On the Saturday Jo and Heather tackled the Women’s Challenge and they were both totally awesome! I won’t give too much away as you can read all about how they got on in their own update but I’m sure there will be some more MTB plans in the pipeline! There is definitely a lot of untapped potential there methinks – Jo even made easy work of the gravel sections!
The weather for both days was fabulous and the super fun course of around 10k was bone dry, riding pretty fast and awash with the usual seasonal colour including carpets of bluebells in the wooded sections.
There were bumpy grass bits, swoopy wooded single-track bits and even slalom sections around the equestrian jumps! Thankfully though they didn’t send us actually through the (rather deep) water jumps and a tiny little water splash was as wet as it got.
Sunday dawned and after a false start off the drive when I forgot my breakfast (doh! clearly not enough caffeine in my brain to wake me up yet) we were soon back at Catton and packed tightly together into the start funnel in readiness for the rather peculiar sight of hundreds of cyclists trying to sprint round a ½ mile run in their super stiff soled shoes – sort of “March of the Penguins” meets “Happy Feet”.
10am sharp, the hooter went and we were galloping off. It always seems to be quite a lot further than ½ mile until you are actually re-united with your bike and of course there is the added challenge of actually remembering where you left your bike in the first place!!
After the initial grass climb and a bit of slalom practice around the jumps there was a minor bottleneck at the start of the first wood but nothing too bad and I was soon back round at the start/finish straight where my own personal gang of cheerleaders (Jo, Heather and their enthusiastic backing group) were giving it some at full volume!! This was fantastic encouragement at the end of each lap and combined with all the friendly faces and voices out and about on the course the six hours just seemed to fly by.
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After the sickie episode at Thetford my dual objectives were firstly to force-feed myself every lap in an effort to get more consistent times and also to try and get in at least 10 laps. With my pockets stuffed with dried bananas and fig rolls the food thing worked much better (although a few fig rolls died in combat) so my laps times didn’t take the dreadful dive that they did last time. All in all it went pretty well for lap after lap until the six hours was up and I had finally got my target 10 laps in the bag – Result!
Throughout the race I had absolutely no clue on my placing which maybe was a good thing as I just chugged around doing my own thing and even when I finished I had no idea that I had actually managed to place second in the ladies open race!
I waited on tender-hooks in the pits for Hubby to come over the line from his 13th lap as he was having a shot at it solo for the first time. In the end he nailed a well-deserved 5th place in the huge men’s open race so all in all a pretty good day in the office – good job there were a few cold beers in the fridge at home!
The following GR2 items made it possible to get to the podium this time:
o Vertex Microsensor Shorts by Pearl
o Sleeveless compression top by Skins
o Originals Butterfly socks by Pearl
o Cheering by Jo and Heather
and for afterwards when just about everything hurts I pulled on the super comfy Peak Performance fitness pants and base zip long sleeve. Sweet.
This is a great early season event with a friendly atmosphere and acheivable for pretty much all abilities so keep an eye out for it next year and mark it down on your list of events to do. For a first attempt it’s probably best to enter with a friend or significant other in the pairs category and you can then decide whether or not you want to go it alone next time for the whole six hours!.
NEXT RACE REPORT:
National MTB Marathon Series Round 2 at Sherwood Pines on 13th May 2007
