Tuesday 4 September 2012

WOC Long distance

It's about a week and bit late, but I've been pretty busy!

After my mechanical in the middle distance race, I dropped from 4th to 25th, so I knew I was riding fairly well despite not having done a huge amount of training. Originally I had planned to focus on the relay first leg and have a good race before cruising the long distance at the end of the week. The plan changed after the middle, so I focussed on the long race and cruised the relay instead.

The day of the long race was marginally cooler than the rest of the week. With a 5km ride to the start and quarantine starting at 1130, I knew I would have 30mins or so to chill at the start. I had managed to focus myself for all the races bar the relay and I could feel the mental fatigue creeping in during the morning of the race. I wasn't as nervous as on previous days, and I had no idea how my assault on the long distance would go.


By the time I reached the start line I was in the right state of mind again. I changed my route choice to the first control and opted for a longer but 'faster'  route. In Hungary, with such dry weather there was little difference between medium, slow and difficult biking tracks/paths, so in fact, going on the 'faster' tracks was slower if you had to bike further. A small mistake to the second control when I turned left too soon, but judging by the GPS I realised before many of the others who made the same mistake.

At 2 I met my 3 min woman, and then had caught her by 3. We rode together for a few controls but with different butterfly forkings I saw a chance to get a gap. The winner Susanna Laurila caught me on my second loop as she was on her first, and I was impressed with her graceful speed as she got a small gap on one of the small hills. Once back at the central butterfly for the 3rd time I was back on my own and so it remained for the rest of the course, which from there on was just a matter of fast riding rather than involving any navigation. The main navigation consisted of right or left route choices.

The map change was 80% of the way around, as we entered Veszprem from the north. I was fatiguing quickly at this point and struggling to get any speed on the fast, flat, marked sections which totalled 1.5km. I lost a few places here and a minute or so. By the final control I was down by a second to one of the swiss girls, but a couple of track standing punches and Team GB cheering gained me a couple of seconds to finish a second up on her, in 9th place.

9th is my personal best result in the long distance, and I'm pleased considering my 2 months of training for WOC revolved around sprint and middle training. I certainly felt tired towards the end, but thats the nature of lack of long distance training.

Impressively a mere 10 minutes separated the top 32 women. A close time gap I have not known before, and even more impressive when you think that the majority of competitors wouldn't have been caught or catching others as in other years. The MTBO field has certainly got stronger in recent years, but the nature of the flat Veszprem terrain allowed tight competition and close results.

I'm pleased to be 5 minutes down this year, compared to 30 mins last year and near front of a tightly packed group.