Merida Ruthin 50k Race

This sunday saw George finish inside the top 50 (again!) at the Ruthin MTB marathon event (www.mtb-marathon.co.uk). This was despite a finishing time of over an hour slower than last year! Every so often I manage to get my prep completely wrong and it serves as a reminder to me of how it should be done next time.

What went wrong?
Primarily I started cramping up after about 25k, this was a nastly surprise for me as this is the earliest that I have started to cramp up in any race. From this point onward I had to monitor how hard I was pushing, if I went above a certain output the cramps would come back, either in my hamstrings or my quads (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quadriceps and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamstrings for descriptions). It was a real task to stop myself getting carried away with competing against those around me, the weird thing was having to ride way within my normal capacity. Definitely a good experience, especially when I gave myself licence to stop at the last feed station at 37k and have loads of salty food and about a litre of water, I felt a lot better after that!
What will I do differently next time?
I will drink a whole lot more water before the event. After the event I realised that I had only drunk half a pint of water in the four hours previously. I would normally go through about 3 pints or 1.5l in this time. I also made the mistake of piling in some coffee and some food immediately before the start, and whilst this wouldnt normally be a problem, when you add that to insufficient liquid it will equal cramping!
One interesting thing I also noticed was that on the technical downhill sections I was much slower than normal. This is because I have only been out three times on my bike since November 07, why would this be? Something to do with my little girl being born and studying NLP every third weekend I suspect. I have a little quieter time planned over the next 8 weeks so that, by the time I go to Selkirk and do the 75k route, I will have been out on my bike a few more times and will get my prep right. Bring on the practise!