i am a little overwhelmed by the results still even the day after. i woke this morning in a fair bit of pain – which indicates i put in a large effort for the day. it was a shocking lead in but an awesome final results never-the-less.

with back to back 12 hour work days then throw a 14 hour in as well [and thats not including the 4 hour commute daily] to say i was tired before the race was a bit if an understatement. some how i did manage to attend both PT training session that week but it just wasn’t enough and i would love to have ridden a recovery ride to work on the wednesday.

i’m realising more & more how important sleep is for a successful race and the friday night i was really controlled at the soap birthday bowling and dinner outing. i drank two sprites, one OJ, four to five glasses of water and had just half a glass of red wine with dinner and of course ate as much as possible.

i left the restaurant in randwick right on 9:30, caught a cab then train which had me in the door at home right on 12:00am saturday morning [race day].

i just wanted to go to bed but couldn’t because i had to pack most of the car for a 5:15am rise. once up ate, pack some more and drove the 1 hour to the race at mt annan.

the whole way down i was yawning and it took over 50 minutes for me to fully wake up. i was really concerned how tired i was before the race. once there, i set up camp almost solo before – glen, brent, trieu, and chris all eventually turned up.

chris and i signed on then i drove off up the road to vote at the local school. i then rushed back, kitted up and we decided to go for a roll around to warm up and check out the track.

we stopped by ludenia who suggested we ride the track. it was a great to do because by the end we knew the course but it was an epic fail because it took way too long. as we rounded one of the last sections of the track we heard in the distance the event centre PA calling ” 3 – 2 – 1 – GOOOOO, and were off in the 2011 rockytrailllllll” … SHITTTTTTTTT..

i knew martin was letting the 4 hr race off first and thankfully this was just that, the first wave. chris and i raced as fast as we could back but had to wait as all the 4hr riders made their way around the shortened first stretch to filter the field down a little. they all rode past us as we were held back by a marshal then i sprinted up to the start finish for the 8 hr race. with 5 minutes till the gun i only had enough time to down a GU. my HR was racing and i just didn’t really get time to recover from our reccy lap. straight after the start i hustled my way through the pack as best possible but it was very congested and it meant i lost a fair bit of time on that first lap.
for that first lap my HR was way too high with an avg 91% and maxing at 96%.

LAPS 2 -3
lap 2 i started to settle but i just wasn’t enjoying the race at all. i was yawning constantly out on course which isn’t good sign. there was still a fair bit of congestion and with a track that is very single track dominated it became challenging to overtake the slower riders. lucky i did manage to push out my fastest lap of the day on lap 3.

LAPS 4 – 5
for some reason i was really starting to dislike the race on lap 4. i wasn’t happy with my physical state at all. i was handling the bike really well but i just didn’t feel good at all. i was really concerned i was going to fade a lot faster than i though i would. i checked the times and it was showing by lap 5 being my slowest blowing out over a 28 min lap [thankfully only by 1 second!]. chris’s laps at this point were bang on par with mine so i had to lift it up or i was going to let him down! + at transition chris was looking strong.

LAPS 6 – 8
the next three laps things really improved. i started to feel good again and had really started to hit a consistent pace. on track i was picking specific lines and knew when & where i could rest & where to put in a big effort. the track was pretty brutal with true rest sections. it didn’t have a lot of climbing which i liked and the length of it was really starting to work well for me. as i was entering transition i was feeling spent so having a rest at that point was perfect.

LAP 9
when i left for my 9th and final lap i had a mission. it was to enter the hurt box and smash out a sub 26 to finish the day. ludenia had not long gone through transition and i had this vague thought i may catch him. i did see him, twice, but that was as good as it got with that mission. the kids just on another level. i pushed really hard and really concentrated on all my lines. i asked to pass every rider on approach rather than waiting back. by the time i rode up to the short climb into transition i was on my limit. i just made it in time for chris to complete our 18th and final lap but sadly my time was 6 seconds over 27 minutes but i was blow away as it was my 3rd fastest lap of the day. i rolled over to our gazebo and just laid down on the ground for about 10 minutes totally spent.

chris brought it home with a total of 18 laps in 8:26:05.

for the day it was more than an amazing effort from both of us. chris and i are the same pace now & what’s even more promising is he is riding a bike that must be 2kg + heavier than mine. he also hadn’t ridden the MTB since our stromlo race! he worked out that over the day [from the only laps worthy of comparing] we were just 2 minutes apart on speed from a total of 7 hours which is pretty freaky when you weigh it all up. looking over the final lap times we were so consistent – almost identical, sitting in the 27′s for the majority of the day.

we finish 14th out of 256 teams/riders etc.
in our category Male Team 2 Elite we finished 7th and only 0:01:13 down of 6th place. completing 18 laps was pretty amazing and such a great feeling. chris and i have a solid 2 man team going now and it can only improve from here. it’s just a shit that i don’t really get to see/speak to him all day, but thankfully he had bought two beers so after the race we just chilled in our seats and drank them. good times

its just under 4 months till round 2 at awaba. i can’t wait now

Ludenia the winner