Thursday 15 November 2007

Day 2 - New stage is very La Ruta


The new day 2 had the right ingredients for a La Ruta stage - notably monster climbs up coffee plantation mountains and a one hour taste test of horrendous mud.


How steep do they make roads here? Quote from Jon - I was zig zagging just so I could spin my granny gear.

How was the mud? There's about an hour of it at the end of the day. Clung to bike, got it up to 50lbs in no time, slippery to walk on, filled your shoes and sucked them in if they weren't buckled tight.
Trish was 4th again at about 6 hours I think, (side note that Erik witnessed high speed crash of the 3rd place girl, yikes). Jon "survived" at 4:50 but felt empty at start, and had one fall that left some leg scrapes, not too bad though. I haven't seen Jack or Gerry yet.

I was able to put power to the pedals for 5:20 minutes uninterrupted, which felt a lot better than yesterday. Rode 4.5 hours with Susan Haywood, it was nice to remove my brain from the pacing decision, that probably helped me a lot in terms of time. Right before checkstop 3 I shoulder checked and saw Lou Kobin approaching and I had the feeling that she meant business. I popped a gel and hoped I could hold on to watch the leaders compete, but I actually needed to stop at the checkpoint and they skipped it, so I never saw them again. Sue ended up with the stage again.

So having a good day had me finish 60th rather than 73... I thought staying on course and not fighting a bonk might work out better. With climbs this long and steep, I just need a better power to weight ratio. I'm up about 5lbs of fat since TR, that's not helping. Other than that I just need a 3lb bike!

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