Held Saturday August 29th 2009 !!!

All photos thanks to Michelle Bull

Action in the 2009Cyclocross event at Pukete Mountain Bike Park

New Zealand National Cyclocross Championships at Pukete Mountain Bike ParkThe SECOND NZ Cyclocross Champs - Saturday August 29th 2009

Only the 2nd time in New- Zealand, and we did some things really well, but we also learned a lot about how to improve things for next year. Spot prizes were plentiful. The fun race to start was interesting and entertaining with much creativity involving bananas. The course was challenging and pretty. The barbecue was great, the frites were delicious, and thanks to Dole the bananas and mango slices were plentiful and sweet.

The weather was good on the day with no rain but the course was still difficult with a lot of mud as this photo shows and some tough terrain to negotiate as you can see from the picture on the right.

Full results are available from the link above. Interesting to note, the winning female was Linnea Koons who came all the way from Boston in the USA. We all thought she was American but on closer investigation it turns out she is a real NZ champion since she is actually a ridgy-didge New-Zealander with a NZ passport. Her mother is a kiwi and Linnea lived in NZ until she was 16. It was just her American accent and American bloke in tow (Cloin Reuter) that had us fooled. We should have known by the way she flew around that course, she just had to be a kiwi! Here is Linnea in action on the day

The timing/results team tried a new approach this year but were not happy with how that panned out and would not do it the same way again. It was a bit of a learning experience in what not to do. Last year's way was better. But they are sure next year's will be better again.
Greg Gibb will be uploading his photos at Imaginemedia . They are now in the form of an ordinary zip file - you can download the whole lot as compressed files, unzip at your leisure, peruse, and order any you specially want as full resolution images or prints.

2008 Results Here

For Next Year's Event -
get planning, start looking at all that junk in the garage and figuring out what can be cobbled together to make a Cyclocross weapon. For some inspiration check out these links:

There's this one to learn how to convert an existing bike. (You may have to scroll down the page a bit)
Or this one which is a cyclocross online magazine.
Or this one which is a cool You-tube video that may inspire you to get into this

To get here for your training sessions for next year . . . .

To find out where the park is in relation to the larger area, this Google map will show you,

To find how to get into the park once you're nearly there, use the one below:

Road map showing the way to get to the Maui st entrance to the park.