This track rocks but 4hrs is enough!?

Another fantastic days racing in the Rocky Trail GP series. Being a bit soft I can't solo 8 hours but I'm liking this format a lot. Even though I finished before the 4h mark. Yeah - double soft!

Although (sorry Martin) I'm still not completely set on the whole turn-up-qualify-relax-race part but an extra hour in bed can be afforded to those who don't care to qualify and might take that option in the future.

Anyhow, what you all need to know about this event is that the track was completely awesome, weather was perfect and getting to follow a world champ like Gordo (and exchange a few words too) even for a few seconds is always a buzz.

As with the first race at Yellomundee I'm pretty happy with the consistency I found. Lap times were 26:12, 27:05, 26:55, 25:22, 25:33, 27:17, 26:06, 26:42. Although the astute out there will notice that only adds up to 3h30-ish. I had one 5 minute stop between laps 4 and 5 but aside from that didn't have any breaks (well, aside from a couple of the natural kind out on the track).

The truth is that I'm quiet amazed the lap times didn't change much because they were definitely getting harder. I actually had quiet a scare on lap 2 when someone stalled climbing up a tight right hander and when I unclipped to dab got a shooting, cramp-like pain in the left calf. Ouch! Rode on but it didn't seem to get any worse throughout the day so managed to ignore it. Well, more like pain in various other parts of the body started to appear and mask it somewhat.

It's probably just a testament to the track and the enjoyment level (what climbs there were, were more than compensated for by smooth, flowing, berm sprinkled descents) that I managed to ride like this for so long. But during lap 8 got a cramp in front of the right thigh, had the whole left side of my torso spasm when reaching down to adjust that shoe and even had a little twinge of cramp in the right hand. Nah - I'm too soft (see above) and decided 8 laps was enough. At least it made for some comedy for the race MC at the finish line (where my right toes also came back to life with some pins and needles - yay!). At least the rest of the field copped it too - very entertaining

But basically - a top day out for me and the right amout of ouch and fun mixed to perfection.

Garmin thingo here:

BTW - What I notice about that is that even though I know these things are all a bit relative the Edge says I used a ridiculous amount of energy (almost 1400 calories an hour for the full 3.5 hours!) despite the low (150bpm) average HR. You can see that the altitude varies lap to lap probably due to a weather front coming over but that should all even out in the end eh? And either way, 621m of climbing is no way enough to produce those numbers. All I know is that for me, and the way I was riding, this was far harder than the first 50 of the Angry Doctor from couple weeks back.