weeksy
Me and one of the boys decided to have a play out at Surrey hills/Swinley and do a Gorrick race.
Entered the 'Open Male' class, 3 laps, about 5 miles per lap.
Lining up i noticed that compared to last time we raced it seemed a lot more serious and was full of lyrca clad whippets
Started near the back as that's where we expected to finish LOL. 30 secs in and the terrain was poorly planned out. Straight into a 5mph bottleneck and we must have waited 3-4 mins at bottom of hill before getting into the singletrack. They really needed a better planned start to break it up a bit better.
The rest of the lap though made up for it, good trails,terrain and a decent mix of both ups and downs.
Managed to work my way to the back of the pack quite well and finished pretty poorly i think. Although it still bemuses me as to where i'm going wrong.
Can't seem to maintain a decent heart rate on teh bike, certainly compared to the rates i can reach and maintain when running for example. The legs are willing but the heart and breathing is like i'm about to collapse.
It was only really the first part of the lap that was really tough, the rest was just decent singletrack with a bit of fire road and a bit of new foresty bit they've prepared for the event.
My target really was to match my mate who did me by about 5-6 mins last time out. However, i think that didn't go to plan and he actually finished i think a bit further ahead of me.
Had a couple of epic battles on last lap, which sadly and rather disgustedly i lost both of and both lads did me before the end.
Had a cracking jump though in front of camera guy and nearly wiped him out as i landed crossed up and went to the right... almost wiping out his mobile phone lol.
Finished the event in a better physical state than last time i did the 3 lapper, maybe that was the terrain, maybe i didn't try hard enough... but DAMN i thought i gave 100%.
Bike was great, glad i swapped to the dual ring setup on the front as twice i needed to use the small ring per lap.
All in all, top day out... but me being me, slightly disappointed in the end result.