Granogue Enduro

After my little high powered antibiotic endeavor last month, I'm still not feeling great (much better, but not great). I think the drugs did as much damage as the infection. So not being quite up for a high-octane XC race (and needing quality training to boot) I opted to ride the 4 hour enduro. On my Single Speed.

The quick skinny on the race:
-the starting road was a big spinner. But luckily we turned onto a steeper gradient quickly, so that I could get into good position. Something I couldn't do while spinning 120rpm.
-Stayed up front, watching Jebbaggers sweet lines.
-We hit the wall of doom and rode it with no frills. "If I can ride this on a cross bike, I can ride it on this."
-Realized I had my feed's set up on the starting straight and not on the finishing straight (we'd never go past it during the race)
-Andy, Dan, and I tried to seperate ourselves from the field
-I spent a lap out front on my own
-I got caught and passed by Andy and Dan when I started to chill out and taper for the remaining time left in the race.
-Cramping started getting worse at lap 3-4
-Endurolytes saved my legs
-Then, there was no saving my legs. Each Vastus Medialis and Sartorius muscle was locked up as tight as possible and not relaxing. My last lap I walked every climb on the course, in a very haggered hobbling fashion.
-The Skinny Chicken caught me at the base of the final climb on our fifth lap. My legs happened to be locking up at the time.
-With 15 minutes to go, I decided to run out the clock and watch to see how many people came past me. Waiting to see if I needed to go out on another lap or not. For the record, I did not want to.
-I finished in 2nd place with 3:45 and 5 laps (~35 miles) thats around 9.3 mph average with a lot of walking
- Lap times 39, 40, 40, 47, and 53


I don't race a ton of endurance style races (sans a 24 solo and a few team 12 hour events), but I do enjoy them. I definitely started out too fast for being on my single speed, and I'm itching to do it again and refine my strategy. This time I'll be using Hammer's endurolytes every lap, considering how much they helped this past weekend. Better strategy, and I'll be back for more. Maybe next weekend at French Creek.