Running on empty out in the dirt; Cody Stevenson diary

Cody in action (Image credit: Tim Bateman)

It has been a while since my last diary entry, and with the road racing light on at the moment I decided to go looking for some racing. I was mentioning the lack of racing down at work one day - whinging is probably a better description, and Brian 'Big Dog' Price who I work with at Panther Cycles mentioned there was a four hour endurance mountain bike race on at Yellowmundee. I thought, "awww, four hours on an MTB can't be that hard...how wrong I was!"

I borrowed a bike, pulled out my old shoes - I hadn't worn them since my last MTB ride (four years earlier) - and discovered I really had become an uptight roady; with my white socks and fear of getting dirty, etc. I rocked up on the day, welcomed by a few funny looks and a voice in the distance sniggering and echoing something along the lines of "does that roady know what he has got himself in for?" Apparently not!

After running to my bike, something else I have never had to do in lycra, I smashed out a good first two hours. "...It ain't that bad - the technical sections I can handle, the climbs, no problem..." but come hour three the cramps started - big problem! On the last two laps of the course I had to stop and massage my legs a couple of times. Unfortunately, the downhill sections gave no respite to my aching body and on the 11th lap, after I had fallen from second to fourth (d'oh!) I cramped so badly going down the technical corkscrew-type downhill section that I could easily have been mistaken for an ironing board riding a bike!