MOUNTAIN BIKING
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South Durras mountain bike rider Becky Mates has continued her sensational form by placing third in the elite female category of the 100km Dirt Works Classic in Woodend, Victoria last weekend.
The impressive result comes just a week after Mates finished first in the female category at the NSW cross-country mountain bike championships held at Fitzroy Falls.
Mates said she found the Dirt Works Classic course in the Wombat State Forest to be a really good challenge.
“I found it demanding and it was tougher than I expected,” she said.
“There was a mix of fire trail and single track. The weather was really warm and the track was wet which made it hard.
“There were quite a few climbs where they were too steep to ride so you had to run up them and it seemed that on the fire trails you were constantly riding into a head-wind.”
What makes Mates’ third placing even more impressive is the fact that her training program has not been focused on endurance races such as the Dirt Works Classic.
“I’ve been training for cross-country which is generally a two-hour race and you try and complete as many laps as possible around the course,” she said.
“So because the Dirt Works was a 100km endurance race, I had to learn to pace myself a little bit more rather than just go flat out for two hours.”
Mates said she hadn’t originally planned to race in the Dirt Works Classic.
“I was supposed to be competing in the first round of the cross-country national series but it was cancelled so I went to Victoria instead and that way I didn’t miss out any riding.”
It will be Mates’ first year racing in the cross-country national series and she said that her recent results have given her confidence to perform at the top level.
“I’m new to the national scene so I don’t really have any expectations. I’m just going to do the best I can,” she said.
“I only started training for cross-country mountain biking in April and my first cross country race was the NSW championships last weekend.
“Winning that gave me confidence going into the Dirt Works, and finishing third there has made me even more confident that I can compete with some of the best girls in the elite category.”
Mates will compete in the cross-country national series as a part of Team Torq, a national elite mountain bike team.
It has been a rapid rise for the 25-year-old but she said she is not expecting to become her family’s second Olympian at the 2012 games in London. Becky’s brother Ben represented Australia in snow-boarding at this year’s Vancouver Olympics.
“London will be too close I think, we’ll just see how I go in the national series and take it from there,” she said.