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I used to be pretty hard core about riding and racing right through winter. It’s perfect for building skills and fitness from season to season. But it also trashes your gear, can lead to a run-down body at a time when flu’s and colds come a knocking, and isn’t much good for the tracks either. So when my mate Mozzy invited me over to do a race in far north Queensland (promising 21 degrees in late July) I jumped at the chance.
Mozzy lives in Townsville and runs an event called the Paluma Push in the mountains an hour north of town. The Push is an old fashioned point-to-point style race. At just over 50 kilometres and with an altitude loss of 400 m from start to finish, it isn’t a particularly difficult event, but given this was my off season, that would suit me just fine.
I flew into Cairns a week early – plenty of time for a couple of rides and a day on the reef before catching the tilt train to Townsville. Mozzy and a couple of other locals have been busy building single track for a couple of years now. The terrain is hilly, but not too harsh, and the vegetation is very open, so it’s not unheard off for an experienced digger to create 10 metres of track in an hour. As I’d originally met Mozzy at an International MTB Association trail building course, I was expecting some sweet track. We did a couple of rides and I was not disappointed. The trails flowed well with a gradient that made them a joy to climb, and included some impressive rock slabs. The wallabies were a nice touch, too.
On the Friday before the race we went out to mark the course with the other organiser, Hayden Tilley. The Paluma Push starts high up in dense rain forest, where it is actually fairly cool. After about 20 km the course breaks out into a savannah type setting with occasional trees sprinkled through grassland.
2005