At the top of Deadwood you'll find the 18km mark,

Makara Peak has some of the best mountain biking in New Zealand - and the world. Or so they tell me. So Sunday 8am we met at the car park and headed up.

My geography is hazy, but I think we went up Koru. It's single-track through bush, smooth but tight with trees close at hand. Fun but very straightforward, as such things go. Mostly Brains, Gordie and Ricardo go on ahead, with me and Scott bringing up the rear. That track turned at some point into Sally Alley.

Then we paused to lower our seats before diving down into the next valley on Missing Link. It's more rugged: cut into a stoney hillside at places the track was a bit bumpy and I envied Brains his new full-suspension bike. There are some steep drops off the side of the track. Missing Link runs down to a bridge on a corner at the bottom of a faster downhill bit - I'm told that Brains missed the bridge last time. And then an arduous climb up the other side of the gully.

I think we went up Aratihi next. But to be honest I don't know. There seemed to be an awful lot of uphill grind. We passed the spot where Scott broke his ribs a couple of months ago - he jerked forwards trying to ride slowly uphill over a rock and hit the handlebars.

Leaping Lizard downhill was great! Fast easy downhill singletrack. Yeehaa!

Then the hard Nikau Valley track, rated "expert" by my list of tracks. Midway down, after a difficult downhill turn, Gordie warned "there are some more gnarly bits" and hared off down a steep twisty slope. I followed and was surprised to survive. Brains came next, and went over his handlebars on the steepest downhill. He rolled and landed under his bike on his back and shoulders - as good a landing as you can hope for from a fall like that, I guess. He came up with a small scratch in his leg and a slightly bruised arm, but a bit rattled with lots of jangley adrenaline pumping around his bloodstream. The rest of Nikau Valley was less gnarly, though there was lots of narrow rough track. I lost it somewhere there as tiredness set in - started putting my foot down as I lost my balance more often on the little uphills and had trouble re-starting.

We came out near Brain's Bridge, and headed homewards back up Missing Link. By this time I was very tired, grovelling along slowly at the back with Scott as the others grovelled along slowly ahead of us.

Then back around the top on a bit of 4 wheel drive track, to the top of Starfish and SWIGG. Hard, but achievable, downhills. I again followed Scott, though this time with some aplomb.

2 1/2 hours riding, including a few rest breaks, and by the time I rode home I was quite wrecked. Karapoti's going to be more like 4 hours. We're going to get there, but we've certainly got a way to go yet.