for this event clearly shows, Coondoo Road is a race experience not to be missed!

Thanks for your understanding.

Fi & Joe
 

Merzy

Likes Bikes
Cancelled? Noooo!

This sux. I totally understand why, but it still sux. Rain, who needs it?
 

Fi

Chocolate Foot
Round 2 - New date announced!

Update: Tuesday 28 May, 9.30am

Many thanks for your understanding over our decision to postpone Sunday's SRAM Singletrack Mind Series race at Coondoo Road, Nowra, and your patience while we've been working hard to find a suitable date for its reschedule.

We'd like to say a massive thank you to our host club, SCUM. While it was hugely disappointing for us to find ourselves in Nowra, ready for all systems go, but rain still falling, it was also a big blow for the club. A small band of people have been working hard on the trails including the building of a cool new feature which was to be unveiled for the race. The clubbies have promised that this will be kept back from the world until the new date ... which is pretty exciting! However, every cloud has a silver lining for the SCUM crew and they have told us that the delay in holding the race will simply give them time to make the Coondoo Road trails even better - and we are planning to help them in a working bee during July which we'll advertise to recruit some willing helpers in due course.

So, drumroll please ... the new date for Round 2 of the SRAM Singletrack Mind Series is Sunday 4 August, at Coondoo Road, Nowra (which will of course mean it happens after Round 3 at Awaba).

What to do now? You should have received an email with this info but it's also on our website here.

And we've re-opened entries to the event so if you know of anyone who is keen to race at Coondoo Road but couldn't make last weekend, please let them know the news!

Cheers

Fi & Joe
 

Delmar

Likes Dirt
Just want to say that I had my usual school group at coondoo on wednesday morning. Access roads were truly a mess (but we ride in from forest rd). However, the track itself was ... completely awesome!! So much grip everywhere, hardly any water and no slop (I know the bits to avoid). Great work SCUM people and even though it's my local I'm really looking forward to this round, it reminded me of how good coondoo can be!
 

Fi

Chocolate Foot
Race for FREE at Awaba on 23 June!

Hey All

Just a call out to see if anyone can help with marshalling and assisting the timing crew at Round 3 at Awaba on 23 June. We're a little light on for volunteers as a few of the HMBA usual suspects are unavailable :)

We're looking for 3 teams of 3 or 4 riders, two teams will be positioned at a static marshal station on course and the third team will be positioned with Timing assisting with the manual backup. Your race entry will of course be covered by us plus we'll give you host club rates (i.e. serious discount) on Series tee or jersey if you'd like one. We'd love to hear from you if you can help - please email info@chocolatefoot.com.au.

Cheers

Fi
 

Mr Pants

skanky media ho
The problem we have is that half the forecasts say it's going to be fine:

http://www.wunderground.com/cgi-bin...ery=-32.932735,151.769669&cm_ven=googleonebox

http://www.weather.com.au/nsw/newcastle

the other say wet:

http://www.bom.gov.au/nsw/forecasts/newcastle.shtml

http://www.weatherzone.com.au/nsw/hunter/cooranbong

With such a spread of forecasts, it's a bit hard to make a call, added to that is that Awaba being on the western side of lake Macquarie, it gets different weather to Newcastle so...?

We're going to try and make a call on it today.

Joe.
 

Fi

Chocolate Foot
Update posted on Facebook this arvo

Hi Singletrackers! As you may have noticed the weather is again being somewhat dysfunctional ... but so far there's been virtually no rain at Awaba and the HMBA trail fairies tell us the course is dry and in excellent riding condition. We have of course been studying the various forecasts available, some of which predict a fine day with zero rain and others some rain. We’ve also been in touch with a weather guru who says this particular weather system is very difficult to predict – just our luck, eh?!

So despite the disparate forecasts, if it is a little damp on Sunday we’ll still go ahead because a) speaking as a pom, a little bit of mud never hurt anyone and b) due to the current condition of the track, and lack of a cumulative rainfall, HMBA say the track will hold up fine and they are happy for us to run. If tomorrow morning our weather guru tells us that he’s about to ring Noah, then we’ll postpone and let everyone know by 10am tomorrow.

If you didn't enter due to the forecast and think you've missed out, the good news is that we're leaving online entry open until 8pm tonight! Naturally we understand your reticence to enter with a dodgy weather outlook, but should we postpone & reschedule we’ll be happy to flex our normal refund policy and offer entry transfer to another round if you’re unable to make the new date.

Our recommended accommodation provider, Myuna Bay Sport & Rec, still have availability and are more than happy to be flexible on cancellation or transfer of a booking should it be necessary.

We do understand that everyone wants to plan their weekend - as we do too! To those that have already entered, many thanks for your understanding and we're certainly looking forward to seeing you on Sunday!
 
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