MTB: Business as usual, loving the festival

Graeme Simpson in motion. PHOTO/Mike Vincent

Coming back from being crook always has key milestones.

The first true test of my successful recuperation from illness, in spring 2012, wasn't getting back on my bike. It was three consecutive days out on three different riverbanks.

That was at the pre-worlds White Water Rafting Championships, from Friday to Sunday at Labour Weekend.

Surviving that was the motivation to swing a leg over my bike for a 1km wander in the Scion campus on the Monday.

During the first Rotorua Bike Festival, last year, I stayed pretty close to race headquarters and didn't really venture on to many courses.

However, at this year's festival, it was business as usual, hiking up hills, dirt in my sneakers, shooting the breeze - and some photos and video.

I loved it.

The dual slalom course at OGO was very steep. I climbed up to the start line with Alick Saunders, one of the hard-working festival photo team. Like all them, he was hauling a heavy pack of gear on a warm afternoon.

For a moment, I thought I might need CPR skills.

I've been up and down a lot of mountain bike courses, often carrying reasonable-sized video cameras.

These days I travel much lighter with just my iPhone. It's still hard on the quads, calves and lungs.

It was different at the Skyline Sprint Warrior: Gondola up, walk down - it was luxury.
I wanted to video the first riders, the under-10s, at the start line.

Under-10s ... on a tricky and technical course like that. Incredible.

First up was Sacha Earnest, the current 7-year-old BMX World Champion. She was "on fire", getting down the course in a shade over three minutes.

To put that into perspective, the winner of the event was Sam Blenkinsop in 1m 58s. He's one of New Zealand's senior professional downhill mountain bikers. And he was silver medallist to fellow Kiwi Cam Cole in the Junior Men's Downhill World Championship in 2006.

How fast will Sacha be when she's his age?

After she headed down the course, I followed, stopping off at various points to gather more video on the dog and bone.

All the festival photo team were on the Warrior course - Alick, Alan Ofsoski, Mead Norton and Mike Vincent. They really enjoyed the debut Warrior last year.

Today's photo is one of Mike's. Photos were uploaded to Facebook every evening of the festival. Over 10 days there were hundreds of them and more than 100,000 photo views during the week.

I only get to have a good look at a lot of them later. My first thought about this one was that the skinny old guy in the high-viz vest looks serious.

Second thought was, hang on, that's me - giving it some jandal. After losing 15kg to cancer, I don't like having my photo taken.

But both feet off the ground was another milestone.

I don't run far these days and I was very focused. There's no time to faff about when there are riders coming down a trail behind you, at speed.

You'll find all photos from the 10-day festival on facebook.com/RotoruaBikeFestival