Selkirk National MTB Marathon Champs 2015

 My blog is called adventures mtb endurance racing and my trip to race in the British Mountain Bike Marathon Champs in Selkirk certainly lived up to its billing.  As ever, I have mixed emotions about what the race was like for me.  It is easy to look back and analyse the event and look at how to improve but the fact is that I have been doing this long enough now to stop making the same mistakes.





The race and venue is awesome.  The course was super tough and I have battled through (and given up sometimes) in some tough races but this was epic.  It was relentless, climb after climb and apart from some little road sections there was no let up.  The start was great.  The race kicks off in the town and by some miracle after the elites lined up I got my name called out by the commissioner.  It’s a nice feeling but also puts pressure on when you are clad in pro race gear and your name gets called to the line.

 
 
 



It was a neutral start behind the race van (ok it wasn’t that neutral) and it weaved through the town with quite a few people cheering us on.  They really get into this stuff north of the border.  Anyway as soon as the van peeled off it was race time and within a few hundred yards the top riders just went.  I managed to catch Julie up on the first section of the climb and set off at a reasonable pace.  I latched on to the back of the elite women’s trio and felt comfortable for a while.  That all ended when I found to my dismay the climb seemed to never end, I could see the elite men a mile or so in the distance and they were still ascending.  The reality of what I had entered kicked I, and at that point and I just sat in and hoped I would make it round.

The bike was great and it descended brilliantly and was the only thing that was keeping me in touch with the riders around me at the back of the field.  Some of the main marathon fast guys then started to catch me and at about 8 miles my head dropped and I was seriously considering cutting it short.

I had grossly underestimated this race!  I had nothing in the tank, my legs felt heavy and I was not feeling great.  I didn’t want to eat or drink because I felt bloated so all in all I just wanted it to stop.  Perhaps the hard tail bike would have been better for me with all the climbing (it is a lot lighter).  Doing a lot of riding with no structure the weeks before probably didn’t help my cause either, and driving there and back on my own certainly wasn’t up there with the best decisions I have made.

 

 

I finished in about five and a half hours, on my best day I would have liked to do around five hours.  But hey it’s not all doom and gloom, there was success for Julie who managed 2^nd in her class and to think I drove to Scotland and back, rode one of the toughest races on the calendar and didn’t actually come last is a testament to how far I have come in the last few years.

As ever the moral is just ride your bike and enjoy it.