CHAMPIONNAT du MONDE UMCA 24hr 1ère Manche en FLORIDE

Marcus Blagrove - Ultra-distance cyclist

Sebring 24hr — à Sebring International Raceway.

I’ve just about recovered from last weekend’s Sebring 24hr in Florida, the first of my three races for the UMCA 24hr World Championship. As always, Sebring was brilliant, everyone there from the organisers, fellow competitors, crews, spectators, and the policemen who stopped the traffic at the junction, were incredible and made the event what it was. Thank you all!

As always, the Ogival chainring performed perfectly, many noticed my big red ‘football’ chainring http://www.ogivalring.com/en_GB This gives a much bigger gear in the power zone where you have power and a tiny gear in the deadzone to help save those knees and keep you efficient. And this was matched perfectly with the Connex 11SX chain, generally regarded as ‘bombproof’, the strongest and longest life chain available.

I scored a new PB of 467.7 miles, winning my age group and finishing second overall. The initial century stated off very well with a good thick fog keeping the sun at bay and temperatures down, but on the return leg I missed a turn which cost me 4 miles with no credit. By the end of the century it was HOT and windy, I decided to ease off and ride at about 90% power to prevent overheating and exhaustion, and have more in the tank for the cooler evening where I’m generally stronger. This strategy really paid off, as it started to cool at around 3pm I was able to hammer out some fast 11 mile loops and keep going to the night section onto the race course. But disaster struck at around 11pm when some sharp plastic from broken lights on the circuit tore a one inch hole in my rear tub. Fortunately I was near the pits so, with the help of Doug Transam, managed to quickly change the rear wheel and continue. Difficult to say how much distance was lost, I only directly lost about 5 mins but I was now on an 88mm wheel instead of a disc and on Gatorskins instead of Pro Ltd Comps, for the remaining 7 hours. No tyre would have survived that gash, and otherwise, the Continental tyres performed perfectly all day.

During the final part of the race I was in third place and very close to second place Thomas Odom, so I upped my pace a little to catch him and passed as he was not lapping at full speed by this point. I was happily in second until about 45-50 mins from the end, when I looked back around one of the tighter corners and saw Thomas stealthily coming back for a run on second. I bolted, no idea where the power came from but I wanted second place dammit and so my legs didn’t have a choice, they were going! The last 45 mins were a drag race between me and Thomas, our lap times had gone from ~12mins per lap to ~9mins per lap as we fought for second place. After nearly 24 hours of endurance racing we were sprinting, I think his penultimate lap was faster than any of mine, but it wasn’t quite enough as I had enough of a lead to squeeze one more lap in before the time ran out and take second. It was a great battle, with a great guy, and certainly made the last hour far more exciting than the usual dreary “is it over yet?” end to a 24! Well done Thomas Odom, and would love a rematch sometime!

I couldn’t have done the race with my single crew member, my mum Jacqueline Osborne! My step-dad Carl couldn’t make it due to a broken collar bone, but was a huge help on this side of the pond with preparation and logistics, couldn’t have done it without either of you! And also a big thanks also to our adopted crew of Jack Broaddrick, Heidi Brooks, and Doug Transam who also did a great job helping out in the pit stops.

Nutrition in the race was spot on, I made 8L of RynoPower CarboFuel in fruit juice, which delivered 6000Kcal of carbs; a few cheese and ham sandwiches handed up whilst riding completed my nutrition! I was also cramp-free from RynoPower electrolyte tablets. Many other riders were suffering from cramps due to using electrolytes which only contain sodium and the major electrolytes, RynoPower give a complete range of all micro-electrolytes as well, which keep you going much longer.

Plateaux route - OGIVAL Boutique

Bienvenue dans la boutique du plateau de vélo révolutionnaire OGIVAL de Bernard ROSSET.

http://www.ogivalring.com/Plateaux-route-1

This was the first race using my new kit from Impsport, their T3 Racesuit which should be available in their shop soon https://impsport.com/ The kit was perfect, no saddlesores and the leg and arm grippers meant that the suit didn’t move a millimetre the whole time. As many noticed I was also riding with my View-speed.com Cyclops glasses, which allowed me to see forward with my head down, both more comfortable and aerodynamic. Sadly, most of the photos were on corners so you can’t really see the position I was able to ride in on the straights, but these are highly recommended!

As always, the Ogival chainring performed perfectly, many noticed my big red ‘football’ chainring http://www.ogivalring.com/en_GB This gives a much bigger gear in the power zone where you have power and a tiny gear in the deadzone to help save those knees and keep you efficient. And this was matched perfectly with the Connex 11SX chain, generally regarded as ‘bombproof’, the strongest and longest life chain available.

So overall a great race, brilliant mileage and the knowledge that I could have gone even further makes the rest of the season look great! I’d also like to thank Eddy Rayford for taking most of the pictures posted here! A new sponsor also contacted me the day after the race so keep an eye open for some new equipment coming my way later in the season