2016 Hodgson’s Bike Hub Roll of The Dice, Sunday 28th February

Winter is coming. You know how I can tell? We of the Coomealla Mountainless Mountain Bike Club have just run another Hodgsons Bike Hub Roll of The Dice (technically it should be die as there were two dice but no-one wants to be a pedant). This typically fun filled family event heralds the dying days of Summer and the kick off of yet another year of the flattest mountain bike racing on offer anywhere in this country…if not the planet.

However I get ahead of myself…what happened at the 2016RoD? Well a lovely cool morning tempted out thirty two pairs of riders to chase a share of the $600 prize money on offer by Hodgson’s Bike Hub. Juniors and many of our female members pleasingly dominated the field. There were a few long lost souls also amongst the throng. Quite a few teams were parent and child…which was perfect for this outing and the reason we continue to run this event.

The idea is that each rider in a pair does a lap of a specially prepared short course and then rolls our special pair of twelve sided dice to get a score between 2 and 24. Both riders scores are added together after a total of 75 minutes of riding to get the team score and the team with the highest score wins. Simple.

This year, however, we added a wrinkle. Each team had the ‘value’ of each of their laps taken from their aggregate score – so if a team did nine laps then they had 36 points (1+2+3+4+5+6+7+8+9=36) taken from their aggregate rolled score. Clear? The intention was that it meant a slow team doing only a few laps had a similar opportunity to do well as the fast team doing many laps. All either had to do was be really lucky on the Roll of the Dice! And it worked too.

After a typically hectic Le Mans start, the first lot of riders barrelled off into the Playpen and out onto the course. The fact that so many of the young ones are far faster than their parents at running down the road meant many of them left their elders in their dust…and the first lap train formed up nicely.

The somewhat hectic tone and the lack of course reconnaissance led to some riders finding themselves on the ground far earlier and in far more embarrassing circumstances than they might prefer but after a couple of laps things settled down, the breeze blew the dust away and the focus on rolling big numbers settled in.

Of course, many of our members took the opportunity to go out and have a blast around the track rather than sensibly working the mathematics and tuning their scenarios to enhance their chances of grabbing prizemoney. This admirable lack of forward planning led to numerous races within the Not A Race which proved to be entertaining and sometimes punishing on bike and/or rider. Mechanical fails were prevalent enough to keep the car park mechanics entertained over much of the event. Fortunately, first aid requirements were kept to a minimum but I suspect a few riders pulled up lame once they safely made it back to their own homes. All those afflicted by punctures or crashes were offered some reward by the donation of some puncture repair kits…so still some smiles

In the end there could only be three winners…

In third place with a score of 85 derived from 9 laps was Jodie Gibson and Wes Marks. Whilst Jodie was keen on a 60:40 split of their $100 prize money (based on some conjecture about who rolled a better score)…cool heads prevailed and many giggles were generated.

In second place were the ever-smiling Peter Gifford and the ever-quick Rohan Hollis with 87 points from 10 laps. In a traditional scoring situation they’d have romped it home given they managed to roll 23 points three times but on this occasion they only got to share $200. Oh well.

The winners this years were, fittingly, a father and son team. Logan Baldock was only slightly held back by his father, Mo and together they managed 9 laps and amassed 90 points on the way. Their die rolling technique could clearly be studied long and hard by gambling aficionados but since we are mountain bikers we don’t have time for that sort of stuff. Congratulations and $300 in cash went their way.

Thanks again to Hodgson’s Bike Hub for their continued and generous support of this event. Very much appreciated by one and all on the day.

The next event is the First round of the 2016 Coomealla Mountainless Mountain Bike Club Championship. We’ll be heading off around the 5(ish) kilometre track at Coomie on Sunday 20th March (sign on commences at 08:45 with race start at 9:30).

There’ll be an opportunity for members with current MTBA race membership to again pay in advance for all series races (except the 3hr Enduro).

The Committee strongly encourages all those members (including Juniors) who would like to race this year but who don’t currently have MTBA race membership to actually sign up for it (www.mtba.asn.au) as it will be a much cheaper option than day licences for each of our ten 2016 events. More information will be provided on this option in the coming days.

Till then,

Happy riding.