278.60 miles

This was supposed to be an A event for me – I wanted to have a crack at breaking the 300 mile mark for 12 hours. At the end, I was almost 20 miles down on last year’s distance, having achieved none of my goals. Fail.

The race consisted of 5 hours on the ball, sitting pretty, so to speak, nailing my selected power and then LEGSGOBANG! a rapid decline such that I (barely) finished the event having averaged the power I’d typically ride during a 24hr. Meh. Big ol’ cup o’ meh.

All I can pin it down to is having a dose of the squits the day before and the morning of the race. Theory being, if your guts is dodgy, you’re body isn’t properly taking on nutrients and I basically just ran out of energy, even though I was eating my Torq goodies just fine.

The next 7 hours were then a feeble procession with a few attempts to pack (quit) but my team wouldn’t let me! I’m not one to bail on a race without there being a fatal mechanical or a hospital visit involved so the going must’ve been grim! Thanks to them I did get a 12hr training ride done and I guess it was still the second fastest 12hr I’ve ridden but when you know you can do so much better it sucks to fall apart so bad on race day.

Congrats to Mark Holton riding the second fastest 12hr ever, a 316.74mi, just behind Andy Wilkinson’s Comp Record 317 miles and Jill Wilkinson who rode the second fastest women’s 12hr ever with a 269.85mi ride. Also, nice work to Hoppo who bashed out a career high 270.89 miles.

Unfortunately due to the general feebleness of modern humans there aren’t many 12hrs run these days and the remaining events clash with other races/rides I’m doing so it looks like I’ll have to wait another year to crack the 300.