Rocky Trail Grand Prix - Stromlo

I entered this race purely because the course was Stromlo red laps with the decent down the awesome skyline and berm tracks, my favourite bits. It also offered an intriguing new race format, with a qualifying lap and Grand Prix grid positioning for the start. It sounded fun!

Rocking up on the day it was hot, with the needle nudging 40'C. I opted for conservation in qualifying and gave it a little stab, but held back some energy for the 4hrs in the heat to come. I hadn't really understood the qualifying and assumed we be launched in 4 or so groups, with the fastest qualifiers in group A, so I hoped I had done enough to get into the first wave.

Sadly, that is not how it worked, and it seemed like no one else understood what was happening either; confusion reigned as they launched groups of 10 or so riders at time, 30 seconds apart. In the interim the rest of us stood around waiting to be called up. 5 or 6 groups went and I was wondering when I would get to start. Garry and I stood in the group, tapping our feet; our lap time had started when the first wave went, and we were stuck standing around asking ourselves WTF?!?!

After around 10 groups had gone, the organisers abandoned the grid system and just yelled "mass start" to the remaining 100 or so of us that were "patiently" waiting. Garry and I took off like a shot and luckily scored font row and then we were off, chasing down the riders that had been given up to 5 minutes head start on us.

The first lap was a screamer, with Garry on my wheel we went all out, catching wave after wave of pre launched riders. To our amazement there were 10 year old kids and other slower riders that had been launched well before us, I am not so sure the grid system was as good an idea as it sounded.

At the top of the hill I noticed my heart rate was through the roof due to the heat and had gone above my red line of 160bpm; I pulled over and let Garry go past. It was going to be a hot day and I was hoping conservation would win over brawn... only time would tell if it would.

I cruised through transition where Kylie was waiting for me every lap, keeping me going as usual. I had only brought 4 bottles with me, thinking "4hrs, 4 bottles, plenty". That was wrong, very wrong. Thankfully our sport is loaded with very generous people an Ed gave us a bottle of Gatorade and the entry pack included some Envirit powder, so we used a couple of those, which saved the day. We ended up going through 8 bottles in the end, 1 per 30 minute lap!

The course was so much fun that the laps very quickly ticked by and in the blink of eye the race was half over, I came through transition wondering where I was in the field. In a 3hr race I usually come around 25th place and have never top 20'd, but I also know that after the 3hr mark in longer events I am usually catching people back up; so in a 4hr race I was hopeful I could top 20.

Coming through at the 3hr mark Kylie told me Garry was fading and only a few minutes ahead, I grabbed a bottle of plain water and tipped it down my back and took off after him. Half way up the hill I could see his Bike Shed jersey in the distance and was spurred on to push a bit harder, by the top I had caught him. He must have seen me coming because when I got close, he pulled over and let me go, revealing he was cramping and in a bad way. He also revealed another interesting tid bit... he thought he was in around 3rd or 4th, which meant I was now probably in a top 5 position, wow!

I flew through the down hill part of the course and into transition where Kylie excitedly told me I was in 2nd place, which was just unbelievable, but I wanted to believe it! I kept the screws turned and tipped some more water over myself and knew this was the last lap; smash it to the top, then flow down to the end was the plan, I just stayed consistent and watched out for anyone catching me on the final lap.

Thankfully no one came and I rolled to the finish in 2nd place behind the mighty Nick Menager, what an honour! Something I will not forget for a long time to come!

Number Fun

Ascent: 2575vm (Garmin)

A look at power down shows the heat caused a 7% fade for me, and it was getting worse until I got wind that Garry was up the same creek, also without a paddle :) Power down in this race is pretty low, compared to my heart rate which was through the roof at an average of 150bpm, these effects must be due to the 40'C temperatures.

A look at the top 10 finishers lap times and Nicko was the stand out winner with a close race between Garry and I for 2nd and 3rd (clearly he was flogging me until the last two laps when cramps started to tickle him), everyone else seemed to have issues during the race, probably cramps or mechanicals?