The BONK!!!!

“Suffer8r”, would be a way to describe yesterday’s events for me. Not sure what the heck happened to me, but I hope I never go through that again. Body bread down, or whatever it was, it was painful. The first snotty climb one of the other riders had fallen sideways and his handlebar nailed me right in the “Charlie horse”. Like WTF, my bike is finally working fine and this happens. When starting the first ascent, it felt like my legs weighed 100lbs each.
The day before the race I had pre rode the course and I felt fine. Lots of snap in my legs, and I also felt strong. So what gives for race day, I have no idea. Maybe I had too much breakfast, or I had just over trained for the week. At one point I was in last place in the race. All my category had passed me at this point, and I thought they might be taking off the course on a stretcher. I have never felt like this before. Every little root and rock seemed like a huge obstacle for me. I took a gel, and then took four “shot bloks”, and by the time I was at the ¾ mark I started to feel better, and was able to ride. Now I had to decide if I was going to do another lap.
By the time I had started going down the last descent I was feeling stronger, and did well on the flat section before the transition area. The second lap was a totally different story than the first lap. I was able to ride everything, and I paced myself because I was worried that my body shut down again.

After all of this I have to realize that I had encountered my first BONK!!!! What a horrible feeling. I am glad that I was able to continue and work through the obstacles that comes with having a BONK. But it does show that I was able to work hard enough to run out of fuel.