It's official...

I suck. In the heat.

Tried to race the 12 hours of Ithaca in MI, and the heat got me again. A heat index close to tripple digits is too much for me. After 4 hours/10 laps on the supertwisty and superflat course I had to take a couple of serious breaks. My stomach contents where boiling and ready to blow over.

For the next 4 hours I tried different tricks to cool down:
-fill the helmet with icecubes and put it back on
-icecubes in the gloves
-icecubes in jerseypockets
-cold coke and red bull
-cold towell on the neck
-icecubes in the sleeves
-testosterone pack placed on the right spot
-unplug the sun
It all didn't help, and since I was so busy trying that stuff out I only got 4 laps completed between 4 and 8 PM. I gave up hope for a good finish and started to cheer for my competition. And I kept reminding myself that it was just a training ride (and at the same time started to get freaked out about the 24 h in 3 weeks...)

At 8 PM I felt like I could be back in the game and headed out again. I got 2 laps in before I had to mount the lights, and after my first nightlap I made the official announcement that "I'M BACK!". It felt so good, finally my stomach didn't tell my legs to slow down once they wanted to go. I was rippin' through the trail, trying to catch my HID light beam. I was almost disappointed when it finally was midnight and the race was over - I had just completed my 2nd fastest lap of the day!

At the end I managed to finish 3rd, only 1 lap down of the overall winner. Good enough considering my problems and the off-bike time...

And:
Thanks Robin for helping out in the pits, I hope I wasn't too annoying when I was complaining about myself everytime I was there. But I was just mad at myself that I wasn't able to perform as good as others and others in the heat!