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| New camper! |
We temporarily misplaced the camper keys so did not get time to do any warm up at all (They turned up in the pocket of my shorts, how odd!). So it was straight to the start line. I thought some of the girls looked quite nippy when I scanned my competition, a couple of them were too. One girl was off and straight away I could see I was battling for 2nd place. The course had its usual long climb on the first lap. It always half kills me and today was no exception! Heart rate zero to max in about 5 seconds. after that it was up and down continuously for 90 mins. Lots of near vertical but short drops and near vertical but short climbs too. The longer quite hairy rocky descent was in it, as was the longer rocky climb. And a rock path that went around a corner, I thought I might fall off that when I got tired but luckily did not. The whole thing took quite a lot of concentration and was tiring because there was hardly anywhere to gather yourself and eat a gel.
I was 2nd for a while but a girl slipped by me. She was faster through the technical parts and I caught her on the climbs each time. I stayed with her for the first two laps but then wondered if I was going to make 90 mins so eased off slightly. I thought maybe she'd get tired towards the end. I lost sight of her for ages and when I got the bell my legs were all nicely warmed up so I decided to go for it. I caught up 44 secs on her in that last lap. It came down to the final climb! I was closing in but was pretty trashed after doing the last lap almost a minute faster than my next fastest lap. I caught her just as the climb steepened and I started to pull alongside for a final sprint past right to the line, but she saw me and pushed harder and I couldn't do it! She beat me by 3 secs. A most excellent race!!!
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| My step seems very low, or maybe the other two are just tall! |
