Right, while many were cooling down in the pool, three fidi’s were recovering from actually riding.

Rusty, Libby and I rode the Highland Fling, Rusty did the 115km Full-Fling version while Libby and myself rode the insanely hard 165km 100Miler version.
As usual, it starts nice and fast while you feel great and still have fresh legs, finishing stage 1 only a few minutes behind the fast guys. Then you head into the 53km stage in Penrose Forest with some nice single track and plenty of leg hurting fire trail climbing, including what they call ‘The Wall’ which I and most other walk up (not worth trashing your legs I say).
It’s nice riding around with some other guys as you edge each other on and get that extra little speed out of your legs. The only thing is that ALL the guys around me where only riding the Full-Fling and as we transitioned from stage 2 to stage 3, I found myself abandoned and riding stage 2 again completely alone, as only 100Milers doubled up stage 2.
It wasn’t very exciting on my lonesome, luckily there were some awesome marshals happy for a very brief chat or call of encouragement, bar one who rubbed it in that I was miles behind 🙂
About 3/4 of the way around the 2nd lap of stage 2 Naomi Hansen caught me and we started riding together, just to have some company. There were a few times I thought I’d lost her but then finding out she was in the same hurt bag as me, but on the flats rather than the hills, and I would catch her again on some flatter section.
Cramps had been setting in from about 100km and I had to tread very carefully to avoid going into full leg lock-up. The same happened last year, but I thought I was managing the nutrition better this time, maybe I was but just pushing harder.
The last section of the race is brutal with crappy bumpy paddocks and nasty climbs and legs feeling painful, but I made it to the finish before totally cramping up and rolling around screaming in delight (not) to the amusement of all others 🙂
Libby rode an awesome time only 22 minutes behind me coming in as 3rd female, Rusty was riding in the highly contested Masters category that had most entries of all and coming in 30th out of 300 is great, I came in 6th of the 100Milers, letting Naomi roll across the line ahead of me but at least still beating her on time… by 50 seconds, phew!

Libby – 3rd Female 100Miler Fling (165km) – 8:30

Bleeksie – 6th Male 100Miler Fling (165km) – 8:08

Rusty – 31st Masters Male Full Fling (110km) – 5:38