The steeply wooded and semi-open, seemingly mountainous hills surrounding the town of Chaves were the venue for the long race qualification. Where as in the women’s race the numbers of entrants at present do not exceed 60 the men’s field of over 90 riders needed to be cut to 60 for the final on Friday.
All the men were split into 3 courses of similar length by world ranking, then 3 riders start at once on the 3 courses every 3 minutes. The top 20 from each course then qualify for the final.
The finish area was in a little village square, complete with little cafe, elderly locals and old gnarly trees. Dust clouds blew up from time to time, the hot Portuguese summer now quickly drying the plush green countryside. Some commented it was like a scene from a Western movie, just needing a group of bandits to ride into the square on horseback!
I got a good, long warm up before heading to the start. I was apprehensive because I knew it was, again, going to be a very physically demanding course, but I was fairly relaxed. Starting with MTBO legend Lasse Brun Pedersen and the Italian pocket rocket Giaime Origgi, I was surprised that I could keep up quite well and felt confident after seeing Giaime make a mistake. I roared down a steep track towards the first control, unfortunately miss-reading a track junction (I know others did exactly the same or even crashed here), and performed a classic parallel error until I realised what I had done, possibly losing a minute or so before punching. After a short leg we then had a massive route choice leg with an evil climb across the map. On the ascent I felt fairly good and settled into a much better rhythm than on the shorter steeper climbs of the middle race. We then had another route-choice leg with a manic descent into a village. I made a small mistake losing perhaps a minute in the dense streets, the little alleys mapped at 1:20,000 being very hard to read.
There then followed another big climb back up to the ridge before another mad descent into a river gorge, the rough track twisting and turning following the valley side. By this time I was starting to tire and for the first time had to get off and push for the last few metres on the way into number 8. The climb up to number 9 was just bonkers, & with the sun on the back of the neck I was forced into the granny ring as I ground my way up, sweat pouring down my face.
I refused to let it beat me and eventually it flattened out. After another control I started the final descent towards the finish but took a safe route into the penultimate control. I then gave it everything to the last control and on to the finish line.
I was completely spent and could have given nothing more. I went light headed and collapsed in a heap by my bike trying to keep my feet high in the air, pouring cold water over myself. One of the Swedes kindly grabbed a cereal bar which I forced down, luckily the sugar hit immediately revived me enough to be able to get back on the bike for a warm down.
Then the disappointment of not qualifying for the long final hit home, but although I may have lost 4 minutes or so in mistakes, a clean ride would still not have got me through. The easy navigation and massive climb favoured the stronger riders.
My altimeter showed 860metres of climb!