It’s day 2 of Epic Israel! What do you get when you take a stage race newbie, no sleep the night before the race, 122 off road kilometres and sweltering heat?
Yesterday’s post was about as much as I could manage after categorically the hardest mountain bike race of my life.
Here’s a bit more about what actually happened yesterday at Epic Israel – a marathon XC mountain bike race in Israel. Also what happened today, seeing as I’m sure anyone reading it will have gleaned nothing of the real test that happened yesterday.
So, as I mentioned, the night before my longest day on the bike, and my first stage race day, I did not sleep. There’s little exaggeration here. I became bored of the caravan ceiling’s many intricacies after the first 20 minutes of the 7 hours sleep I had planned to get. On top of that, everyone was too excited at the start and we went way too fast on the first half. This pace combined with the 29 degree heat and a strong headwind for the middle 40km fireroad section along the shore killed me. Cramp and a simultaneous collapse of my physical and mental fitness saw me in a dark place at the 100km mark. Put it this way, I struggled, then I bonked like I’ve never bonked before. Thankfully I slept like a bag of rocks last night, so here is Day 2’s round up.
While today was essentially the same distance as yesterday (107km), the climbing jumped an extra 1000m vertical. I was actually looking forward to the lack of flat sections until I got my kit on and felt physically sick and like I could cry at any moment. I was having serious reservations about whether I could last the day. Under no circumstances was I going to retire from this race! Thankfully a good sleep left my mental fitness in command of my physical fitness well beyond the crash of yesterday afternoon and a downpour at the 40-50km mark kept the cramp away and the singletrack sections greasy as anything. While it definitely wasn’t easy, we put our minds to riding a sensible pace and using all our gears to keep the cadence smooth through the day. 9 hours and 3 minutes in the saddle, brings the 2 day total to 17 hours 3…
My race kit for each day. Saracen Mantra Trail Carbon, Giro Phase helmet, Giro Gauge shoes, Continental race kit, gloves, High 5 gels, energy bars, pump, multi-tool, tubes, two bottles.
