Enduro Pulse at WSC

There are a couple of ways to race enduro and ultra enduro events. In enduro racing it isn't always the strongest and fittest that holds the cards at the end of the day. It is often the rider that pedals in the most effective way, pedaling harder when it is necessary. There is the heavily tried method, go out hard and hold it as long as you can, then there is don't go out to hard and come home strong. Over the last year of enduro events I had trialed both methods with some interesting results but it came down to what was most effective over the longer distances leading up to this years big race enduro, the WSC.
We have all seen the running start of iconic events like the Scott24 and the WSC was no different. I lined up with the Age Group riders glad I had done some light running and hoping to make it to the bike safely. There were no hiccups during the run and I located my bike easily, one of my support Hally held my bike, he was wearing our bright blue Carman's crew shirts. Transiting along the initial open fire trail section, I didn't make to much of a fuss in passing riders but wanted to keep with riders such as Mr Dreggs, aleast for the first lap.
After our initial lap I eased back into endurance heart rate zone, happy to let other riders flog themselves. It was a great day for riding, it was warm and sunny, the track was dry and fast. Everything was going well till we hit the four hour mark, I was just spinning up the backside of Stromlo when a riders zoomed past me. Crap, was that the race leader? Twenty seconds later Jason English asked for the inside line. Damn I was being lapped in the first four hours, a quick mental calculation had me being lapped six times at this rate. First of all shocked, then slowly the reasoning and words from my support crew reminded me of the big picture and our game plan. Let them ride, I didn't want to unleash the Gordo grimace till tomorrow.

TBC...