2008 Dirtworks 100km Marathon

I had picked group A for my start group. So we watched the Elite group take off first, then got on the grid for our start. It was pretty cold, so Kylie wrapped me in a jumper while we waited, but it wasn't long before the race was on... the group of around 200 riders formed a nice peleton, which cruised casually for the first 10ks to the start of the climbing. I felt things were slow and my HR was low, but I sat in the middle of the front bunch and as long as leaders were never too far away I was comfy to cruise and warm up. I tried to chat to Katrin van der Spiegal as she is off to Canmore too, building some comradere with fellow Aussies that are going would be nice, but I think she thought I was a complete dickhead, oh well :(

At the bottom of the hill the pack broke up pretty quickly, all the good riders rode up there and the rest of us walked the first short but sharp pinch. It was rideable, but pretty steep, I chose conservation and walked, not really knowing what was ahead, deciding to save the legs for later.

At the top the group was scattered to the wind and the race was on, I imagine the view from here would be beautiful if it wasn't so foggy... ;) The course from here to the 50k was well... crap. I really hated this stretch. It is full of sandy and rocky firetrails, and I had chosen the wrong bike for this race. I took the Anthem, which is my race bike, but it has a much harder ride than my training rig (a Trance). The course is very rough, lots of rock steps and horrid bumpy descents that the Trance or a bigger bike would have eaten up, the Anthem on the other hand was just hammering me around like a jack hammer, I bottomed the poor thing out a few times before slowing right down and limping my way along trying to preserve the bike and my body.

There was no flow to this part of the course at all and I could never get into any rythm, it was so rough there was no time to take a hand off the bars and eat anything either. A never ending run of swimming pool sized mud baths littered the sandy and rocky course and at the 40k sign I started to ask other riders if this was how it would be for the rest of race (because if it was, I had had enough!). My driveline was grinding and screaming from all the sand and mud it had through it. I started to wonder if the bike would make it, and cursed myself for not carrying some lube in the camel back.

Thankfully though at the 50k mark the course changed and got some flow, I could put the hammer down and have some fun and it was great! The field was so split up now that I only saw another rider very infrequently and felt like I was out there alone, but that was OK with me, it made for no congestion ;) The fog had cleared to a perfect 20'C blue sky day and the views to the surrounding mountains are spectacular from up here, things were looking up! :)

At the 70k mark they had the famous canoe / plank river crossing bridge, it looked rideable, my driveline was howling by this stage and I figured if the bike took a dip in the river, that might be the end of it, so I decided to be a cat and walk the bridge. The decision made easy by a lack of photograpers at the time :)

From the river it's an awesomely fast ride back, I was feeling good and gave the last 30kms all I had. The climb is pretty easy and cruisable (compared to the first climb at the 10k mark) and once on top it's an undulating ride to the wickedly fast descent for St Albans, I caught a few tiring riders here and kept pushing for the finish.

Once at the bottom I caught and passed several riders and begged them to tack on so we could bunch up and work together. It would seem I had learned something from Wildside afterall ;) After a few knock backs I finally hooked up with two riders that were keen, and we worked fast change overs and went hard for the finish, freight training pass the odd straggler every so often; we offered for them to tack on too, but they let us go. It wasn't long before we crossed the line togther for a hand shake and were handed beers by the organisers, what an awesome finish!

If I come back I will deal better with the sand and mud by carrying some lube and take a bigger bike to cope with the rock steps, then I could hammer that rough 20-50k section knowing that once you get to the 50k mark, it's sweet and smooth sailing home... I note in the results it looks like I was the only one to do their second 50k faster than the first, and that really shows how badly I struggled in that technical section. Next time I would tackle that section better, with a bigger bike and the knowledge it isn't like that for the full 100k :)

Logistics

After the race we got stuck in 90 minutes of Ferry queue, making for a 6 hour drive home; friends of ours went to the other Ferry and only had to wait 40 minutes, so that's the smarter option for sure, would have saved us an hour.

Nutrician

Stats

Goals