Dusk Til Dawn

After the success at Plymouth I had the unfortunate luck of being struck by a cold the following day. After a day off work and a few more days just trying to survive work while still feeling crap I was finally starting to perk up by the weekend. I went to Bergerac for 4 days for a friends wedding and found the area to be obsessed with goose/duck fat. Each meal must have been about 4000 calories and left the plane groaning under the extra weight I had put on! Not an ideal preparation for Dusk til Dawn at Thetford Forest where I was guesting for the Giant Radlett team. I managed to fit 1 high cadence training session in on Thursday before the race but that was the only bit of exercise I had been able to do in the fortnight since Newnham. I had forgotten just how flat Thetford is. It actually challenges your perceptions of how flat a place could possibly be. The only slight inclines being a couple of 3m high ramps to climb out of bomb holes. On the practice lap I struggled to keep a pace with my Team-mate for the weekend, Franck and was really not looking forward to the prospect of riding the course a further 3 or 4 times in the dark. Without wanting to offend the course designer, it was just a bit boring! There is, after all, so much you can do with a 10mile loop that gains a total of 100m!


The race starts at 8pm and while we were sitting, prepping bikes and discussing tactics and waiting for dark to fall, something wetter, and altogether less welcome also started to fall. At this point it was just drizzle but the paddock was rife with people reminiscing about last years catastrophic course conditions and my enthusiasm for getting out on course was reaching an all time low. I did the second lap so at about 8.55 I took the armband from Franck and headed out into the darkness. At this point the course was holding together pretty well and I managed to get around in a reasonable time. I got caught by one rider at the start of the lap and then didn’t see another person until I began to lap some backmarkers towards the end of the lap. It is hard to keep pushing when it seems like it is just you in the woods in the rain with just the odd flash of light in the distance from another rider on an unknown piece of track. On handing over to Franck I knew I had about 40 minutes to try to keep warm and eat something before I was out again but it was cold and wet and all I really wanted to do was go to bed! My second lap was similar but with a lot more back markers to deal with. The course was starting to show signs of wear and was starting to get a bit slippery in places. I felt slower and was frustrated to see I had lost about 4 minutes against my previous lap time. Now I had about 3 hours while we passed the batton over to Dan and Vini to do the second set of 4 laps so I hit the sack. Conditions had worsened while I was resting with persistent rain throughout so when I hit the track for my 3rd lap it was very hard to keep forward motion and not land on your arse. I was actually enjoying the challenge and making pretty good progress until, with about 1 ½ miles to go, I bonked completely. I could barely muster the strength to drag myself back to the hand-over and the flat sections of fireroad felt like up-hill treacle. I am normally good with my nutrition and energy levels but I obviously completely under-estimated the toll this race and the lack of sleep takes. I was also annoyed that I had let my team mates down and it was very close and we could maybe have sneaked another lap if I hadn’t turned into a jelly legged invalid! I was relieved to hand over to Vini and just about collapsed once I got off my bike.


At 8am the hooter went and the race was over. Franck hadn’t managed a super human lap and I didn’t have to go out again thankfully. He had managed to take enough time out of the competition to take us up into 5th which was welcome reward for the effort put in to keep pushing in the conditions. Since the event I haven’t really stopped eating and am still pretty disappointed in my performance but there is always the next race to pick myself up for.


Also well done to Andy Cockburn who won the solo race, managing 12 laps, which in those conditions was nothing short of epic!