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| Simo and I relaxercise with a coffee post TT |
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| By day four the three-a-day coffee rules set by the Doc were thrown out the window. Here, Simo is sleeping on the table while Aido and Glenn caffeinate (yes, it's a verb too!). |
The dreaded night stage came. I realised that my light really weren't as good as I originally thought at this stage! I struggled through, with a chain of guys riding behind me. I was in the lead and intending on keeping it.
The singletrack course prompted much bitching and moaning from aggro guys that somehow failed to ride hard at the start of the course, but now wanted to get past mid-race. Quite difficult in the snaking singletrack and quite off-putting!
I was just trying to see and ride smooth when suddenly I was on the ground on my shoulder, stunned mullet. I struggled to get up, feeling a little confounded. A kind bloke did some neuro obs on me and I got up and rode on with the awesome Jo Wall, who was as amazing as I was distressed (ie: very much so). I rode in losing hope of the yellow jersey, but still only a minute 40 down on Jess who had her own battles in the race. Still, that blew her lead out to over 8 minutes with time credits.
Really really disappointed with this race, I kept thinking over and over 'if only'...but this is the nature of bike racing--it's tough! It's not neccesarily the person with the best legs on the day that will win...which is especially true when you add multiple days racing into the equation!
Oh well, one more day to go, and I sure as hell wasn't going to lie down and give it up.
(Note to self: I managed to ride the last day no problems...but now five days on I still have limited use of my shoulder. Sometihng I noticed after racing had finished, such is the power of the mind!)