Forever second..... Race Report British Whyte Enduro NPS Round 3 Grizedale, Lake District, UK

Ok, I have no idea how I do this, feeling all battered and tired from an XC race and then doing a 100km marathon the day after. But, when we lined up at the start line and there was no Sally Bigham, I was hoping it would be a little easier and I wouldn't have to kill myself, but then there was Jenn O'Connor there instead. She had finished a strong 2nd yesterday and was going to be my biggest competition.


The course from a bird's view :)

The course was basically the same as the NPS course from the day before with one modification: they took out the first technical climb to lead you further uphill on the fireroad, another singletrack section of the purposebuilt type, a fireroad linker descent that lead to another singletrack that eventually lead to the first singletrack descent from the day before.



The course profile - a lot of climbing!
We started riding and I kept with her for a while, but she was very good on the technical descents where she started opening a never again closing gap. I was close enough behind her for the first out of the 8 12.5km laps, but lost her sight more and more in the second lap. In the third lap I was feeling really crap, thinking "Why am I doing this to myself? I could just go for a ride instead in this beautiful countryside and enjoy the view....". By the 4th lap I got over it and rode on. It seemed as I was getting slower on the climbs (a total of about 2700m!!) I was getting better on the descents, starting to enjoy them more and more with each lap, with my favourite being the last singletrack descent. There were no girls around, so I mostly rode by myself or with some guys who were about my speed. Finally, after 06:05:37 I arrived at the finish, 11:24min behind Jenn O'Connor. Another second place.... but my time will come!!! ;)


The view from our car on the way to the B&B :)

Next weekend we are back in the UK for the Mayhem and I'm currently waiting to hear back from the German cycling body if I will be allowed to go to the World Marathon Champs in Italy. Lots more racing to come!

Full results, report and photos can be found here.

Some more pics by Rob Crayton can be found here and pics by Oliver Coat are here.

Race Report British Enduro Round 2 Drumlanrig, Scotland

After the XC NPS race on Saturday, Ryan and me tucked into a good meal at the local Thai restaurant in Dumfriess which we had found by chance when we were desperately looking for some half way healthy place to eat. We actually had 2 portions of rice each with and even though I think we had the biggest meals in the restaurant, we were still the skinniest people in there....

Beautiful bluebells were growing in the woods - amazing trails!

Anyway, Sunday morning was a bit of a rush to get to the race place due to miscalculation of time, but we made it in the end and arrived all ready at the start line in time. There were only 5 ladies in the 100km ladies category, including Sally Bigham, my biggest competitor who beat me in the last Enduro by a mere 47 seconds.

The whistle went off and we went up the hill. Sally and me took the first 2 positions for the race from the start and for the first out of the 8 12.5km laps I hung on to Sally to study her riding to find a suitable time and place to attack. She was ahead of me in the singletrack and I noticed that I might be able to break away from her by entering the long tricky singletrack section ahead of her in the next lap, because I had the advantage of knowing most of the trails due to taking part in the XC race the day before (they reused all of the trails from the day before and had added some more singletrack and a few bits of fireroad), so the plan was to attack her on the next lap at the start of the singletrack section and get out of her sight quickly and then stay on a steady speed and hope she won't catch up to me again.

Interesting profile - notice my heartrate steadily decreasing over time

And so I did attack on the steep climb towards the first singletrack section and sped off. I actually managed to do my fastest lap on my second lap with a time of 44min 3 seconds - the fastest ladies lap time of the day! On lap 3 I started slowing down again to a more conservative speed and cycled on. Unfortunately my lower back started hurting a lot (it had already yesterday in the XC race) during the race as the course was so rooty and rutty and it really shook you about, especially on a hardtail. Then it seemed that my attack move might have been a little too fast and had taken too much out of me, affecting my lap times. Eventually, just before the end of lap 4 Sally had caught up to me again and overtook me.

For the rest of the race she was able to steadily widen the gap by staying at a pretty much constant pace whereas I was having more and more difficulty with my back, having to stop multiple times to stretch it out and therefore having increasingly slower laps. When Ryan lapped me on my 7th lap, he told me that there was no girls for miles behind me, so at least there was no danger from behind, because my back was giving me serious trouble there was I had no chance to catch up with Sally, so at least I knew I had safely bagged the 2nd place and didn't have to kill myself for the last lap. The last lap was actually the most enjoyable, I rode it relaxed and smoothly, knowing this is the last time I had to go over these roots, around these corners, along the lakeside, through the field of bluebells in this absolutely stunning estate and actually enjoyed the prettiness of it all on this beautiful day.

After six and a half hours I went over the finish line, only able to lie down on the ground - exhaustion really kicks in when you allow it and Ryan was really good in trying to make me drink and eat. Well, he had already had an hour to relax as he had finished the race in 5:30h, taking a very respectable 4th place in his race.

The "Silver Bullet", a 1992 Peugeot 205 - who would have known it fits 2 adults, 3 bikes and a ton of other stuff!

Thank you also to Karen for doing my bottles and for running for a bar for me and thanks to Matt from Torq for his supply of racing fuel, especially that spontaneous donation of a caffeinated gel at the start of my last lap - you really felt the kick of the caffeine!

All in all it was a really good racing weekend and I am pretty happy with my performance. I wish though I had a full suspension bike for courses like this, my back was still killing me a few days after.

Another great performance from the Irish squad was shown by Peter Buggle in the 50km race who took first.

Results, report and photos of the race can be found here.

Sunday Enduro race

Sunday saw the Enduro NPS Round 1 race also in Thetford, UK - both the NPS and Enduro races are always coupled together.

I had left the decision about what distance I would do till the morning before the race. I was put down for the 50km race, but decided last minute to go for the 100km (8 laps of a 12.5km course, re-using some sections from the XC race from yesterday, but with some added new sections, similar to the day before) - I was feeling ok after the race yesterday and it would be a great test to see how my body would deal with a double whammy back to back racing like this. The weather again was beautiful and sunny and we girls gathered at the start line, this time only 8 girls in the 100km Ladies Elite category. At 10:00am we went off and thank god, the speed was slower from the start. When I went off there were 2 girls that went off together ahead of me and I tried to follow them, but was not able to close the gap to them in the first lap. Considering that the race was 100km long I didn't want to kill myself either in the first few laps and thought I would have enough time to work my way up to them eventually. I stayed at a constant speed, and the gap between the 2 girls in front and me also stayed quite constant. Eventually one of the girls started falling back behind the other girl in about the second lap and I was able to catch up to her and overtake her. The first girl though stayed at about a distance of 50-100m ahead of me for the following laps.

Then I had a problem, I had 1 bottle and a few gels that would last me about 2 laps, maybe stretching it to 3, but then I would have to stop at the feed zone for a refill. Because, unfortunately I didn't know anybody there who could do my bottles and wasn't racing at the same time, so a feed zone stop would mean loosing valuable time (Sean, you were so dearly missed at this race!). So I decided to stretch the big bottle to 4 laps and then stop to grab another big bottle and rip the gels off all my other bottles so that I might be able to do the rest of the race on that second 750ml bottle without having to stop again.... Eventually, in about the 4rth lap I caught up to the girl in first, Sally, and followed her comfortably around the course. But then in the feed zone, I had to stop to get refed, whereas she could race through and grab a bottle from her soignour. Nonetheless, I pushed into the pedals hard to make up the lost time and caught up to her about half way through lap 5 and stayed on her wheel for most of the following laps, one time even leading the race for about half a lap after trying to get away from her (I noticed she was very strong on fireroads and could pull away from me there, usually this would also be my strength, but I didn't have that kind of power left after the really hard XC race the day before, which she hadn't done, so I tried to pull away from her in my favourite bit of singletrack, which I managed, but then she caught up to me again on the fireroad sections). So she went into the lead again and I stayed on her wheel.

Although the laps were quite fast, averaging almost 23 km/hour with average lap times of 32min40secs, the speed felt comfortable for most of the race, only in lap 7 the effort started to take tolls on me and I was running low on liquid as well. So again I had to take the decision to either stop and grab another bottle of water and risk allowing her to break away from me or to try and stay with her but risking to bonk on the last lap. Finally, I decided to play safe and get another bottle as I was feeling more and more drained as the lap went on. Sally of course took the chance and broke away and pushed a good gap on me that I unfortunately could not make up for the rest of the race, giving her the win with a super fast time of 4:20:26 and me arriving in second place exactly 47 seconds after..... The next lady in third place was came in at more than 10min later.

The first 3 ladies in the 100km Enduro race

Full results and Joolze report can be found here. Pics from Joolze Dymond are available here. Pics from Rob Crayton can be found here. Ryan found some pics of us here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here (sorry, can't put them up here due to copyright).

I was very proud of my performance and how the race went, but also had thoughts going through my head such as - "maybe I should have tried to pull away earlier", "if I had also had a support person in the feed zone", "maybe I should have risked going without that last bottle"... etc. but then again, I was a little more tired from the hard race the day before, I still had a very good result and I have to say, Sally really deserves the win, she is an incredibly strong, consistent and determined rider, and I don't think I would have been able to pull away from her without her catching me again, so fair-played to her. Very interestingly our lap times both are very very consistent, the difference over 8 laps between my fastest (first) and slowest (7th) lap was less than 2 minutes and my slowest laps (4th and 7th) were those in which I collected my bottles....

Ryan thankfully had a good race too, and finished in a very strong 3rd place, making up for his DNF on Saturday. Well done!

100km Elite Man winners with a very happy Ryan :)

So, time for a few Thank you's again, firstly to Ryan for his consistent psychological support and training advice, to TorQ for also supporting me over the weekend (Ryan is now racing under their banner which I think is great because they make by far the best tasting gels that I ever had) and of course again to our B&B hosts in Magdalen House for getting up so early on a Sunday morning to prepare our breakfast.

Can't wait for my next UK race!