Oak Valley – Oak Valley 85km, 1800
With a promise of lots of single track and slightly shorter day I was looking forward to today. The morning was chilly but not for long. Forecast predicted warm again but luckily there were few clouds and bit of a breeze so we never got so hot as on friday.
We started off with an up hill and I found out my 4 top end gears are not working. So I had to push really hard on the climbs and mostly standing. I don’t know how single speed riders do it. There was some really cool flowing single track down so I tried to push ahead few guys to be able to enjoy it fast. Even Celina praised me how well I passed them in the single track and that I went fast. Now that’s a something coming from her since she is a XCO national champ.
We got to water point one in about 1,5 and the SRAM mechanical support fixed my gears relatively fast. Happy to have my gears back as we went quite long up hill but with beautiful views and then long down hill towards Lebanon and water point 2 that was on top of a steep climb after RSAWEB hot spot. We filled up there and grabbed the usual snacks and off we went more up hill but then we finally got to Lebanon and enjoyed the flowing single tracks even the rockier part. I went first again and loved it. I didn’t hear Katie( the race director) mentioned the Paul Cluver bridges so when we get there I was slightly tired. And had to concentrate not to fall off the bridges and there were lot of people watching. Once refueled I felt bit better and off we went more up and down. 10km before finish I got a nose bleed and it didn’t stop for a while when I looked on my bike frame it was covered in red. Not the best view. So I rather kept looking forward and kept going luckily mostly down single track.
When we got to finish I looked like I broken my nose or something. But luckily not. I felt actually much better than on Friday just looked worse.
My husband waited in the finish so I chatted to him for a bit and then the last usual routine except we went out for dinner to the Oak Valleys Pool Room restaurant where we had delicious meal.
One day to do 69km and 1800m ascent to Lourensford.
Its raining a bit hopefully it will get better!