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| SO EXCITED! The sun is shining, the last day of racing, pumped about riding some awesome singletrack. And hey, so what if my sunnies are half the size of my face? |
It was a 40km stage, and I had already decided pre-race that win the overall or not, I am going to damn well win this stage!
This idea started really well, but at the halfway feed zone when I went to throw a gel down my throat and my gels had fallen out of my pocket (how can that even happen!?) I knew that the remainder of the race was going to be a lot harder than expected.
I managed a half-bottle of coke throughout the 2hr20 or-so affair, the constant singletrack made it difficult to drink even that.
Though, saying that, the trails were some of the best we had ridden all week. I wish that I had slightly more cognitive capabilities than "rock...must ride over"... to appreciate them at the time.
I was lucky enough to be riding with Warren, who definitely kept the motivation up despite the fact that I was cooking on the inside. The last part of the course I felt I was definitely losing time, Waz crashed (which I laughed about a LOT once it was all over!), and my singletrack riding was very slow by this stage. I was technically ok, just every climb or pinch was a massive effort.
Anyway, we popped out at some houses near the end. Waz lost his computer in the crash so we had no idea how far it would be, but we were sure it couldn't be too far...we met a few nasty sandpits along the last fireroad, then came to a fast, flat dirt road which turned left onto the sand.
The end of the race was over the Todd River! With as much speed as possible I pinned it across, with the final 50 metres or so of sand must have been laughable for those on the river bank!
This was it! It was the end!
Very excited to have finished, and I had taken out the stage I wanted to most of all. It was the Tavis Johanssen memorial stage, and the boys that win this stage get their name plastered on a trophy. I don't get my name put anywhere, but it was nice to really hurt myself in the memory of Tavis, Willo and all other athletes and friends who had been taken too early.
So now what? We waited for jess, who came in almost three minutes down. Tough, because I needed a lot more time than that and it would have been near impossible to gather together bar an incident on Jess' Part.
But hey, it was a great week racing, and four out of seven stage wins 'aint bad, even if the long one that got away was the most significant time-wise.
Considering a few years ago I came to Alice to finish this race, was grossly traumatised most of the time by the technical nature of the terrain, finished my first ever mountain bike ride over 100km and really didn't know a great deal about being an athete, I am pretty proud to have come this way and have been able to have such a wonderful experience.
I was excited about getting more than 5-hours sleep a night again. I was excited about not eating sports foods, and about buying a new saddle for my mountain bike!
Even now, two weeks on, I still manage to have dream every single night about a stage race in some form. Last night I dreamt that Aido, Simon and Glenn were riding with me out the front of the long stage, the entire field being dropped by our amazing legs (of dreamland's concoction). Likey? No. But it's amazing that one week of your life can have such an effect!
Will we be there next year? Hell yeah. Without the pre-race pneumonia and now with some experience racing a stage race, hopefully I will be on FIRE!