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Day 3 in the Dales

Kevin Cordina / 30.08.2009

I was slightly concerned about today as it was described last night as the toughest day, but since it looked fairly straightforward to me I figured there must be something I was missing. It was to be a run over Nine Standards Rigg, followed by a cycle across to Northallerton. At 28 km the run was going to be long, but didn't look to have too much climbing; certainly not compared to the last couple of days. The tricky bit turned out to be the surface which varied from slippy mud to boggy mud.

Setting out my legs were seriously heavy and things didn't feel great. Then after a couple of km everything cleared and I felt great. Within the first half hour I'd caught the three starters ahead of me so had already made 12 mins on one team (it's a reverse start with slowest leaving earliest). Things carried on well up to the summit and then down the long boggy descent on the winter route to the road. It was only halfway down and an hour or so in that I started getting caught by the later starters.

I passed the support crew (mum & dad) at the assigned spot and I carried on while they headed for the transition. The rest of the stage was more boggy, muddy paths, with the last section being along the side of a river valley, which was tiring with constant camber. I steadily picked off more people and arrived at transition feeling really good.

A quick snack and I jumped on the bike for an MTB leg, which took us along miners tracks and over a few dales. This was a great ride on rocky tracks up and down some fun routes. Most of the way I'd been trading places with Karen (surname unknown) but she suddenly vanished - turns out she punctured being a bit flash and showing off down a rocky descent past some walkers. D'oh!

Another fun descent took us into Castle Bolton for a quick snack and then it was back out for a road section to the finish at Northallerton.

This was a fast ride with most of it heading steadily downhill with a bit of a tail wind. An improvised aero-tuck with my arms laid on the bars added some extra speed and Catterick arrived in double-quick time passing a few more on the way.

From there we turned south straight into what was that tailwind and it was a bit of a slog down to the finish. I missed a turn at one point which would have put me over the allowed distance on a B-road so I decided to be a good boy and back tracked to get back on route. That was the first navigation error of the race which I'm pretty pleased with.

I crossed the line in just over 7 hours 30 minutes, so a nice short day! Hopefully I've made up some time as it felt like a quick day and definitely my best yet.

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