![\"\"](\"http:\/\/zo-zo.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/09\/diamonds_in_the_dirt_2017_0.jpg\")
<\/p>\nnot me. that honour goes to natalie and in her first race, too. our friends from rocky trails entertainment, who also organize the flow rollercoaster, invited all girls young and old to come and race at ourimbah, incidentally also our home track.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
natatalie entered the race in the under 15 team category, together with her friend milly. milly’s mum nicole and i followed the girls around and helped with the bikes when it got a bit too tough.<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"http:\/\/zo-zo.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/09\/diamonds_in_the_dirt_2017_10.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
everyone is ready to go, i believe there were 60 ladies overall. note nat & milly in the foreground, as it should be.<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"http:\/\/zo-zo.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/09\/diamonds_in_the_dirt_2017_1.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
the girls were going to race for three hours; the person or team with the most laps wins. for teams, like nat & milly, they could hand over at any point, typically after one lap.<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"http:\/\/zo-zo.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/09\/diamonds_in_the_dirt_2017_2.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
martin from rocky trails entertainment, who is also from austria, not far from where i grew up. funny.<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"http:\/\/zo-zo.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/09\/diamonds_in_the_dirt_2017_3.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
milly rode the first lap and then handed over to natalie.<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"http:\/\/zo-zo.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/09\/diamonds_in_the_dirt_2017_4.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
both girls completed 3 laps, quite an achievement really. the course was 3.3 km long with an elevation of 61 meters. not much but the climb back out was steep with a few technical parts, definitely a serious challenge for the two little ones.<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"http:\/\/zo-zo.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/09\/diamonds_in_the_dirt_2017_7.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
it was nice in the bush. not too warm, no wind, a bit of smoke from the nearby bushfire.<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"http:\/\/zo-zo.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/09\/diamonds_in_the_dirt_2017_9.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
the reward of all the hard work was a place on the podium!<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"http:\/\/zo-zo.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/09\/diamonds_in_the_dirt_2017_5.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
and here is first & second place. milly and nat were by far the youngest & smallest in the field and earned a lot of respect from everyone.<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"http:\/\/zo-zo.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/09\/diamonds_in_the_dirt_2017_6.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
we are all very proud, not only because they actually made it onto the podium, but also because they completed a full three hour race, even though especially the last lap was really tough for both of them.<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"http:\/\/zo-zo.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/09\/diamonds_in_the_dirt_2017_8.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
that is serious grit and determination, and something to be really proud of.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
not me. that honour goes to natalie and in her first race, too. our friends from rocky trails entertainment, who also organize the flow rollercoaster, invited all girls young and old to come and race at ourimbah, incidentally also our home track. natatalie entered the race in the under 15 team category, together with her… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":8911,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8905","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bikes","category-our-blog"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/zo-zo.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/09\/diamonds_in_the_dirt_2017_5.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7MvER-2jD","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/zo-zo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8905","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/zo-zo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/zo-zo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zo-zo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zo-zo.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8905"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/zo-zo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8905\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15076,"href":"https:\/\/zo-zo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8905\/revisions\/15076"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zo-zo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/8911"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/zo-zo.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8905"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zo-zo.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8905"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zo-zo.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8905"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}