This weekend I traveled up to Fort William to take part in a 10 hour endurance race, in the face of Ben Nevis. The event ran for the first time last year, and I didn’t manage to complete the 10 hours due to my partner giving up, so I definitely had unfinished business!
Again I opted to do it as a pair, and I lost the toss and had to do the first lap. It had been raining pretty bad right up until the start, and we had to stand there for 10 minutes shivering in the rain before the race started. I got a pretty decent start and was one of the first back after the first lap.
Gradually after my first 2 laps, my lack of top end fitness started to show, I hadn’t been replacing fluids and I was starting to cramp. I couldn’t keep up the pace but managed to put in consistent lap times of about an hour. My teammate managed a 53 minute lap! For the final 3 laps there were points where I was having to ride along with one leg due to cramp, it was pretty tough. We were 13th out of 126 pairs after lap 4, 17th after lap 8 and I didn’t see where we finished - top 20 I hope (Edit - we finished 18th with 10 laps, ~108 miles).
The day was so good and it is still my favorite bike event of the year, even with the questionable weather and hordes of midges. My legs yet again look like they have some form of bad skin condition/acne.
Pics courtesy of Neil Hodgins and Nevispix.
[...] My pictures are here. Rider by rider pictures shot by Nevispix are here. Sandy’s comments on the race are here. [...]
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