The long race was to the north of the previous 2 days, characterised by very steep sided valleys and spurs and a complete mix of track ride-ability from flat out to a shoulder carry. After my middle epic of over 90 minutes I was prepared for a long one out in the hot sun – with my camel back full and even a couple of bars tucked away just in case.
We started down hill, the full sus bike was a great platform for map reading at speed but even then I could only take snatching glances, the track was really sketchy. I cut through the trees to #1 and rode well to #2 but missed the tiny turn off and had to cut through the woods after turning round. At #3 I was lucky that a stray dog took off after another rider, rather than me and at #5 I missed a single track and ended up running down a slope, digging my heels in. It was so steep if I had simply dropped the bike it would have ended up at the bottom. The climb up to #6 was awful, the map says 60 meters straight up but it felt like soo much more with the sun on my neck!
After a couple of controls in grassland, in the valley, the climb back up was brutal. I was careful to keep well over to the right in case someone was rattling down but ended up off the bike a walking a couple of times and Peter Simmonds who started 6 mins after me came storming past as we crested the hill. We turned for home and the decent back to the finish. I opened up the suspension lockouts and managed to just catch Pete on the finish line but he had beaten me by 6 mins and I was down in 5th.
Surprisingly it was not too long in the end ( more of a middle long) and I was only out for 99 mins but the winner took 25 minutes out of me!
