The past few weeks have been a bit of a toughie. Several weeks ago I started feeling quite terrible on the bike—dead legs, a bit of a headache and some back pain. I put it down to the previous few weeks of hard hills and good km's. After a week or so, some good riding followed by good-quality recovery, nothing was changing and I found myself turning home from several rides, unable to continue and this was then I realised that what I was feeling was more than the sum of all my prior training catching up on me.
Heading to the doctor gave me little closure or help—she stated that I probably had a virus, perhaps even Epstein Barr (Glandular Fever) or Ross River Fever, but discouraged me from having a bood test due to the lack of treatment options for viruses. Great, this was fantastic news considering the upcoming races I had!
I headed to uni day after day, and each day for several weeks I could only last a couple of hours before I had to call it quits to head home and sleep. I missed the last Sunshine Series XC race—devastated to miss the legendary Adair XC course. But I felt it was the best, due to the:
Definitely preferring the XC events, and training primarily for them, I had never really explored the world of 100km racing. However I have had some relative success with some 6hr-lap races not too long ago so I was really hoping to smash the PnP.
The format was 4x25km laps, consisting of around 21km of singletrack each lap. Despite the masses of singletrack, the undulating rather than hilly terrain, the super fast trails meant the boys lapped around 25km/h, and us girls were averaging 20km/h. Crazy fast for that much singletrack!
I was hoping that a week of rest would see me racing strong, as I tentatively decided to race the 100km event after weeks of this 'Mystery Virus' rather than cutting my losses and hitting up the 50km event. Perhaps I was just excited to be in the vicinity of the Big Banana?
A group of three girls stuck like glue until the second lap—Trudi lead us down a singletrack detour and when we popped back onto the main train some age-groupers that started off a minute behind us chopped me, putting a few bodies between Trudi and I.
From then, it was me and the woman behind me, the second lap I rode the front the whole way, I was aware of Nicola's brakes squealing a lot more than mine throughout the singletrack, so I thought that if I could have the legs to continue then I was wasting far less energy in the singletrack and would be okay when push comes to shove in the later stages...
But in the second half of the second lap disaster struck—or at least disaster was observed (It most likely struck sometime in the first lap, methinks). My fork was feeling funny, but it wasn't until the rougher second part of the lap when I had a good squiz at it and noticed that my 100m travel had been depleted to nothing. I was using masses of energy to be smooth around the trail, was bone shaken and my fork kept on making that 'kang, kang kang'-ing noise, which is not particularly confidence-inspiring.
The final km's of the lap were the rough, fast, fire trail, and that's when I first saw the girl who was sitting on me for 2hr30, on a particularly rough section when I was struggling with my fork to ride fast, who came around on her full-suss (I was double peeved—not only had she sat on for however long, NOW I have a bunged fork, dagnabbit!).
But that's racing, isn't it?
It is such a rare thing that this type of mechanical would occur—my fork is well-serviced by the guys at RLC Sport and is usually plush and compliant. In fact, I am such a Lefty-lover that I have a Lefty-mug for my morning coffee:
But not that day, as it was. My campaign was over at 50km, and I was pretty mad—but honestly, what can you do? If you don't have a laugh about it you'll cry and the time I did have racing was good fun. Of course I wanted things to turn out differently, but I am pretty lucky in my racing—I almost never have any mechanical problems and if having one at this race means I won't have one at Nationals, then that's a good thing!
Aido rode really well, but predicted his fate before the race even began. Craig Gordon (Rockstar Racing) had turned up and they rode together (and fast!) for the first three laps, partway through the last lap, Aido mushroom-clouded and went from riding with Gordo to around 8-minutes behind. But an awesome result for an XC-only aficionado.
It was Aido's 100km debut and—after the race he declared it was his 100km retirement—all in one race. He came through start/finish and pretty much passed out, there were medics fussing around, and all I wanted to say was 'leave him alone, he'll come good', but I guess they were doing their job.
He came around, but was a smashed crabbie. An awesome ride, though. Age brings with it some perks, and for Aido it means just drilling yourself 'till there's nothing left in the tank at all. He's amazing.
Also, Juzzy Leahy rode strong in the 100km elite women's race, all part of her training for the World 24hr Solo Championships, happening later this year (crazy girl!)
The racing until National Series Season is minimal, I am trying to get my body 100% this week before launching into some meaty stuff so I can hopefully have a better, faster, stronger series this year!
Thanks Cyclinic and RLC Sport!