I've just added a small gallery of photos taken during Masters 1 and Masters 2. Click HERE to view.

It's time to wake up those climbing legs and start the Mt Buffalo Challenge for it's 3rd year.Each year the number of people entering is slowly increasing which is fantastic.With the "Tour of Bright" entries currently being taken, it seems fitting to launch this year's competition.Matt Clark has owned the Men's Trophy for the last 2 years and will start the favourite once again.The Women's event gets more interesting each year, with Clare Dallat the current keeper of the Perpetual Trophy.Rumour has it there will be times under the hour from the Ladies this year.

                                                                  Details of the Competition.
The Mt Buffalo Challenge is a competition to time your ride up the main Mt Buffalo climb.There are 2 perpetual trophies offered for the fastest time for both men and women.
The starting point is at the bottom of the mountain near where the little office/gatehouse used to be. See the stone wall on the LHS (I think this has a digital screen on it now) for another landmark,with the Eurobin Creek Picnic area sign on the RHS.Just start your time when your passing through this point and you'll be close enough. It will be based on the time it takes to ride from the starting point (see pic below) to the top of the main climb finishing at The Gap.(finish timing your ride when adjacent to "The Gap" sign), see image below.   

           Important Statistics. Distance 18.5km, Average Gradient 5.4%, Elevation Gain 1004 metres. 

                                             PLEASE READ THIS PART IN RELATION TO STRAVA. 

It's probably better to be stopped or rolling very slowly at the start so as not to get an unfair advantage by hitting the start line at 40 kmh.The Mt Buffalo segment on Strava is around 10 seconds shorter than the manual timed segment I've created for this competition, so you can use Strava to get your time.I will then add 10 seconds to all Strava times.It's been decided to not make this a Strava only competition as many people want to join in who don't use it.It's pretty easy to time it manually on most bike computers or an iPhone.

There are many ways to submit a time for the competition and one way is to contact me via email. I'm also on Twitter so feel free to tweet a time in too.The 2013 results sheet can be seen below the current 2014 results for comparison.I will also need the date the ride was completed,your name and racing category or age so that information can be added too. 
Feel free to leave your time in the comments section at the bottom too. 

                                                                    IMPORTANT NOTE.
I also think it's fair to the leaders of the competition, that anybody submitting a winning time be able to verify their time either on strava,taking a photo of your bike computer displaying the recorded time or have somebody else that witnessed the ride. 



                                                         2014 COMPETITION CLOSES WITH A BANG 
Many thanks for everyone who has been involved in The Mt Buffalo Challenge over the last three years.I enjoy running it and hope it keeps growing in the future.Making the trophies was great fun and I know the quality of them is appreciated by the winners.
  
With a week left to run in this year's competition,Verita Stewart completed the winning ride on the Women's side of the ledger.
Verita is improving all the time and has made huge gains in the last year,can't wait to see if she will be the first Female to go under 1 hour next year.

Not to be outdone,like the last minute bid on an Ebay item, Matt Clark once again proved he's the man to beat.Matt completed his ride on the second last day of the competition after Stephen Lane had been in the lead for most of the year.

I'm trying to work out how to get more competitors involved in future years.This year has been the lowest in the event's short 3 year history.I'm thinking about running a handicap event along side the current scratch race.Hopefully that would create more interest for those of us not gifted enough to get the fastest time.Just have to work out a handicap system!!