Punishment indeed ....

I was really really looking forward to this one ....... This unbridled enthusiasm lasted all of 3 km's before I picked up a stick in the rear derailleur and badly bent the hanger. Looking at the condition of the singletrack after 800 riders had gone through, I seriously considered turning round and heading back to the start ( as quite a few people appeared to be doing...). Common sense prevailed and I replaced the hanger with a spare form my pack but by this time, I was dead last and probably about half an hour behind the next rider..... not a good start.

Momentum was proving to be elusive with even the downhill fire roads being fairly unpleasant. The grit in my eyes gave a whole new meaning to the term 'blind corner'. I spent the whole of Saturday evening squirting saline into my eyes to try to clean them out... Just when I seemed to be getting a little flow going, what momentum I had was snatched away by the somewhat inevitable onset of chainsuck ( what do you expect when trying to ride through mud which is deeper than your bottom bracket...)
Just to let me know who was really in charge, fate added a monumental clipstack to the chainsuck. Over I went and while I landed smoothly, I can't say the same for my cruelly persecuted rear derailleur..... bent hanger number 2 and only another 88km's to go !

I bent the (f@c%i*g ) thing back using a multi tool and brute force but it was obviously a slightly flawed process. Suffice to say that gear selection from that point on was a fairly random exercise....

While there were still over 80km's still to go I was now another 30 minutes further behind and was pretty much resigned to the fact that even this early in the race, I wouldn't make it to Stromlo before the cutoff. In some sections, I started to enjoy it but couldn't quite shake the feeling that I was destroying someone's hard work by riding singletrack in these kind of conditions. To prove that Karma has a sense of humour, every time I started to enjoy it, I came to a sudden halt followed by the now customary slow sideways fall into the mud.

When I finally arrived at the 35km water stop, it was almost noon. It had taken the best part of 4 hours just to do a third of the distance. For once, common sense prevailed and I called the support crew to come rescue me .....

It was the right call at the time ..... but now I'm starting to feel a bit soft for bailling !

Roll on next year I say ..... as long as I've got all the grit out of my eyes by then

CB