Norlond '50' 15/5/11 - Sick!

As last year, this event was nominated by my club as it's 50 mile championship event, which was an added impetus to my participation.  On the morning, however, I felt distinctly unwell.  Perhaps this situation had something to do with a couple of days of hosting family, with attendant over-eating, but it really wasn't ideal for a race.  Because the organiser was in my club, he'd done the traditional thing and put a member of the organising club off first (#9) - this also meant I'd be back and able to help with the results board. Anyway, at the appointed start time, there I was at the line.  It was very cold - probably only a few degrees over freezing.  I negotiated the dreadful road surface on the sliproad roundabout and descended the slip onto the dual carriageway.  There was a particularly nagging side wind, which promised to make the race rather hard in both directions.  By the time I rounded the first turn at the Sandy roundabout, it was pretty clear this wasn't to be an event in which I would bang out a decent performance.  In fact I was feeling as though my stomach was going to empty at any point, and during the race occasionally had to com off the tri bars to avoid being sick (which wouldn't have been good for the bike, I guess).  Along with this, I had horribly weak feeling legs and couldn't raise my heart rate to its usual racing level. [caption id="attachment_1464" align="alignright" width="152" caption="Heading north on the F1/50"]

[/caption] As I came past Tempsford Carol and my father were there to give an encouraging shout (and take a photo -see right).  Actually, I was probably looking better that I felt as at that point the road's quite sheltered and pretty level.  Unfortunately I knew what was up - by the time I reached the Black Cat roundabout, I reckoned I'd not get below 2 hours.  But I persuaded myself to keep on going. One factor working against me was the lack of riders ahead of me to catch.  It was pretty solitary for the first lap - no-one passed me, and there (of course) was no-one to catch.  As I passed the slip road at the start for my second lap, I did start seeing riders on their first lap (and did actually catch one or to of them) - but of course the counter to this was that some of the faster guys came past me! Eventually I made it to the finish, and rolled back to the HQ.  I got changed and went over to the HQ where I assisted with the results board.  There were some cracking rides - notably Ian Cammish (1:45:23) and Jason Gurney (1:48:06).  I ended up in 33rd place with 2:02:08 - almost 17 minutes slower than Cammish! Click Continue Reading for results and ride detailsResults (to 33rd place)