2009 World Solo Championships

Last year we went to worlds to experience it; I was honoured just to qualify and represent my country, we had no plans to try and do well, so do what we do and see what happens, in the end we were amazed to find ourselves finishing in 2nd place in my category, so this year I was going there to race and win it...

The training was 12 weeks of hard work, it didn’t quite go to plan though (does it ever? :)), with me pushing things a little too hard, too early, and ending up too fatigued to get my heart rate up in the all important final weeks. I ended up peaking about 5 weeks before the race (3 too early), but remained confident in my form as a peak can last a few weeks. About 2 weeks out from the race Kylie and the kids got the H1N1 swine flu and were bed ridden and very sick for several days, I worried about getting it (and she worried even more about giving it to me at such a critical time in the training), but amazingly, I dodged a bullet and stayed well.

In my final big endurance ride, 12 days before the race, I crashed on a slippery corner in Stromlo and went over the bars. The fall was in slow motion, with me certain I was going to break my collar bone, thankfully I didn’t, but I didn’t get away scott free either, breaking my wrist. With only 3 days until we flew to Canada for Worlds, it didn’t look like I would not be able to race; I started to look into cancelling our trip and claiming travel insurance, and I stopped training (and started comfort food eating :P). Thousands of dollars and hours of sacrifice were going up in smoke in front of us, it was our worst nightmare coming true.

Luckily though, the bone I broke turned out to be one with a good blood supply; if you push breaks in some wrist bones, the bone can die, leaving you with a permanent problem. A sports physician confirmed my broken bone was not one of these though, and I could race on it, it would not suffer permanent damage, just pain and loss of mobility. This cleared us to push on and head for the race, armed with a pain management plan and suitcase contents that would make a pharmacy jealous :)

For the next few days my wrist showed improvement, but with 4 days of travel, jet lag and poor sleep, it only got worse by the day when we arrived in Canada. The stress of the last few weeks bore down on us like lead, and it looked like my wrist would be far too painful to race on, our dreams were looking shattered, again, and when a few minor travel issues didn’t go so well, they became the straw that broke the camel’s back, with both Kylie and I having breakdowns. I feel for Adam who was travelling with us, what great company we made!

A good slap across the face and a dose of HTFU later, and I got back on the bike and had some good pre race rides, so we decided we would go for it, regardless of how the wrist was, or anything else. We’d come this far, so we were going to finish it no matter what.

I had been seeded a woeful 71st, some 60 places behind several other riders in my category. Unable to see them or catch them in the foray that is the start of a 24hr race, I resigned to having to let them go and run my own race until dark, taking it easy and resting my broken wrist, knowing it had to hold up for many hours of abuse to come.

The start was fast, with the entire field seeming to go too hard, too fast in my opinion, so I just took it easy nursing my wrist around the course at my own pace. The laps ticked by and I had settled into a nice rhythm. The course had some really fast, fun and flowing fire trail sections, but the single track descents where a living nightmare for me; steep and loaded with roots, rocks and obstacles, completely devoid of flow. Two sections in particular where hell on a broken wrist. Jarring and smashing me like a ball in a pinball machine. Each time I got to the start of these sections, I knew I was going into the torture box for 20 minutes or so and had to just grit my teeth and push through searing pain. The rest of the course I could ride one handed, or just rest my right hand on the bars, so it wasn’t too bad I guess, and I was thankful to be able to ride at all.

Several times rain threatened us and Adam would prep one of our bikes with mud tyres, but luckily the storms kept passing us by and we avoided the mud fest that was last year’s race. In a way though, I was hoping it would rain, as it might level the playing field forcing my competitors to slow down in the bumpy single track too :) It never did though and we had a dry race right to the end.

When night fell we were in 3rd place, which is about 2 places lower than I was hoping to be, but there was still a long way to go and anything can happen, and usually does, in the early morning.

During the night there were many crashes, I saw 3 spinal board evacuations alone, one of which was particularly disturbing as the patient was unable to swallow and lay twisted on the trail like a rag doll that a dog had torn apart. It really brought on some fear for me, and others too, as the reality of the risks of riding this very tough course set in.

It didn’t slow me down enough though; during the night I was flying down the fire trail descent at full race pace, at least 40k/hr, when I railed around a bend to find a rock had been dislodged and lay in the middle of the road. I hit it with my front wheel and the bike flipped, throwing me at the ground. As I went down, I thought for sure I was going to be lifted out on a spinal board like those previous victims, and just wrapped my arms around my chest to protect what I could before I hit the ground. Luckily I rolled on flat ground, past trees and rocks, and got away without breaking any more bones. With a bruised hip and missing some skin, I jumped back on the bike and pushed on.

We had started to catch 2nd place and not long after the crash, while transitioning in the pits, I caught and passed him, he did not give chase and for the next few laps we put good time into Michel each lap. 1st place had almost an hour’s lead on us and seemed out of reach to me, but we were gaining on him each lap since dusk, little by little, so we just kept plugging away and hoped it would be enough or that an asteroid might fall from space and squash him! :)

My wrist was holding up well, but major blisters were forming on my right hand from having to grip the bar tighter and brace the wrist. My stomach too had started to shut down; I could no longer face any food but managed to force some down. By dawn my average heart rate had dropped to 110bpm and I was walking two of the tougher climbs, I was destroyed with nothing left to offer and wondered if I could even finish. Each transition became longer and longer as I took the opportunity to talk to my crew (and by that I mean bitch and moan to them and anyone else standing nearby about the pain I was in :)). I was not going to be able to catch Richard in 1st place and we had a secure lead on Michel, so I stopped pushing myself and just cruised, resigned to finishing 2nd. I started walking hills I knew I should ride up but figured it was not worth it, as the pain was getting worse and worse every lap and I wanted to be sure I would finish.

Kylie kept propping me up though with an assortment of Nurofen and Panadol to take the edge off, and she tried very hard to get me to eat something, anything. Then the inevitable happened, my lap times blew out and Michel’s team realised I was vulnerable and told him to attack, Adam over heard the order and noted Michel looked to be trying and got the panicked word to me that in one single lap he pulled 10 minutes back into us and our lead was down to less than 12 minutes with 2 laps to go, he was going to catch us for sure!

For a while I thought I might just let him go, and be happy with the bronze medal, “it might go well with last year’s silver and motivate me to make a complete set with a gold next year” was my reasoning; but then something inside me said there was no way we could let this guy come and take something away from us, something we had worked very hard and gone through hell to achieve and then I started to think about my kids, how many weekend mornings I had spent away from them training and that I owed it to them to never give up, ever, and to show them no matter how hard things get, you don’t quit, you keep trying. I opened the taps and started riding all the hills I was previously walking and smashing through the single track descents, teeth gritted, fighting through the pain.

I couldn’t eat anything, but forced down a couple of gels and kept the hammer down (as much as I could after over 23hrs of racing anyway ;)) and flew through transition without stopping, trying to ride strong, or at least look strong and strike some fear into Michel’s team, who were changing clothes and trying all sorts of other bizarre techniques to spy on us (very strange behaviour indeed!). The tactic paid off as he quit the race when his crew told him about me coming through with a faster lap time. Of course, I didn’t know this and had to keep smashing myself for another lap, doh! It was worth it though, to prove to myself that no matter how bad things get before or during the race, you can dig deep and find strength you never thought was possible to finish what you started.

This was a challenging race to be sure; the course was the tough, technical and challenging. The competition was fierce too, much tougher than last year.

In the end I did not achieve what I had set out to do (win my category), Richard was just too strong and credit to him; when I put down what I thought were two fast final laps, he put down faster ones! The result left me pretty disappointed :( A few days later though, we found out that we placed an amazing 9th overall! I still cannot believe we got into the top 10 in a race at this level, so that has left me feeling pretty elated and fired up for another one!

I have learned a lot during the training and in the race and am excited to see if I can apply what I have learned and improve next time. This is what makes ultra endurance racing so addictive, there is so much to learn and try in the quest for the perfect clean race; that no one ever achieves of course! :)

A huge thank you has to go to my sponsors Radical Lights and Onya Bike Belconnen and Civic for helping me with the cost of the gear that made this race successful; and to my amazing support crew; Adam, who put up with a very stressful, moody and horrible race lead up to carry me through, keeping the bikes mechanical free, motivating me and still finding time to take the most amazing photos, and Kylie, who went through hell for weeks before the race with flu, fatigue, the threat of her Canadian holiday being cancelled, a grumpy freaked out husband and a household of five to run, I don’t know how you do it, you are an amazing woman!

Some stats for fun, comparing to Worlds last year:

Stat	Last Year	This Year	Notes
Distance	260km	323km	No mud and less climb = more speed, yah!
Climb	7850vm	8460vm	Almost the full 8800vm of Everest!
Energy	57,111KJ 13,663 Calories 145 Tim Tams (6 per hour)	56,923KJ 13,618 Calories 145 Tim Tams (6 per hour)	For the same energy burned, a better result this year.
Heart Rate	118bpm	120bpm	I averaged 130bpm for the first 8hrs, 120bpm for the middle 8hrs and 110bpm for the last 8hrs.
Speed	10.8km/h	13.1km/h	A dry track is a fast track.
Training	16 Weeks, 297 hrs	14 Weeks, 265 hrs	Mostly done at 5:30am before breakfast and school time with the kids.
Result	2nd in Cat, equiv 13th in Elite	2nd in Cat, equiv 6th in Elite, 9th Overall	Same cat result, but much better result against the big boys this year.

Gap analysis: In my little race Tessier (CAN) and Rothwell (UK) pull away from me for the first half of the race. When dark fell on lap 9 I was able to keep the hammer down and started to reel both of them in while they faded, by lap 17 htough, they had cottoned on to my attack and both put down some quicker laps, but there just wasn't enough time left to change the standings that had been set in concrete before midnight. I've also put in a comparison of English and Smith who came 1st and 2nd overall, I just cannot believe how close they raced for the first 17 laps until Smith slowed down and English sped up to put 10 minutes a lap into Smith for the final 4 laps to take the win, nice work Jase!

Lap time analysis: Here are the lap times for the top 10 finishers, fairly tight competition, but Jason English is a stand out race leader, only Smith got close to his amazing lap times. How Dallas Morris went sub 1:10 on lap 17 when Richard started to attack him for 7th place is beyond me, amazing!