Saturday was destined to be a lovely day.  The weather forecast was good with sunshine and little wind.  I had entered “Ten more at Moray”.  A ten hour mountain bike endurance race.  I had entered the solo category.  Basically in a nutshell, ride around a course as many times as you can and as fast as you can in ten hours.

My loving supportive wife had come along to support me, she set up her mat on the floor next to the transition area with her books and my boxes of food and spares.  The course was roughly 17km long with around 350m of climbing per lap.  At 9:30 it was off time, around 300 bikers all huddled up sprinted for the single track at the bottom of the field leaving a large bottle neck.  I was in no rush as I was solo.  A lot of the people do it as a team of 2/3/4 and do it in a relay style.  So go for hell for leather for a lap then rest while their team mates go and do a lap then repeat.

The first few laps went past no issues, the track was great, fast, flowing and fun.  This was going to be great fun – but it was rather hot!  Most of the track was in the forest sheltered from any wind and the thermometer was tipping over 20’s.  My thoughts started to think towards keeping hydrated.  Knowing how much I sweat, I thought I had better take precaution.  Every lap I made sure I drank my entire water bottle which was filled each lap with different liquids for interest.

Lap 3 and 4 went past no issues.  Laps were taking me in the region of just over an hour.  Lap five was where things started to get interesting. 

I was so hung up on drinking loads that I had neglected my eating.  Then came a sugar low.  Now those of you who have had it will know what it is like – not very nice!  it becomes a mental game, the demons start to appear in the mind.  “you are done”  “there is nothing left” “it hurts, it really hurts”  SHUT UP SHUT UP ALL OF YOU!!!  I pulled over and rummaged in my rear jersey pockets for food.  I inhaled all I had which was a zip tie bag of cheese and dried meats ( how very french of me I thought), a load of jelly babies, a cheese and ham sandwich and two power gels.  I climbed back onto the bike and carried on, still had about 1/2 the lap to go.  It was hard, head hung low, mind is only thinking negative thoughts.  It is really hard to not just stop there and sit down for a bit.

I managed to finish the lap and got back to the transition period where Lara was peacefully reading and lounging in the sun.  Demons again started up ” give up, go join the wife”  “you are empty nothing left”  refusing to listen as I know this race is a lot about mental ability rather than physical, I though if i can just get myself outside the timing area then I am committed, off I went.

The food I had eaten was about thirty minutes inside and my sugar levels were starting to rise and so were my spirits.  But it was to be one of those days, next came the cramp.  I was so preoccupied with beating the demons that I had forgotten to drink and had become dehydrated in the heat.  I have had a lot of experience with some pretty horrendous cramping incidents racing (Sabah in Malaysia in particular) and knew that the situation can escalate into something really painful if I was not careful.  I had been on the go for six hours now and was desperate to carry on but knew that in an hour or so I would not be able to ride my bike due to cramping.  So reluctantly on completing my 6th lap I admitted defeat.  Head hung low, I walked back over to the timing tent and handed back my timing chip prematurely.  The guy said ” good effort lad, you were 9th out of the 80 odd solo entrants”  twist the knife why don’t you mate!!!

It was just going to be one of those days, a good learning experience,  I really enjoyed the 100km I did, had some good chat with other racers, saw some old friends and learnt from it.  Another learning that I really perform best in the cold on the longer distances.