Raced the Hardwick Hall HC last night, brilliantly organised by Bolsover & District CC in the grounds of the NT stately gnome, under floodlights. I was a bit sceptical about my chances because I've been a little overweight throughout the summer (Zwifting around 76.5kg), but a slightly more disciplined diet (combined with poisoning myself with undercooked chicken-of-the-woods mushrooms!) has got me down to a touch under 74kg. I've also been focussing my training more on endurance running in the past few weeks, and not feeling at all zippy on the bike.
I arrived early and warmed up for longer that usually would. It wasn't full-dark when I was set off at 19:33, but getting that way. I held back a little bit on the gentler 8-9% run up to the switchback, knowing that the worst part was in the second half. I think I made a mistake in not downshifting on the steepest (15%) gradient - the cattlegrid(!) took away so much of my speed that my cadence dropped and I fought to turn the pedals for the last 200m of the course. I crossed the line in 1:40.7, faster than the 32 riders who'd gone off ahead of me, but ready for the inexorable slide down the leaderboard. In the end, I was 12th out of 79 finishers, pleasingly close to some of the strong riders ahead whom I would have expected to have beaten me anyway!
For an interesting comparison, here are my power stats compared with those of Rachel Galler (reigning National Champion), who pipped me by 0.3s!
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Her cadence only dropped to 81rpm, whereas mine... 43rpm at the end!
