MUD MUD and more MUD!!!!

Hey guys, sorry about such a late post, my web page hasn't been working... irritating I know!

Well on Sunday was the Eston Illovo Marathon and Half Marathon. YOH!!! was it super muddy, Craig and I drove in and the fields were smothered in thick brown sludge and it was still trickling down. It soon dawned upon us that this was going to be a super SUPER muddy race. Surprisingly the terrible conditions didn't scare off that many people.

With 45min to go I hopped onto the stationary trainer. The weather was also freezing, so it was definitely a good plan for the trainer to come along :) After a really good long warm up we were called into the starting pens. Fortunately I was seeded in the 'A' batch so I was able to get a really good position on the front row.

Off the start things already became very clear how slippery the race was going to be, as even the lead bike crashed in the mud (yup camera man and all, with first 300m or so being thick sludge most of us took it very easy until the first climb. James Reid came to the front and set the pace with myself, Luke Roberts and Trav Walker all in tow. As we approached the KOM (king of the mountain) the pace heated up. Over the top Trav and James opened up a small gap, which I tried to close but couldn't get any grip with my tyres. I pushed super hard over the top and onto the flat section that followed to try reduce the gap. Unfortunately with them working together the gap slowly began to stretch.

In the attempt to close down the gap, I noticed Luke had dropped off, and this left me to chase down by myself. I got into a good rhythm and just kept pushing. The gap would open and stretch depending on the traffic, and I was hoping to close in the single track sections, and it worked to an extent, the gaps would get smaller but would open again as soon as we hit the road sections.

Approaching the 60/40 split, I was forced to run the majority of the climb. My gears were totally caked in mud, and my tyres were slick with nasty brown snot. Luckily I stopped at a water pumped and cleaned what I could out of my cassette (thanks to the guy that helped me).

Now came our long single track sections, and the gap started creeping down again, but not quite fast enough. The dodgy single track saw me buying a huge piece of Eston land, which saw me landing in a small ditch. I got up quickly and scrambled to my bike. Now in the last couple of kilometres I just rode as hard as I could in case a mechanical occurred with James or Trav.

I brought it home in 3rd (1st youth), just under 5min behind the two leaders, with Luke bringing in 4th. I was massively impressed with my race, as I'd been off my bike for 3 weeks and didn't exactly know the form I'd be in for such a big race.

But now its time to start cracking that whip again. Got some seriously tough training over the next couple of weeks. With Harburg Tour de Krantz this weekend, which should provide some fantastic racing.

till next time
ciao