Dusk til Dawn

Back in 2010 I raced D2D as a mixed pair. I always meant to go out and ride it solo but when Ali suggested we ride it as a pair this year I jumped at the chance. We headed down on the Friday night to stay at her mum's, unfortunately I didn't do a great job of sleeping but lots of rest lying round in bed reading was had. We headed over to Thetford and managed to find a spot not too far from the arena and went to register. It turned out we were the only female pair so we decided to see how close we could stay to the female teams.

I lined up for the start in the dark and we were soon off, it was a lot less scary than I was expecting, starts at cross races have probably helped with that and I spent the first lap trying not to lose any places and pass people on the fireroad. Coming in I was calling Ali's name, only for there to be no Ali there (I had said the only thing she had to do was not miss changeover) she was only a couple of minutes late and amazingly I wasn't mad at her! She stormed round her lap and it was my turn again, it was turning out to be a cold night and I had a lot of layers on while I was waiting. She asked if I would double lap next time so I went and shoved loads of food down me and got ready to head out. The double lap worked well as I was only really getting warm halfway round. Ali headed out saying she was struggling to eat so I got ready to head out again, but as she came into changeover she shouted she would go round again.

We carried on with double laps and the lead in the unofficial women's race changing between us and the leading women's team. They changed there order but Ali came in from her last lap in the lead so I just pushed as hard as I could to keep our lead. It had been exciting through the night and really made us push ourselves which was good as it can be hard when there is no-one else racing in your catagory.

I really enjoyed the race and hope to do it again. We didn't argue and were well matched so we may even race as a pair again!