24 Hours of Great Glen. What to say about this race. As a local, this was to be my A race for the year. The one I REALLY wanted to do well in and get the top spot of the podium. The days leading up to the race, even with the race efforts of the Wilderness 101 still in my legs, I thought I had a good chance.
I got to the venue, got camp set up and was right on the start finish line. You couldn’t have asked for a better position as far as spots go for service (I had no crew to help me out). I pretty much walked around the venue, chatting with folks, had a great dinner to fuel me up and got to bed pretty early as I knew it was going to be a long day.
I woke up nice and early, had breakfast and got all my gear 100% dialed in. I was completely ready to race, race hard and race for the next 24 hours. We lined up at the line for the Le Mans start and I staged myself at the back. I knew from other years, if you weren’t one of the first 20 people into switchbacks on Blueberry Hill, you were walking and going pretty slow. Still healing up from some blisters from the Wilderness, I decided that it was in my best interest to just walk the start, get on the bike and work my way through the pack during the fire road section. BAM, the cannon went off and I left the line with some type of speed people have never seen (note the sarcasm). After the .6 mile walk, we were working our way through the start line to grab our bikes, Abe from TWAF mentioned that he would give 5 bucks to the person who sprinted the last 10 yards. One to never pass down 5 bucks, or to make a spectacle of myself, off I went running, screaming the entire way. And, no, Abe never came through on his 5 bucks. I’m still waiting, but my hopes for seeing it has vanished.
I grabbed the bike and off I went. The legs didn’t feel to bad and I worked my way through a good section of the field on the first lap. Came into the pits, changed bottles, grabbed more food and off for lap 2. Pretty status quo, just keep the heart rate nice and low, drink and eat often and just ride my race. Lap 2 was about the same time (both about 55 minutes) as lap 1. Another pit, another lap. Times crept up by a few minutes each lap but I wasn’t concerned. By the middle of the 4th lap, I knew I was in BIG trouble. It seemed as if the effort put forth the week before was killing me. I could hardly make it through anything. I stayed calm, as I knew this was going to be a long race.
I came in from lap 4 and decided to take a little breather. I thought, maybe the body just need to recoup a bit with some cold drinks and some quality food. After about 45 minutes, the jersey went back on and out I went.
The 5th lap was still somewhat consistent with the rest, only adding another minute or 2, but the tiredness came right back. for the 6th lap, I could barely move the pedals. There was just no power to put into them. When I got back to my pit, I talked to the folks next to me, who’s rider was on lap about 9. It was less than 7 hours into it, more than 3 laps down and that guy was in 3rd place at the time, and looked strong every time he came through.
I had a major decision to make. With the Hampshire 100k coming up the weekend after, I had to decide whether to keep going in this race, to completely bury myself, putting myself in to the pain cave, big time, not letting me ride the next week. Or, to bag the rest of the 24 hour race, save myself and give all my effort the next week. After talking to some people, I figured that no matter what I did, there was no way to close the gap to the leaders, no matter how much hurt I put myself into, so I put the bike down and changed out of the team gear. So much for a 24 hour race, more like a 7 hour race.
After a good nights sleep, I woke up early, cleaned up camp and got ready for the last lap around noon. In order to not get a DNF, I needed to be on the course at noon. Around 11, I grabbed the bike and went out for the slowest lap of the day. I got back around noon, walked across the line and called it a day.
Overall, I finished 7th in the single speeds, which honestly, isn’t all that horrible. I must say, calling that race at 7 was one of the most difficult decisions I have had to make when it comes to riding, but I know it was the right one and the more I talked to people, the more they agreed. It was better to take a hit on the one race, then to completely ruin 2 races.
The goal now, was to prep my legs for the Hampshire 100k….
Here is the data from my Garmin 705.
