Another winter gone

Its been a bit of a long break since my last post so I thought I should get back into the habit of the blog. The winter has flown by with the aid of 5 weeks of summer in America with my wife Katie, we went over for a holiday and I managed to slip in a US MTBGP round and the two North American World Cup rounds. It was awesome to get back over the states and check up with all my old friends there, not much has changed!

The racing was awesome and I was pretty satisfied with my results, coming in 8th at the US MTBGP round in Sugarbush, VT feeling extremely jet lagged and then 55th at the Mt Saint Anne World Cup. The World Cup in Windham was the only disappointment with a crash in qualifying meaning I missed the cut for finals by a small amount, after Windham though we headed off for the non bike holiday spending time in Las Vegas, San Fransisco and LA which was awesome. Nice to be a tourist for once!

There has been plenty of local racing on around Nelson too with the Nelson mountain bike club running their club DH series, Top of the south DH series, a 4 stage enduro and now a Super D series! I managed to win the Club DH series and we have just finished the Top of the south series last weekend where I won the final round by nearly 13 seconds in slick conditions of the Fringe Hill National track.

The 4 stage enduro was an awesome event held in the Codgers network of trails right by town and after some decent rain before the event it was a very grueling day! I have been really enjoying the new challenge of racing my trail bike and I ended up taking the win on the day by just over a minute overall!

To continue on with the trend of constant racing we have now just started the sprung super D series which is 4 rounds run every second wednesday night, Mildie is the man behind them and just to be extra sneaky this year he is keeping the tracks a secret until registration on the night to add an element of surprise!

The first round was an awesome track, nice and fast up top with a short sharp climb before some more down into another climb then just as your completely wrecked he threw us into the new downhill pump track just to see if our limbs were still functioning! I was definitely hurting by that point and managed to completely lose my rhythm and bounce my way down instead of doubling like usual. I ended up winning overall by about 9.5 seconds which was pretty satisfying! My new Ibis Mojo trail bike is pretty fast!

As summer hits everything is getting hectic again with organising all of my team stuff (graphics, jersey printing, ordering kits, ordering tyres, ordering parts, the list goes on!) and also trying to train for the National series but I love all of the this silly bike stuff and would be lost without it!

This is New Zealand full trailer

Earlier in the year I posted up my rider preview for the upcoming mountain bike movie, This is New Zealand, and now that they have finished filming the bulk of the film we can finally get to see the full trailer and it looks awesome! Check it out below
This Is New Zealand | Official Trailer on Pinkbike

Fresh lid!

I had been wanting to get a new helmet painted up for a while and I had also been wanting to do something on a carbon shell but having basically zero artistic talent when I finally decided to do it I went straight to Chris at Infamous Designs (www.infamousdesigns.co.nz) and gave him a vague idea of what I wanted along with the colours I wanted and left him to it!

After a few days I got back a draft image that Chris had drawn up and it was all set to go, the draft was exactly the sort of look I wanted, nothing overly complicated with a "fast" look, clean lines and a perfect amount of Carbon-Paint ratio.

A couple of weeks later I finally got to lay my eyes on the real thing and I was more than stoked with the result, Chris had exceeded my expectations by a lot and I couldn't of been happier. 

There wasn't a single hint of overspray anywhere, perfect lines and some very nice finishing touches to ensure it stays looking sharp!

If you are after a custom paint job on your helmet then I highly recommend you get in touch with Infamous!

Sugarbush MTB GP race report

After two days of flying and two nights of sleeping in planes Katie and I made it to Burlington, VT on the East Coast of America and met up with fellow Kiwis James Rennie and Pip Holdom to begin our trip to the second round of the US MTB GP which was being held in the small ski town of Sugarbush, VT.
Having never been there before I was pretty unsure of what to expect but after checking out the track we were greeted with a fully taped, multi line, wide track that looked awesome! 

The better part of Friday was spent building up my fresh new Zerode G1 and thanks to Rob Metz, Jeremiah Dylan Dean, Shimano, Fox, Maxxis and Gamut it was looking pretty awesome! The new anodized blue definitely helps it stand out!

After finishing up building my bike I managed to squeeze in a couple of runs in the evening to get a feel for the track and start to get my bike dialed in.

Saturday came out hot and fine and with qualifying in the afternoon it was time to get all my lines sorted on the track and get up to speed. It didn't take much to get the Zerode feeling at home on the rough track at Sugarbush and by the time qualifying rolled around I was feeling good on the track.

Photo: Dave Trumpore

With an open format for qualifying we were able to do our timed run anytime after 3pm so I decided to get up there early and get it out of the way. I ended up being the 4th person down the hill which was good to avoid sitting around in the heat too long!
Straight out of the gate was a short pedal and I decided to push it in my run to see how I was doing but unfortunately after bending a couple of teeth on my chain ring during practice my bike had other things in mind and primary chain derailed on the second pedal stroke almost sending me over the bars straight out of the gate! Luckily I managed to hold onto it and not crash so all I had left was to ride my run chain-less and see how it turned out. Surprisingly I managed to roll my way down into 8th which I was happy with, although still 24seconds behind fellow kiwi Justin Leov who qualified 1st, but I still felt I had some decent time to make it up with a chain on!

Photo: Dave Trumpore

Sunday was another scorcher and practice in the morning was hard work in the heat but nice to be away from the NZ Winter!
After a bit of bike maintenance on Saturday night my bike was all ready and with two good practice runs in the morning I was feeling good for the race.
The race runs were seeded off of Saturdays qualifying so being 8th it meant a fairly long wait until my race run, luckily though I had booked a room in the condos which were literally right beside the finish area and lifts which meant we could hang out in the nice cool room until it was time to race!
My race run started out good and I hit the fast open top section of the track smooth and clean before entering the woods and trying to adjust to the big difference in lighting. Down through the trees was smooth and I hit all of my lines before exiting out into the open once again for the final few berms to the finish.
All in all I rode a good clean run but felt a little reserved through the woods while trying to ride clean and smooth, in the end my time was good enough for 8th place overall which I was really happy with considering I have been away from International racing for nearly two years.

Photo: Matt DeLorme/Vital MTB

We are now in Mt Saint Anne, Canada for the 4th round of the World Cup series which begins with course walk tomorrow. The track here is traditionally pretty long and rough so I am looking forward to getting onto it on Thursday to test out the Zerode down there!

This is New Zealand - rider preview

A few weeks ago I posted a blog about filming for a movie coming out later in the year call "This is New Zealand" and ever since then I have been meaning to post a link to the my Rider Preview that Michael and Hamish put together from the three days of filming. I'm pretty stoked with the preview and this is just their throw away footage! Can't wait to see the full movie!

Rider Preview | Kieran Bennett on pinkbike.com

Last weekend the Nelson Mountain Bike Club kicked off their Club Champs Series which runs over the winter with one race each month. Traditionally the series starts off with an easier track to try and encourage people into racing and this year a short but fun trail known was "Redwoods" was chosen in the Brook Valley right by town. With it only being around a minute long I decided to race on my 6" trail bike rather than my full on downhill bike because the track just didn't justify the need for it, it was also a short ride to the top too so I could pedal back up between each run which helped turn it into a bonus training day!

Due to there being no shuttles sign in began at 12 and everyone could do as little or as much practice as they felt like before racing began at 1pm. After a couple of quick practice runs I felt pretty well dialed in and was having plenty of fun in the casual atmosphere. Even so I couldn't help but put 100% into my race run and coming through the line with a 1.03.35 which was good enough for me to take the win with a clear 3 seconds over 2nd place which I was really stoked with, I have been putting in a lot of work over the last few weeks to get prepared for my trip to the US for the North American World Cup rounds and US MTP GP downhill rounds and to win by a good margin on such a short track makes it feel like my training is paying off!

Another five weeks to wait for round two now and then three days after that I will be on a plane with my wife Katie and en route to my first race in the US at Sugarbush Resort, Vermont!

Filming for "This is New Zealand"

Some of you may have seen bits and pieces about the New Zealand MTB documentary that is in the works called "This is New Zealand" which is being produced by two young guys out of Christchurch. Hamish one of the guys behind it got in touch with me a few months ago giving me a run down on their ideas and asking if I wanted to film a section for the movie in Nelson which I immediately said yes to because it sounded like the perfect chance to show off what Nelson has to offer.

I wanted to get a bit of variety in my section so we spent one morning shooting some of the local trails that I use to train on my trail bike, there is a big network of MTB trail's about 10 minutes ride from my house and we managed to get a lot of cool footage there with some interesting shots off the back of my ute!

The bulk of my downhill riding was shot on Fringe Hill on the National Champs track, I hadn't been riding there since National Champs but it didn't long to get back into it and have some fun.

We also spent a day out on the Ben Nevis downhill tracks just out of Nelson shooting Reuben's section and also some stuff riding together for the transitional period between our sections in the film.

NZ National Championships

Over the past weekend I had the New Zealand National Mountain Bike Championships here in Nelson where I took on the first ever Super D National Championship and raced the Downhill Championship for the 11th year in a row!

Super D was held on Friday evening on the backside of the Codgers MTB trails down Firball, Turners and Dogs which ended up being a really testing race. Each section of descending was quite different from the other and a good section of pedaling/climbing in between each of them to keep the oxygen deprivation high!

Since I have ridden the track a bit over the past year I decided on just one quick practice run before the race to get my head around the track again and get a feel for how loose the dust was going to be. This event was raced as a single person timed run just like downhill which I think suits the downhillers because we are so used to pushing ourselves against the clock rather than racing other people around us.

Being the local I ended up getting seeded to be last down the hill which meant I was chasing down some fast guys in the form of World Cup Downhill racers like Justin Leov, Jared Graves and Matt Scoles which was a good thing because it meant there wouldn't be any waiting at the bottom to know how I went.

My run went well and after trying to conserve my energy on the descents I hit the hardest and final climb with a good solid sprint but after about 30 seconds my legs were feeling like bricks and I had to sit down the last 15 seconds and spin which I was a bit disappointed with because it was so close to the top but as it turns out I still managed to cross the line in 2nd behind Justin Leov which I was stoked it. Justin showed us how much of a freak he is by putting a solid 12 seconds into me! I definitely had no answer for where those 12 seconds went and I will tell you all now you can put your money on Justin being a podium contender at the first round of the World Cup in South Africa in March.

Next up on the cards was Saturdays Downhill practice which was extremely dry and dusty after a couple of dry weeks leading up to the race. The track held up well though with only a couple of small turns getting blown out by the end of the day. I took the day pretty easy as I was definitely feeling a bit slow after blowing myself out in the Super D the night before.

Race day looked like the rain was going to come for most of the morning but eventually the sun came out just as predicted by Metservice! With such a long shuttle most people only got one run in during the mornings practice and that worked out exactly as I was planning for me making it up for the clear run pro practice before getting organised for seeding.

I wanted to put a quick run down in seeding to see where I would be standing heading into the finals so I decided to just try and ride a normal run down there so I knew I had time to spare and that was exactly how it worked it, I ended up crossing the line in 5th place about 6 seconds back from Scolsy who seeded 1st

Knowing that I would need to take about 8 or 9 seconds off of my seeding time I hit the track was aggression in my race run hitting the first few corners quick until a corner that had changed a bit since seeding caught me out and sent me to the ground. I was gutted to go down so early and got back on cursing myself for the mistake but forced myself to push hard again to try and salvage what I could from my run.

The rest of my run went well and I hit the tricky off cambers with an all or nothing mentality making it through them clean and fast.

Crossing the line at the bottom I was surprised to see my time was good enough for 2nd and only fractions of a second off the lead! With 4 riders left to go on the hill it was a nervous wait to see how my time would hold up but in the end I finished up 4th only a few seconds from the win which I was stoked with considering I crashed and still made the podium.

Justin Leov showed again he is on form taking his first National Downhill Championship and his second Championship for the weekend.

Iv'e got two weeks off now before the NZ National Downhill Series resumes for round four in Rotorua, I know a couple of things I want to work on before then so its back to training and getting prepared!

Thanks again to all of my awesome sponsors for making it happen again this year, Zerode Bikes, Fenwicks, Results Gym, Equilibrium Chiropractic, Fox Clothing, Scott Goggles, Maxxis tyres, Shimano, Pro, Fox Racing Shox and Interislander Ferrys!

In the news!

Earlier in the week myself and my team mate Reuben Olorenshaw met up with a reporter from the local paper and did a bit of an interview and photo shoot. It ended up coming out pretty good in a half page article in tonight's edition, check it out here! http://www.stuff.co.nz/nelson-mail/sport/6317578/Its-all-downhill-for-Nelson-riders

NZ National Series Round 3 race report

Hey Everyone,

Another round of the 2012 NZ National Series is in the books and Methven put on a good one! I had ridden the top half of the track at Dave Balderstones memorial race in November last year so I had a rough idea of what to expect which made practice a little bit easier not needing to learn a completely new track. The top was a fast, open and had a few fun jumps in it to keep it fun before heading into a steep flowy section through the pine trees down to the finish.

Friday's practice was a day of fun runs playing around on the track with Matt Scoles which helped find out which lines worked and which didn't. Scolsy is my usual practice buddy at national rounds and is good to ride with because he seems to be able to pick the lines that work and get up to speed quickly while still having fun.

With a bit of rain sneaking down over night race day turned out fine but overcast which was good to help keep the dust down and the light change not quite so harsh going into the trees although it only took about half an hour for the track to be bone dry and dusty again!

My seeding run went well and I slipped into 5th place behind four world cup regulars so I was pretty happy to still be up there with those guys and it gave me some good confidence going into race runs.

After a big break unfortunately due to a couple of riders needing to be helicoptered out we were back to the top and getting ready for race runs. I think one of the best parts of the NZ Nationals is how much fun it is at the top of the hill before runs, no wind trainers, everyone is hanging out and messing around, not like a world cup start area!

I put in another solid run and felt like I had put in a competitive time coming through the line a second faster than my qualifier which put me into 3rd with 4 riders still to come. My time ended up being good enough for 6th which i was happy with although a little bit gutted when I saw the results and found I was only .09 of a second off the podium!

This result was good enough to bump me up into 3rd overall for the South Island Cup behind Matt Scoles and Brook McDonald which was a nice bonus for the weekend!

Still I was happy to put together two good fast runs on the day and am looking forward to National Champs this weekend which are being run on my home track here in Nelson, as well as the downhill i'm also going to be racing the Super D on Friday afternoon which I have been putting in work to try and pull a solid result!