50 Km Dirtworks blast

I'd been training pretty well for the 100, and had a bad setback last weekend, with a bad cold that put me in bed for about half the long weekend. I spent the week recovering, and had my first tentative ride on Friday - 30min each way to work and back. So, the 100 was not really an option. I downgraded to the 50km and knew my past training would give me enough to get through it ok.

The start line had some serious talent, with ex olympian Paul Rowney, and a bunch of other well ranked elite, vets and masters contenders.
I decided to go out hard and get a good run on the field, so kept within about 10-15 bikes from the lead all the way to the 'big hill'. It was pretty fast and I averaged 92% of max heart rate - just nudging into the anaerobic zone. The hill was hard. I rode most of it, with a short section in the middle where I had to walk for a bit to get a few heart beats back - I was sitting up around 98% of max for most of the climb, and by the top my average was up to 96%. I lost sight of the leaders pretty early on the hill, and it became my own race from there on. Given it was 'only' going to be 2 hours or so, I kept up a hard pace along the ridge and up the many pinches, but still continued to get overtaken occasionally. My strategy was 'it's better to go out hard and drift back a bit, rather than go out easier, and try and make up time'. So it seemed to work, although by the 28k water station I could feel cramps lurking in my quads each time i got out of the saddle driving up the pinches. We continued to climb for about another 8k or so before a really fast and loose decent. Before I new it, we out on the road for a 14k time trial to the finish. I worked with a couple of guys and we kept up a good pace - although going up the last couple of hills the cramps came on pretty hard. Given it was only a short way to go I spun as best I could, and came in ahead of my target in 2:06, and 13th place in Masters. Given there were 162 finishers in the 50 masters, and 492 males overall, I'm pretty happy.
Average heart rate: 92% of max!

It was great to see the Nobmobbers out there, and there were plenty of stories and laughs after the event as we sipped on our beers.

Gazza, Martine, Steve01, Peter and Henry (Peter's 15 year old son, who came 3rd outright in the 50 open class), all camped in the area behind the tennis courts. It was a good spot, near where we camped in 2007, and was nice and relaxed. On the night before the race we were sitting back eating our big buckets of pasta, sipping on our wine and beer, when the moon rose shrouded in mist, but still nice and full. It was a glorious site, as was the night sky with the stars filling the sky - no pollution up at StAlbans!

I didn't get the final results before I left, but I think Martine took out 3rd in the 50k women and Steve01 did an absolute cracker doing the 100k in around 4:45, and he thought that he'd made third in 100k masters. Gazza came in well under the 5 hr mark - running hot too.
I think there were other great results - no doubt we'll get to read about them in the other blog entries.

W.

A few pics from the event.....