It’s been a long time between races at Tasmania for me.

I’ve competed at three national championships there, over three decades. Two in Launceston and one in Hobart.

Traditionally they have been smaller events due to the costs involved. The main factor being that you just can’t drive there like you can to the mainland states.

Australian’s are fans of the road trip, at least they are in the circles I move in. And if Tasmania was part of the mainland I’m sure it would be much higher on the to-do list.

Not only does it have a number of race tracks within a couple of hundred kms of each other it also has an endless number of bike parks. There’s no doubt that Tasmania loves it’s mountain biking and if it wasn’t for mountain bikers those jump parks simply wouldn’t exist. So I’m not about to hold that against them.

I’ve looked at Tasmania and the viability of loading up a van full of mates and just making the most of the riding opportunities. It’s something we’ve talked about for a number of years but just haven’t pulled the trigger on it.

What could be better than covering new territory and riding at 2 or 3 different spots a day for close to a week?

Now the race scene in the apple isle isn’t huge, it really never has been, and it’s not surprising given the population. Open events pull 60-70 riders while state championships are open and still lucky to pull

150 riders. It’s the massive number of motos that puts me off racing their open state championships. Not because I think I wouldn’t be fit enough. But I like to get my racing over and done with and use the extra time to poke around. Much like at Canberra last month where we hit the dirt jumps in the morning and raced in the afternoon.

In my master plan we had a crew of 6 or more riders hit a few jump parks in the days before and after racing. Reality has kicked in. Injuries, budgetary restrictions and just bad timing has trimmed the crew, and the trip, right back to bare bones.

The main attraction this time around is the final round of the 2018 Australian National Series. Personally I wanted to get to five of the seven rounds. Tasmania being the final round. Even for me though the trip is trimmed back. With only two days in Launceston it’s looking highly unlikely that I’ll see any dirt aside from the race track. And, well, that’s fine by me. There looks like some reasonable and fun jumps at Launceston, even if it does look a little mid-school from the photos I’ve seen. Long straights, low corners and a lot of pedaling. It’s not too different from the way it looked about 20 years ago when I last raced there.

It’s no surprise that my classes are merged, due low entries and there are very few Tasmanian riders to compete with, I was merged at Cross Keys and Frankston as well, but this time around I noticed there wasn’t even a masters class, male or female.

The race calendar is winding down for the year so it’s nice to sneak away and get an extra race in, even though I have been to club races with similar numbers.

I’m glad that BMX Australia’s fresh and all inclusive approach to the 2018 national series was to give the entire nation a little taster of national level racing. Ok, aside from the state that hosted the national championships, Western Australia – but that’s not a bad trade off.

I’m really looking forward to getting out on the bikes and just having some fun in a place that’s probably not exactly new to me but still a little different to what I’m used to.