friday, the route choice yesterday, and today's catastrophe, hopefully
we're done with the bike issues and will have a smooth day tomorrow, so
what happened today? All in good time.
Yesterday we'd been pretty efficient after the race getting fed and set up
for today, the only issue was my complete inability to sleep, at least that
gave me the opportunity to eat plenty, so hopefully I would be well fuelled
unlike tom gibbs from HH-nuun who had been ill several times overnight, and
so would be doing the first run on jelly babies.
Bruce set off looking pretty keen, and then HHN were 4 minutes after him,
and my countdown started. At 9:04 I was away, leaving kirkby stephen
looking for a footpath this took me off towards some farmland where I lost
a minute or so getting my bearings, and then onto moorland heading for 9
standards rigg, a stone circle that I eventually approached, shrouded in
mist, an hour into my run, having seen no other soul as I battled across
the boggy surface.
From the top there was more bog hopping down past an 'area of shake holes',
which was a very cool field full of small flat boulders, that looked like a
huge rock sheet had symmetrically cracked as it cooled. Here I saw a couple
of walkers braving the forecast before hitting the B6270.
Slogging along the road I still hadn't seen any other racers, and just had
the chance to say a quick hi to H2O before heading back across the
moorland. A navigation error here cost me another few minutes as I found
myself on the wrong side of some bogginess. Heading south I managed to
avoid sinking too far and reached the track to keld, which was very boggy,
slippy and generally hard going, especially as I was fairly certain bruce
was going hard and eroding my lead.
Shortly before keld I caught ant emmett, and we ran into TA together, him
confirming bruce was on a mission today ... Oh good ;-(
The time check told me he was 15 mins ahead, so 7 mins gone from my lead
.. Could be worse, but he's a strong rider so expect that to grow as we
head out for an MTB.
After friday's puncture I was a little cautious on the rocky sections, and
the foot plates that had been doing so well on the road turned against me,
slipping every time I stopped to open a gate, not seating back into the
pedals very quickly, and being too slippy to pedal unclipped. At least
that's my excuse for losing another 5 minutes on the ride ;-)
Actually I was quite pleased to hear that, and headed out on road wheels
confident of making some time back. I immediately started passing other
teams, and the pace notes I had written for this section worked a charm,
allowing me to pass several teams stopped studying maps at or near
intersections.
Through brompton-on-swale, the lights were red turning into the B6271, so I
went for a cheeky hop up onto the kerb to cut the corner, only my front
wheel decided it preferred to stay in contact with the tarmac and dropped
out of the forks. Needless to say, this somewhat impeded forward progress,
and I went straight over the bars. Nothing appeared badly damaged, though
the wheel is no longer true, so back in it went (Thankyou disk brakes), and
I tried to head off. Unfortunately the anti chain suck device didn't stop
the chain going round the cogs, but was now stopping it returning. Out with
the multi tool to sort that out and I was on the way again, with the
addition of a bit of visible blood and a couple of new bruises.
Getting back going was hard work, and I had a bit of back and forth with
one team who were using a cyclocross bike for added speed, and they
eventually pulled away from me as we headed into Northallerton and I
trailled them into the leisure centre and collapsed across the finish line.
First order was to find out how bad the final result was, and I was
pleasantly surprised to find I'd pretty much pegged bruce on the last ride,
so lost about 12 minutes to him and HHN ... Could have been worse, and
here's hoping for some sleep tonight and a trouble free day for kev and I
tomorrow.
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