The great race

I had prepared for and thought about this race for so long I just couldn't wait to get going, so when I did I went too hard at the start, but it just felt effortless even though my heart rate didn't agree. One thing that was plain to see on my 1st lap (blue) and knowing the red lap from the 8hr was this course was not going to be easy to ride the full 24hrs, I sort of shrugged and thought I'll worry about that later.

Settled down heading up to the top on the red lap and heading down the 1st steep rocky bit after the bridge got out of sorts at the bottom and went OTB luckily my face took some of the impact as I didn't need it for pedalling, later in the race I was struggling with knee pain and thought it was from over use, but noticed after the race it was swollen from the crash.

I keep a fairly even pace till night fall and I just kept the food and drink going down. Midnight, half way, took too long to come, when it did I was relived and I said to myself, self it's all downhill from here About 5am feeling well below average my knee was real sore so I'm working the other leg much harder to save it, as I had 7 hours to go. I started thinking about those lucky baskets that are in a team of 6 and this is my last 24 solo.

Daylight came and I was in transition still feeling fairly used and had only heard I was in 4th place, I left thinking that may be as good as it gets. 1 or 2 km later I see my wife and son on the track saying something about race leader "who's race leader?" "you are, you are" Well that put a different spin on things and I started riding a bit faster. By the time I pitted again the computers had been updated and I was back to second place I went out for my last lap at about 11:45 hoping to pull Neil Dall in but didn't. It was a lonely lap as not many were going out at that time of day.

I'm totally stoked at 2nd place, even more at 7th solo male as 3 of them are champions.

I performed better at this race than the solo champs last Easter by doing more kms on a tougher course and I qualified for the World's open category by 2 laps this time instead of less than 1 lap.

It was a great race and it was great to have so many familiar faces there.

John.