Anne and Kylie wanted to have a go at the 50km, so I thought I would ride with them, then a few days before the race, Adam heard about the race and on the spot declared a Grudge Match race between he and I :) So we left Anne and Kylie to do the challenge of the 50km, while we would race it (and each other).
It was a perfect day for it, over cast and not too hot, the course looked great to me, climb up from the Cottor to Two Sticks, then mostly downhill all the way back, like a giant Red Lap!
The tactic was simple then, hammer it to the top of the mountain and coast home leaving Adam behind, but do you think he was going to let happen? ;)
Right from the start the pace was extremely hot, I was in my crit racing HR (>90% maxHR, basically maxed out as hard as I could go) for the first 30 minutes, I figured I was going to blow up for sure, but kept above 85% for until we got to the top of the mountain, where low cloud was hovering, keeping us cool as we rode through it's misty caress.
Here the downhill was on, and I finally started to over take people, a few hard tailers on the rocky Two Sticks descent...
Adam was on fire, he had taken off and was out of sight by this stage, but I figured all would be well, as I am usually stronger in the 2nd half of a 3 hour event and might catch him, especially if that hot pace over cooked him in the first half...
Coming back toward the Cottor I was starting to reel more people back in on the climbs, and everytime I caught up to someone, I hoped it would be Adam, but it never was. I hammered for the finish, only to find him already there, having flogged me by over 3 minutes!
Well done Adam, it was an honour to duke it out and the best man won on the day, you're come back from months off the bike with a hip problem is most impressive (and daunting ;))!
That was surely a PB performance for me, I've never held that high a pace for that long before, am really looking forward to the upcoming 3 hour races now, this distance/time has become my favourite challenge!
In the end we came 6th (me) and 3rd (Adam) in veterans, or 13th and 10th overall. Worthy of note is that it was actually 60kms, not 50 as advertised, that sneaky Steve Hanley and Neil Dall tried to sneak a few extra km's in there without telling us :D LOL
Kudos to them, for putting in the effort to organise a great event!