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Nerves. Tension. Excitement.
I was given the (very dubious) honour of taking us off first. This involved one of the team holding my bike in a big straight with about 600 other people, and 600 of us running 500 metres (ostensibly to spread us out) to the bikes.
I took it easy not wanting to put my heart into the red zone right away (with a 16km loop ahead at race pace), but I was in the first 100-150 riders, grabbed my bike and off I went. Having a heart rate monitor is officially rad.
Running down that straight was one of the craziest things ever. I wish I’d had a helmet cam. Hundreds and hundreds of people yelling and screaming, flags denoting bike locations everywhere, it was crazy fun and a huge buzz. Highly recommended. I want to do it again!
Heading up a fire road (used only for first lap), smashing past people uphill, we quickly hit the fireroad-singletrack transition and came to a standstill. Pity the 500 or so riders behind me.
Here’s me pre-race.
Paul.
Andrew.
Matt turned the lens hood and came up with this (=cool).
Here’s what happens when you ask 600 or so people to sprint to their bikes. Chaos.
Me struggling with ridiculous MTB cleats. Pov.
And we’re off!
What followed next was 16km of sometimes fast and flowing, sometimes slightly technical downhill (easy downhill) and lots of technical uphill sections. I came unclipped three times which was most unfortuitous as it’s hard to reclip on a steep uphill with people pushing from behind. Especially with pov MTB cleats.
I rolled in ~55 [update: turns out it was 57mins, not bad for only 2 hours practise for this race] into the race, apparently not too many people ahead of us, and handed over to Matt B to smash it up.
Back to site, sore QL muscles already, Nutrigrain, water, V energy.
Stay tuned for more!
Flickr photostream is here.
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