Dusty Husky

Did the 50 again this year. A pleasure to finally ride these tracks without much mud. Still coughing up a bit of dust this evening however. There were still a few patches of water in some of the 4WD wallows and it was a bit scary just how deep some of them were....
Tried a new tactic of heading off in the front of the second wave - it was supposed to be 2.5-3 hrs, so I was just in scope. Was in the front dozen or so at the end of the golf course, but gradually drifted back down the rankings during the course of the race. However, the faster start than my usual and the pressure of hitting the various sections of sniggle in relatively fast trains meant I pushed myself more than usual and the results improved accordingly.
The 50 km course was 70% different from last year, so any idea of a time based on last year's effort was irrelevant. This version seemed to have more uphill sections and probably more sniggle. I felt I was much faster and although I was actually a few minutes slower, I improved by about 50 places overall and 12 in category (there were 71 supermasters in the 50 this year!).
Although I don't usually stop for the food station in a 50, it was a bit disconcerting that the advertised "25 km" food station was located at about 41 km. My mate who rides with a smaller water bladder was dry for about 12 kms and started cramping badly towards the finish. Added to that was the lack of promised signage of "kms to go" from the 35 kms to go mark. The only sign I saw was an ambiguous "55km" sign. I was actually starting to worry that I (and a whole bunch of others) had taken a wrong turn somewhere and were deep into the 100 km course, but was reassured when one of the people at the feed station said that there was about 10 km to go. There were a few folks who took wrong turns at various stages and a couple of points where the 50 and 100 km intersected and you had to slow down for a marshall to point you in the right direction. All issues that shouldn't happen with a crowd that run these events for a living.
Other than that, a great event on some great track and a good outing on the Niner with re-conditioned forks and new drive train components.