After stepping out of the car in Chittering at 8am on Sunday morning, I thought I had missed a memo and had turned up for a bikram yoga session instead of a bike race.
There was no memo. This was a bike race. It was hot.
Peer pressure (from me) had meant that SPR had 9 girls entered into the Women’s A grade race (out of 12 starters), so we were fairly confident that the odds were in favour of at least one of us making it onto the podium.
With no warm up being done by me (trying to conserve as much bodily fluid as I could), I wasn’t sure how the day was going to go. I had checked out the route and the rolling hills is definitely my preferred style of course. However, I have never raced in super hot conditions, so was just ‘going with the flow’ so to speak.
Thankfully the race started pretty slow with a few accelerations in the first 10km. The first hill saw 4 of us break away from the group, which included myself, Jess, Liz and a WAIS girl (2 SPR girls – awesome!)
Not too much happened during the remainder of the first lap, with the 4 of us concentrating on staying away from the rest of the bunch. The mercury was continuing to rise, but I was feeling pretty fresh at this point (oh how this changed).
The start of lap two was where things got ‘interesting’. The WAIS girl dropped off (after doing barely any work on the front – she must have been suffering in the heat), then I dropped off after feeling like I was going to have a stroke on the hill with the sudden blast of heat (the HR had reached high 190s – heat and caffeine taking effect!). Then 200m or so up the road, Jess dropped off from Liz and was also suffering in the heat.
In all honesty, I nearly considered pulling out after the 2nd lap as I was not feeling good. My feet had expanded to rather epic proportions and drinking my electrolyte was like pouring super sweet hot water into my mouth (not exactly refreshing). However, I had Jess in my sights and as I entered into the 3rd lap, I found that I was still pedalling and thoughts of abandoning were thrown out of the window as my competitive streak took control. I caught Jess and then carried on time trial style, while feeding on a mixture of gels and flies. The cycling top was completely unzipped in the hopes of providing some kind of cooling effect (the reality of this plan did not play out in real life). By the time I hit the 4th lap, I was starting to have hallucinations of being covered in ice cubes. Forcing gels and hot water into my mouth was becoming some kind of medieval torture. I also started feeling a bit cold and the HR was climbing higher as my blood started to boil inside me (??!! – a sure sign of heat exhaustion). Flies had also decided to take refuge on my face, in my mouth and behind my glasses. Delightful.
It was awesome to see the ‘1km to go sign’. It was even more awesome to cross the finish line in 2nd place, rip the shoes off, stand in a cold puddle and down an ice cold lemonade (cheers Ryan).
SPR managed 2nd place (me) in the A grade women, 3rd place (Jess) and 4th (Anna)…I think Pete will be proud!
Thanks to all the SPR girls who gave the race a go and finished it! For many of them, it was their first race so to actually finish in those conditions was super gutsy!!
NDCC put on a great race, with super friendly officials and plenty of cold ones at the end!
Bring on the next race!
