LRRA 50

County 50 Champs is basically what the LRRA 50 is all about. I have ridden it in the previous two years, having a bad ride the first time around, and then a very good ride of 2.08 last year.

This year I was going off at no.77 of a field of 80 so there was every chance that I could have ended up last on the course and that all the cake at the HQ might have gone by the time I got back !! ( That obviously would have been a disaster ! )

There was good news and bad news when I signed on at the Village Hall in Osbournby - the good news being that it was finally a day of light winds, the doubly bad news was that it was going to rain all the way through AND the course had been changed due to roadworks - we now had to negotiate the 6 mile undulating climb to Grantham twice, and the course had been extended to 50.35 miles. This would be my third soggy 50 miler in the last 4 weekends, so I felt calm about the whole thing.

I took a chance and went with a disc wheel with tub after a lot of self doubting as I needed to finish today for both the short & long distance county all round competitions and I fretted a little about pucturing, but in the end figured that any puncture in the rain would probably be a race ender so took the quickest set up possible.

2.17 and I was off, doing a sort of reverse of the C10/10 course and boy did I feel good. In a stark contrast to the same morning when I really didn't feel like racing, just a few hours later and I was enjoying the opening stages, making my way up to the Sleaford roundabout where I made at least 10 seconds on my minute man, and then promptly lost them queuing in traffic at the roundabout !

Hammering down the return leg, I was maintaining good speed, and looking forward to the first climb to Spittlegate. On the first ascent, I could see my minute man getting closer, and I could gauge my effort not to lose touch with him, which helped enormously. I caught him by the roundabout and then had a good six miles or so to hammer back down the the Osbournby roundabout where I clocked an average speed of 24.5 mph. I deliberately re-set my Garmin at this point as half the race had elapsed at this 25 mile point.

Overall, I wanted 24 mph so knew I need to hold 23.5 over the second half of the course to do this. Firstly, though, I would need to do the whole climb to Spittlegate again, and I can tell you that second time around, it f'in hurt - a lot !! I was relieved to hit the roundabout again, and the opportunity to make up some lost average speed ground on the six downhill miles to the roundabout.

My position was beginning to get to me, and I was re-adjusting my seating a lot, and shaking the hurt out of the tops of my arms. Back at the roundabout at 23.9mph and just the reverse C10/10 bit to do. Happy not to be climbing the whole way and knowing that I was not too far from the finish, I really put eveything I had into this stretch. By Sleaford roundabout I'd kept 23.9, and by the finish I had improved it to 24.

2nd Wheeler on the day, a new PB, a tenner for being in the fastest team of three for the day ! A good days work.