A new start for 2010!

I have a new bike on its way, and am VERY excited. A wholesaler is sorting me out an awesome deal on pretty special bike through the Quiet Revolution Cycle Shop and it's on its way to Christchurch now... All will be revealed when it arrives, and I will take some photos and update my blog with a new header and sponsor images (it's looking a bit bare at the moment!).

Can't wait to get on it, and then get it off the ground! Yusss!

Buy my V10!

I decided to leave the Santa Cruz team (for reasons I won't put on here) and so my V10 is for sale. I'm still representing for the Quiet Revolution Cycle Shop and SR Cycles (who do Kore, Vesrah and Fly), and I'll probably be wearing a Martha Hucker riding top when I get some printed!

I don't have a new race bike for 2010 yet, and tried to do a race on my Heckler this weekend - it didn't go too well, I only did practice, did some big jumps, but then got nailed in a steep, rough section with my short forks and xc head angle. So with a sore neck, bad weather and an inappropriate bike I didn't bother to pay to do the race in the end! Was a fun day practicing though. I have a renewed respect for how awesome big bikes are, and I can't wait to get a new one... in the meantime, my V10 is on trademe looking very bling with its red wheels on. BUY IT!

Swin Flu Survivors Zombie Killing Mountain Bike Army Single Speeders

The SFSZKMBA is a facebook group Martha Hucker started a while ago when the swine flu media hype was at its peak. So we named our Macleans 12hr team after it, and dressed up as a post-swine-flu-apocalypse army of single speeding mountain bikers and shot toy guns and bits of potato at everyone all day, and menaced other people into riding faster with a baseball bat and some creative heckling!



In terms of riding, it was pretty cool tearing around the flat, bermy tracks on a fast single speed. We came third, only ten seconds behind second, and also got prizes for best dressed (along with a couple of other people). Was an awesome day!

A road trip to Queenstown

I've met loads of cool people in Churr Churr, and one of my new buddies suggested a quick weekend away to Queenstown, and I couldn't say no. It snowed on and off and there was actually quite a good storm on the Saturday morning, but the weather wasn't really that bad and we got heaps of riding in, hitting up good old Seven Mile, Remarks track, Wynyard and the pump track in Wanaka too. A good weekend, and Mops (my xc travel buddy) learnt to put her seat down and ride steep stuff... nice!



Remarks track, these shots look just like some taken in summer, but with a lot more snow and cloud on the Remarkables in the background...

Trying new things

There's a new biking club here in Chch called the Christchurch Single Track Club, and they had a club barbecue on Saturday. Despite having had too much of a good thing on Friday I took my hangover and my single speed along to see what was happening.



The highlight was definitely bike polo - riding bikes and smashing stuff with a stick, yusssss! I had a really good time playing with a whole bunch of other people who were new to it as well. There were a few silly races, like an egg and spoon race and some kind of relay. Then I tried out a unicycle, which was really hard but I could kinda balance after a while. And finally I had a play on a proper trials bike, which did great bunnyhops and got up some rocks, and part way up a picnic table... Fun, but I have tooooo many bikes, so NO I'm not taking up trials!


This kinda looks like I'm on the ground, until you look at where my shadow is...

World Champs

I went to Worlds to do coverage for Martha Hucker dot com. Where do I even start writing about it? It was one of the most intense weeks I've ever had, I got to meet so many awesome people, cranked out some coverage I was pretty stoked on and Emmeline won. Awesome.



I had a media pass which was amazing, as I was allowed to go anywhere. The media are really well looked after, with a massive tent with fast internet, food and drinks and access to all areas including the 'exclusion zone' on the sides of the track which allows you to take photos from right up in the action.


That's me with my video vest on the side of the track for qualifying.

The best part though was meeting all the riders, and how stoked everyone was on the whole Martha Hucker thing. Until now I thought the site was maybe making a tiny wee bit of difference, but in some riders eyes it's a huge step in the right direction, and getting told that by some of the best riders in the world who have been doing it for ten years plus is really quite amazing. It really motivates me to keep doing what I'm doing, and try to do it a whole lot better. I need a better computer, mine keeps crashing while I try to edit videos!

It was also amazing to see everyone riding. I have a huge amount of respect for the ability of the top riders, but at the same time I think I can get there... it just takes a lot of practice, but that's the fun part of riding! I have a whole load of techniques I spotted from different riders that I can't wait to try out and see if they work for me. Watching the world's best ride hard for a week is definitely good for your riding style...



Me and my 'trusty' laptop, doing extreme reporting!

The coverage and videos are on Martha Hucker dot com...

Martha Hucker photo shoot

I decided to get some tee shirts printed for Martha Hucker before my trip to Worlds, and when I went and put the word out to see if anyone wanted any it turns out that loads of people did. So we then did a photo shoot up in Vic Park. Here are some of the shots, the full set are on Martha Hucker's facebook: www.facebook.com/marthahucker


The whole MH crew doing a mass-skid! From left: Mel, Fraser, Michelle (Indri is behind her in this shot - damn!), me, Lilly, and Anna



This wallride is pretty fun, we spent a while on it and some of the riders hit t for the first time which got everyone stoked! I'm trying to style up the huck off the end in this shot, but it's not really much of a kick...



I need to learn some better tricks, but one handers are still a bit fun :P

Winter racing in Dunedin

On Thursday I head about a fundaraiser DH race in Dunners, and even though I couldn’t talk anyone else into joining me on my last minute road trip I headed down to stay with Scotty and Celia and take the opportunity to ride one of the coolest tracks in NZ. The weather forecast was rubbish, but ended up being fine all weekend. We were riding a freshly-cut piece of track across an exposed hillside which was pretty fun to slide into tight berms on, with the track finishing on the same open section as Nationals.

I felt good on my bike on race day, and was just having fun riding. In the open women, there was just me and Shannan from Invers who I’ve met at race before, and whose brother Peter was racing with a broken wrist. We all got three race runs because there weren’t that many people and my three were all pretty good – in my second I slid out and came to a stop, but it was actually my best run. It was cool to see how the times related to the way the runs felt on the bike, and it was nice to be riding fast but relaxed again.

The race was a fundraiser for Eddy Masters, who did a great job of organizing it and is off to Worlds to represent NZ at 4x. All the category winners won ‘tommy tippy turtles’ donated by a local shop, but someone drove off with them in the car so apparently they are getting sent out! I still don’t know what a tommy tipp turtle is…

Move to Chch, and BMX

I've moved to Christchurch and it's exceeding my expectations for rad-ness so far. I came down here from Welly - I love welly, but felt like a change, am too broke to go overseas now, and wanted to live in at least one other NZ city before I decide which is best!


My bike in the snow just outside Christchurch in the hills. We were plaiying around and filming for a project my flatmate is working on. It's a bike film but I was the only one who brought my bike, the others had done it before and I learnt what they already knew - dragging a bike up a hill in knee-deep snow is arse, and riding it down is slower than expected and not really that fun! I did some skids and faceplants, but I don't think I'll be in the film, it wasn't as cool as the stupid stuff the guys were getting up to...

For the first few weeks the trails were closed due to rain, which was a bit stink. You can still ride offroad just not on the best tracks. I got into riding street with my new flatmate who has a bmx. He likes to take full credit for my quick conversion to owning a BMX - it only took two weeks! But it's all about the riding, BMX is rad and a new challenge, and chch has multiple indoor and outdoor ramps to ride. Awesome.



That's me on my new Kink Doyle BMX in Espresso (brown). (Thanks again to SR Cycles for helping me afford this when I really shouldn't! Luckily in chch it's possible to live on $1 pies...)

Recently the weather has fined up and this weekend I rode my DH bike properly again. Well, sort of properly - Flying Nun is an awesome track, not an extreme downhill track and I was riding UP as well, but it goes downhill fast, has big chunky rock sections, and has awesome flow.



As you can see, Chch is rocky. I had an awesome afternoon riding with Vorbettes and their lovely hubbies/partners/wotev. There are lots of other women who ride here, and they're not scared of rocks... well, maybe just a little bit!

Check out Mel's (Tinkerbell) blog here with other pics of riding on Sunday, and a video of us thinking we're having a photo taken and heckling passing roadies with transparent lycra while we're at it (I'm easy to spot on the far left, the only one with a DH bike!)

I can't wait till summer, if I'm having this much fun here already it's only gonna get better when weekend shuttle buses start rolling in September, 10 minutes ride from my house, on some really great DH tracks. Oooooh yeeeeeah!!!

Eye of the tiger

It's winter, it's horrible and cold and raining, and even though riding in that is still fun for a while, and I'm used to the cold by now, cleaning bikes all the time gets lame pretty quickly.

This winter I'm trying to build more core and upper body strength, and since I'm not riding my bike all day as a courier I have the time an energy to do it on top of my normal riding. So as well as some weights and strength excercises I've been making regular use of my boxing bag - I've had it for ages but it tends to be a last resort for when I'm injured and can't ride!

Since I'm still at home it's set up in the shed along with an awesome 80's ghetto blaster that I bought for $2, crammed in between the bikes, bodyboards and windsurf gear, and a whole load of Dad's old tools. My MP3 player hooks up to the ghetto blaster, although I should go really old school and make a mixed tape... Eyyyye of the tiiiiiiigerrrrrrrr!!