Good fun weekend

This is the first time I raced the highland fling and it was a great weekend. I am really happy with my result, my fitness was good but I struggled with cramps for the back half.

I started the race with about 100 people in front of me and really wanted to use the first stage to warm up and it was clear that there was many people behind who wanted to race from the start. There were lots of riders passing me but after a couple of kms the testosterone and pace of the riders around me settled down and there were some good packs forming to ride with.

Coming into transition I stocked up the gels in my jersey, filled the camel back and had half a sandwich while I had a pee. I cruised a bit much too the next timing gate and didn't make it in the five minutes.

The next stage I started pushing and had clear track for the first two sections of single track and they are great fun. I was picking people off on the hills as I moved through field and trying to find wheels to follow on the flat fire road. On the third section of single track passed about ten more rider and it was great how polite everyone was. Maybe with 50km in the legs no one is that worried about racing. Just before the transition I started cramping, I had been having a salt stick tablet every 10km but clearly that wasn't enough. I popped a few more and decided to have one every 5km from then on.

At transition stocked up of the food and water again. I could not believe that during 5 hours I drank 8 litres of water, a biddon with 120grams of High 5 and 12 Gu gels! Only only missed the 5min time limit by a few seconds this time and found a fast moving cyclocross rider to sit behind on the dirt road.

The final stage I was staring to suffer from the cramps and ran out of salt tablets too. That meant that I could not get out of the saddle and get up the more technical single track climbs so I was walking them with slower half fling riders. Stoked to see the finish line with an average of over 20km/h!

It is great race to do, really looking forward to doing it again and learn from the mistakes this year.

http://app.strava.com/activities/27477658