There were an awful lot of fire road climbs which went on forever, interspersed with some nice single track trail centre like sections and a couple of really muddy woody bits. I soon realised that jumping off my bike and running through the mud and sliding down the muddy cliff edge was by far the fastest way to do it. As the day went on the mud got deeper and the trail centre bits turned into streams and then rivers! Single track I was flying down in my hardest gear on lap 1 was a hard slog on the small ring by lap 5. It was pretty grim. On the bright side, the sticky mud on lap 1 (where I chuckled as a man lost his shoe) turned into watery muddy shin deep gloop by lap 3 and it was actually easier to run in.
Getting in from a lap and I felt quite warm, but 5 mins later and I was shivering each time. There was just an hour between each lap to change and to try and eat something. Then it was back out into the rain to wait for Lisa to return. I was rubbish at eating, I mostly ate fondants fancies! And a gel on each lap, I just couldn't stomach anything more. Probably due to getting zero hours sleep that night (we camped at the event).
I pushed myself on every lap, but the combination of getting more tired and worsening conditions made the times slower each lap. I started off at 56 mins 33 (garmin time), when I was fresh and the course was pretty fast. The 2nd lap was 59 mins 27, I lost 3 mins in the 1st half with most of the climbing in. The 3rd lap was 1 hour exactly, I was faster in the first half this time but my glasses were so steamed up and covered in rain and mud I literally couldn't see a thing in the woody sections. Wiping them just made it worse so I just had to use the force...
Lap 4 and I was really feeling it in my legs. No vision, caked in mud then swilled down with icy streams, 1 hr 3 mins. They'd cut out the worst muddy section now and so this lap was different, we did a load of trail centre singletrack instead.
I checked the results board after lap 4 as everyone was giving up and I wondered if it was worth putting my poor body through another lap when I was pretty much broken. But I saw we were coming 3rd!!! So I bounded back to the tent and tried to eat anything I could.
The answer was a pot noodle, a bag of monster munches and the last fondant fancy! Richard H made me a Horlicks too. I was all fired up and off I went. Lap 5 was a struggle, mile 40 to mile 50! I ate a gel and some Percy Pig and Friends sweets and forced myself to climb. There was literally nobody around, most teams had either given up or finished, we were in the hour of extra time, where if you'd already started a lap you had up to an hour extra to finish it.
I was very tired, had to run, OK walk / stumble up the steepest climb that I'd made on every lap before (the boys around me cheered every time!) Both really muddy sections were diverted this time so I had some new bits again. 1 hour 4 mins later and I'd made it.
And we did come 3rd! We very happily scrambled up onto podium and collected our medal! So it was all worth it in the end!
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| On the podium, it was all worth that extra lap of pain! |
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| It was rainy and windy and Lisa almost got stabbed by the gazeebo in her sleep! |
