Here's quick wee report from Innerleithen for you all, yep, we're back up here again, can't keep myself away!
This was the first proper enduro that I have done using my experience from the previous night & day 'tester' and I have to say that although it was so much fun it was so physically difficult too.
The format was practice and qualifying on the Saturday with racing on the Sunday, some people turned up on the Friday to practice so they weren't too tired for the Sunday. I however couldn't get the time off work so crammed all practice into the one day, which was fun, phew!
I practiced all five tracks on Saturday in the roasting hot sun, I'm typing this slightly manically at the moment I must add, and then I had qualifying in the afternoon. After riding 32km of either steep uphill or downhill runs it wasn't the best time to do a qualifying run obviously. It went OK though and I came over the line in 8th position, which is not too shabby cos then there's less pressure behind me for the race runs, clever eh!?
Sunday came along and it was blisteringly red-hot again. I had sunstroke combined with dehydration from Saturday to deal with resulting in an headache all day. I kept on the hydration gels (energy drink in gel form) to help me through and was getting bad muscle cramps as well. Not good!
Aside from that, the tracks were brilliant, a good mix of techy roots, rocks and sweet singletrack followed by flat out Caddon Bank type stuff with some real steep sections in it for a good measure.
From the word 'Go!' it was full on. Get to your start time as quick as you can cos the transition times were tight and then as soon as you got there you were literally straight off on your race run! Pretty hard to get your breath back and get the track you were about to go down into your head. 28km later and five race runs down it was all over and I was ready to drop!
I wasn't too happy with my race runs, but I know what to expect now. My overall time was approx 38 mins putting me into 6th place in Elite out of 11, not too shabby for a beginner in this format though granted.
I'm really looking forward to round 3 at Hamsterley Forest. Can't wait!
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