Relief on the finish lineRules, it appears, are made to be broken <br />
Either that or the rule of 3 simply doesn't apply to multiday races?<br />
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So I had achieved my first aim of carrying the leader's jersey into the final day, and James had decided to stagger the starts by 5 minutes today, which gave me a bit more of a lie in, but as it was a mediocre night's sleep, this didn't help too much. At least I figured out why the problems though - I was so eager to recover that I kept shovelling carbs into myself late into the night, and couldn't sleep due to the sugar rush refusing to allow my brain to shut down - a useful lesson to learn!<br />
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So I decided not to show up at the start until Bruce had already left ... Why not leave him wondering where I was ;-)<br />
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The first leg was a 15 or so km road ride along an A road and then over a hilly back road, that Kev and I had driven the previous night, and got a bit concerned about how unpleasant it looked. As it turned out it was relatively OK, and I despatched it in 41 minutes - 1 more than my nemesis ;-)<br />
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Next was a run over Carlton Bank on the Cleveland Way, and heading into the first section I could see Helly Hansen Nuun about 5 minutes ahead, so they hadn't taken much time either.<br />
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The Cleveland Way is an impressive cobbled walkway heading (literally) up hill and down dale, and took us along the edge of a sheer ridge with fantastic views to the north. Being sadistic, James the Race Director sent us along the undulating rather than the flatter option. At least this gave me the opportunity to see HHN approaching hilltops in front of me, and work out that they were only slowly pulling away. Given how I was feeling, and how hard I was thrashing myself, this was very good news!<br />
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I was amazed to find that even though this was my 4th straight day, and I was basically running on rock, often steeply downhill, my feet still felt fine - a great testament to the x-talon shoes that I had worn for every leg of the race so far (paddling in them to save transition time, and using footplates on the bike rather than bike shoes), I think I've found my favourite multi-sport race shoe!<br />
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Dropping down to Clay Bank to switch onto the mountain bike, I jogged into an empty transition to be told I was now 18.30 minutes back. So I was 7 minutes down over an hour and a half of racing, not too bad, but it's on the bike that Bruce would be looking for big gains.<br />
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The next piece of good news was that pumping the tyres up this morning, a valve had been ripped out of a tyre, and the replacement tube was leaking a touch - oh well, at least I know to make sure the road front is available at the next transition!
SleepMonsters
