Manx End 2 End Enduro

I would have liked to blog this race report earlier but its been a busy couple of weeks. The great news is my house has finally sold (completed today so I don't own it anymore) so Anthea and I have been busy. We've nearly bought our new one and hope to complete on that one on the 10th October. We are moving to Market Rasen which is north east of where we are at the moment. The house is a really nice 4 bed detached with garage and conservatory so at last I will have room to swing a cat (if I had one). This will be a big difference in my commute too. I will be around 23-24 miles from work. The plan is to drive Monday's with my kit for the week and commute the rest of the week on the bike. How this will work I'm not sure yet, I am looking forward to the challenge but don't want to get trapped in the mind set that its a chore which would make me get fed up with cycling. I will drive occasionally if it gets too much but plan to cycle as often as possible. Also the area i'm moving too has lots of woodlands within 5 minutes of the house and i'm on the Lincolnshire wolds so some nice cycling ground too.

Anyway onto the race. I went across to the Isle of Man for what has become my traditional end of season blow out. This year I didn't have to borrow a bike as I got a carbon Cannondale hard tail in August. The bike is superb and a real out and out race bred machine. I took my hope vision light across with me and my sister and I went out for an off road night ride while I was over. That is some serious fun and I think I will be doing much more of that when I move next month. 1700 people had entered the race this year but I didn't know they had seeded the top 100 based on the previous race last year to form an elite start group at the front of the field. This was nice to be at the front and not have to battle too much to get in the break away, and within a couple of miles I was in the lead break of around 50 riders. We hit the first climb and I felt good, moved through the field to around 20th. Once up the 1200 foot first climb I settled into a good pace as I was aware that i'd blown in the last 10 miles of the race in the previous 2 years and didn't want to do that again. I had 1x750ml bottle of High 5 Extreme on the bike as I don't like camel backs and my sisters boyfriend was doing the fuel stops for us. At the first pick up I grabbed the next bottle containing 4:1 and a caffeine plus gel taped to it and felt strong. It was the third pick up point that I had my first problem, Ian wasn't there with my bottle and I had nothing left in the one I had. I knew it was only about 30 or so minutes to the last place I was getting a bottle so during this time I took 2 High 5 Iso Gels to keep me going. It was during this stretch I had my second problem, I dropped off a ledge that had been a lot lower in previous years and stupidly looked back at the height of it, my front wheel caught the edge of a rut and I was off and rolling down the hill side but it was a nice soft landing on the heather. At the last fuel stop I grabbed the bottle of 4:1 off Ian I had missed at the other stop and was surprised to see my sister there. She had had a mechanical and pulled out of the race, Ian had gone to get her and that's why he hadn't been at the other fuel stop. I also grabbed the bottle of flat coke I was getting at that point and downed it in a oner. I then hit the last climb of the day and did 3/4 of the climb on the big ring, I knew I was in good form as i'd really struggled on this climb in the past events. On to the last big decent of the day and crash number 2 happened. Too much speed on a single track decent and I once again caught the edge of a rut only this time I landed in a gauze bush, not so pleasant. I still have splinters from my ankle to my arse!!! I got up quickly and ran back to the bike, jumped on and set off again. The hard work was nearly done, the last 2 miles is on the road with a big climb to the finish but on the road its much easier. I finished in 30th overall from 1700. To get an idea of how tough this event is only the first 85 finishers got a gold standard finish (sub 4 hours) and my time was 3 hours 35. I can't wait for next year :-)