Monday, June 04, 2007

Trans Scotland Result

I was 17th in the Male Solo Category!

I'm well chuffed with that. A top 20 finish for my first time in this type of event goes a long way to make up for how crap my cold is making me feel today.

I also realised that I didn't post anything for day6 (no vodafone reception in Glentress), so here's the quick summary:

The link stage stage was easily the worst one of the week with loads of hike-a-bike portage. So much so that I lost my sense of humour around the 4th false summit and thought:

"**** it!! Let's just get this over and done with!"

It was only about two thirds of the way down that cracking descent into Peebles that I started to grin again. I reached the last climb with 25mins to spare on the day's cut-off time and managed to cross the line at 15:02.

Annoyed with myself for missing it by such a small margin I was relieved to find out that the time penalty was 1 second per minute. So, only 2secs was added to my time.

The night stage in Glentress was the one I'd been looking forward to all week, until I saw the profile. "Mostly Up!" would be an undestatement. Very much a course not suited to my head-down-and-spin-it approach to climbing.

I'd started behind the same guy (Nick Percival) all week and in every other TT I'd managed to keep him in sight, even passed him at Mabie. I never even saw him at Glentress, clearly he enjoys climbing way more than me. Still, no-one passed me and I managed to finish 25th that night.

So there you have it, according to the official stats: seven days in the saddle and almost 498km (310 miles) and 14,100m of climbing (46,300ft).

Of course, the question now is: What next? How do you follow up doing something like this? I'm sure I'll think of something....

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