Let the blogging begin (again)

It's been a lean period for this blog for a while, but I am now hopeful that I can put that behind me and come up with something to read again.

On Saturday I got up very early to to a 12 hour mountainbike race near Copenhagen. I wasn't really looking forward to either the early morning or the many hours riding round in circles. These timed races generally follow the same format of riding around a course as many times as possible withing a given time period. In this case the course took about half an hour I think and it was not too bad. The weather was perfect, the course dry and there was nothing to complain about at all.

I started badly, we were in a holding area waiting to start when the announcer said (in Danish or course) make sure your timing chip is in the right place on your shoe, don't start at the front unless you are going to stay there etc etc. No sweat, I'm near the back and SHIT I forgot to put on the chip on my shoe. By this stage the holding pen thing was full so I had to run over the to the solo rider tent thing to try and find my chip. Not there. Then run back to the pen, get my bike and ride back to the car to get it. All in, I think I was about 10 minutes late for the start and I cought up with some people about half way through the lap.

The problem with not having to get from A to B is that there is no real motivation to keep going on these rides. I am not competing with anyone, I can't tell who I am close to becuase I don't knwo who is laps ahead of me or behind me and it just gets rather boring. The course was hard and bumpy which makes your back ache pretty quickly and by lunchtime my interest was waining. At about noon, I stopped for a sandwhich and some coke and enjoyed half an hour off the bike. The lunch was rather heavy and when I started again I felt rather sick so decided to take another break to digest a little longer.

My heart was never really in it after that, I was bored and missing spending the nice day with the family so at about 4 oclock I decided to go home and have dinner with them instead to punishing myself any further.

I remember that last year I felt about the same, but then MK and J showed up and encouraged me to keep going, I also made friends with a couple of Aussies who were riding solo as well that day so there was some more motivation to keep going.

Maybe I'll do it again next year. It is extremely well organised and run and there was a lot of entertainment arranged for bored kids, just not quite enough for a bored rider...