So race day has been and gone and Im still in one piece (mostly lol) On the Wednesday running up to the weekend I woke up feeling like $hit with a real bad dose of a flu type bug that really did knock me about with the aches and pains and a head full of snot ect but not to let a minor thing like that stop me the van was loaded with bikes and on the road at 5.30 ish Sunday off we went. The weather was all set to be the hottest day of the year so far but was out of the blue as we have had a fair bit more rain lately so the conditions were definatly going to be mixed. All signed on and ready for the start of my wave I decided not to go to mad on the start as it went straight through a narrow gate and didnt fancy getting crushed in the stampede, So the flag drops and the 165 as per the norm fires 1st kick and I end up going through in around 12th / 13th, So much for holding back. Track was a real mixed bag of terrain ! dry and dusty up the top of the hills and seriously wet and boggy in the bottom of the valley, loads of rooted ups and downs, some nasty greasy cambered climbs and those horrid football sized boulders that try to put you on your head the wetter they get. I just settled in and went at a pace I was happy with as the faster I tried to go my body just said NO !! I was sweating like a pig and finding it hard to breath so just let the 165 do all the work and now have a bad case of monkey butt for sitting down just a little to much lol. I did take a bit of a breather around the 2 hour mark to take on as many fluids as my big fat gut would absorb and set off for the last hours worth of what for me was pretty hellish as all my energy had just completly vanished! I never gave the eye a single thought as just trying to hold on was getting harder and harder, Knees elbows hands shoulders and a pounding head ache nearly had me pull up and take a DNF but I dug a bit deeper and JUST about made it to the finish, WOW I was shattered but real happy with the day as a whole. Bike dosnt look so clean and shiney now does it, but no damage done and it cleaned back up as good as new and is all ready to go again. Big thanks again to Walt for the new top end with the lower compression and just for creating the 165 as I love this thing to bits and would definatly not of finished riding anything heavier, only got stuck once all day and the 165 climbed every thing with comparative ease while many many much larger bikes crashed out and slid off the greasy climbs Oh and where did I come at the end of the day ??????????????? 8th And have never been so chuffed as I thought I wouldnt even be in the top 20 Thanks again for all the encouragement guys you all have been great
Congratulations and sounds like quite a ride and that 8th place finish sounds pretty good overall ... That headache part sounds a little scary ... maybe you were dehydrated?
