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Chain suck sucks
Having not done much training for this race given the terrible weather I wasnt sure what to expect - especially given the wet weather in the lead up to the race. Many of my mates had pulled out so I thought I would just try to have a nice day out on the bike and see how things went.
I got to St Albans with plenty of time to spare before the race began and started to get ready only to break the top of the presta valve off when pumping up the front tyre. Ran over to the CBD tent and they had no spare valve cores so as I was running tubeless I had to quickly put in an inner tube. I was not off to a good start.
Got to the starting line with plenty of time to spare, determined to ride off in the Group 1, only to discover that heaps of riders had jumped in from the sides ahead of me and I had been pushed back into Group 2 (again - this happened to me last year ). Gun goes and I hit start on the Garmin I had borrowed from Chitts and realised that it was paired with his HR monitor so I would have no HR data to ride to as I usually try to sit on 90% of max in enduro events.
Got to the big hill with only a few riders in front and managed to ride the entire Wrights Creek climb for the first time without dabbing so chuffed with that. Pretty uneventful riding - puddle dodging - until the 50km mark when I came in at 2:38 (same time as last year). By now though I had some serious chain suck in the middle ring and on the road up past the Buddhist hermitage I had try try to pedal without getting chain suck. I toyed with the idea of stopping to clean the chain and apply lube but figured this would take too long and I would had to do it again once I hit the GNR / Shepherds Gully so I put up with the chain suck and tried to use the big and small chain rings until the small one also developed chain suck.
I took Shepherds Gully pretty slowly as I was terrified of wiping out on the wet mossy rocks which is probably what happened to the Elite Torq female rider who was being tended to by medics at the bottom. Got to the canoe bridge and put my ipod into a zip lock bag (just in case I fell in) but rode the bridge with no problems. Jumped onto the back of a "peloton" of two riders along the road section to let the legs recover a little as they were starting to cramp and then hit the Womerah range at just under the 4 hour mark and just tried to get through it with the cramp twinges and chain suck working against me - knowing that I may be able to do a sub 5:30 time if things went OK. Passed a lot of riders on the climb and managed to ride the second pinch before the top where a lot of riders were walking. Down Jacks Track at lightning speed along the road and into town to stop the clock at just under 5:30.
Overall I was pretty happy with how the day turned out weather wise. Happy with my time if I deduct the mud handicap which some people are saying added about 10 minutes to this year's times. The bike was making horrible noises for the last half of the race and the rear wheel has a nasty wobble in it but it managed to get me home. I will get around to cleaning it one of these days. The only downer for the day was my mate Dan busted his collarbone on one of the waterbars in the first 20kms (which I had previously warned him to watch out for).
Looking forward to next year's race.
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