Friday. The last day of racing. And to be honest, I felt rubbish this morning. The heady combination of caffeine, red wine and night racing made for a rather restless night.
There were a few tired bodies at the start at the Chifley. We had a police escort out of town, for a quick lap, but it wasn’t a neutral start. A 4WD coming in the resort exit road (that we were racing on) made for an exciting start!
You should never drop off the front 10 wheels if you want to be up front. That sounds pretty common sense, I know. But apathy had crept over me this morning. And although I woke up to myself after about 500m, as I was having to chase hard out of the corners to stay in the top 30, it was a bit late. We shot across a ditch (no trail, just fend for yourself) from the road, and I was way back, seeing jerseys I hadn’t seen before. No biggie, I’ll just move up on the flat.
Except that I couldn’t.
What ensued was a train of survival, lead again by tempo stalwart Glenn Stewart. We had about six or seven of us in total, going through the tech singletrack we had race yesterday, but in reverse. Plenty of times some people wanted to move up, but in reality the change in speed may not have been worth it, and the opporunities were rare. Chances to drink or eat were also pretty slim.
But we raced through some amazing countryside today. After well over an hour we hit new trails, which were a little wider at parts. Andrew Bell moved up. I moved up. Rohin Adams moved up. We hit the feed zone and Bell and I moved away a bit, until Bell powered up the climb. I clung on, cross eyed, and bumbled along the ridge top trail. We spotted Simon Frederikson in the distance, as we hit the singletrack.
From here we all just needed to do what we could to keep motoring. Freddo suffered an unfortunate crash. Nothing serious, just a stall that left him on the ground. I caught up to Bell, and we had Irish Roy in our sights. The trails at this point were sweet singletrack, well made and involving a lot of rock. I couldn’t actually tell you where they were in Alice Springs, the circuitous routing usually left me pretty disoriented. I did catch Roy, but only because he had taken a wrong turn. I did too, only knowing it was wrong because Roy was coming back up the trail!
We made it to the finish together, keeping the pace high, and duking it out to the end.
A great hard but fun stage to finish on. I didn’t have a great day, finishing 12th and dropping to 10th on GC.
Andy Blair, Jason English and Aiden Leffman could not shake each other today. They crossed the line together, in honour of Willo, and Tavis. We had all shared a minutes silence at the start, in memory of these two, and anyone else who had been lost too early.
Anna Beck scored the stage win, but Jess Douglas kept the lead in the Womens event.
The post race dinner was a celebratory affair, and it’s still kicking on at the moment!