24hr Solo worlds

Well I've taken my time getting around to posting about this, just been busy and getting my head around what happened.
7/10 Woke up not feeling that flash but not to bad either, just a slightly funny tummy that Flynn had had for the last couple of days. Got to love what kids pick up on the first week back to school. Onto the plane for the quick flight to Canberra to be meet at the Airport by Danny, who with Sue where my support crew for the event. Off we headed to Stromlo to check out the course. Hocked up with Stan & Harry who also ride for Bicycle Inc. & the 4 of us headed out for a lap. A lot of the same as the A lap from 2 years ago when I did the race with John Claxton in the Pairs cat.
The first climb to the top is really nice & it takes about 8km to climb 250m, so there is nothing demanding about it. Once at the top its a great fun decent over lots of rocks & some fun little drop-offs down to the fire road around the back of the mountain to a tougher climb out the back, back up to the top of the mountain to descend back to the pits. This decent is soooooo much fun, except during the race I only got 1 good run at this due to traffic on the track. 18.7km lap.
Felt ok doing the lap, but on the drive around to Danny & Sue's the body seem to want to shut down, so had an early meal & headed for bed hoping I'd be better on Friday.

8/10 Not well today (gastro), body felt like crap & need to register, set-up pits & go to race briefing all at 3 different venues. Body didn't need this. Another early night.

9-10/10 Race time. Woke up felling a lot better which was pleasing. Took it very easy, just one finial check to make sure everything was working.
Race time & we were off with a 300m run to the bikes, with 300 of my friends, pushing & shoving. The cut out the first bit of single track to give use an extra 2km of fire road to sort the field out, but when we hit the single track it was still a complete stop as riders had completely destroyed themselves to get here up the front & then they couldn't ride 30m without crashing. Took a while to get around all of these seidaoR. Was having what I thought was some issues with my HR monitor as it was reading really high and wouldn't come down. The strange thing is the legs felt fantastic, I was breathing easy & could talk easy, but it was showing 180 - 210bpm. As my max is 185 I thought it was a problem with the belt, but it wasn't & it wasn't until much latter & to late that I worked out what the problem was. I tried to enjoy the lap & have fun as I planned to be out here for a while. Thing started to go wrong on the 3rd lap as my stomach started to not fell the best & drinking and eating wasn't going well. On the 4th lap by the time I was a third of the way through I couldn't eat or drink at all. So I had to stop & try to get the body back on track or it was all over. Danny & saw the first aid & meet a great x-army guy who had an answer. 5 cups of 3 bags of black tea per cup consumed in 60min. The acid from the tea kills the bug. By the way I hate tea unless it's herbal. 3 cups down in 20min, & not felling that hot, so off for a bit of a walk to check out what I had for breakfast. Another cup & then lets check what that looks like again. I do fell better. So with that wastage I down 2 more cups just to make sure. 30min later I'm eating & feeling better, the suns going down so I headed back out. Everything was fine for the next 2 laps & then eating & drinking became a problem & was also cramping a bit, which shouldn't be happening considering how easy I was riding. End of the 3rd lap out I had to stop again as I could no longer eat or drink. Decided the best thing to do was have a lie down & rest. After about 4:30hr I started going to the toilet & had been thinking. I worked out that with the gastro bug & hadn't been absorbing electrolytes & I was properly Hyper hydrated, which may also explain the extreme HR that I'd been experiencing. So lets try mega doses of electrolyte. I 60min I was feeling much better, so it was time to try again. HR was normal, all cramping had stopped & I felt good & was riding well. Was looking like & feeling like I'd be able to do 7 laps before the end of the race at this easy pace. This worked well for 3laps & then I couldn't eat or drink again. So cruised around one final time & called it quits.

How did it all wrap up. I did 11 laps with 13:25hr ride time. The winner of my cat did 21laps. I was aiming for 20laps. I was happy with how I raced due to how the body was. I gave it every chance to recover but it didn't. I learned a lot about my body from this, which has to make me stronger in the future.