Freedom Marathon

2 weeks ago saw me take on 40km of Nightcap National Park. We arrived in Byron Bay about 30min away from the race on Friday around mid morning. Dark sky's where above us so tomorrow's race was not looking dry. We set up camp in a holiday village and than went for a walk down to beach to meet up with some other friends. Friday night came and the group went out for dinner at the main beach pub. 7:00pm came around and I headed back to the camp to check over everything for the race. 8:30pm hit and I was in to the sleeping back and off to bed. Woke up at 6am, 4hrs before the race so time to eat and drink. Good news was that the sky was blue, and no rain over night. We left Byron at 8am and arrived at the race just after 830am. Got the bikes off and went down to register. By the time everything was done I had about 20min till race start, so I set off for a bit of a warm up. Turn around and Jason English (BMC) flew past, his warm up is faster than my race pace. After winning the Scott 24hr in Canberra last week he didn't look a tad tired. After the warm up, I took my place on the line ready for the start. The 60km riders went off and then 3min later the 40km took off. 2 of my main rivals Casper and U19 rider and Kerian who rides for Merida in the U23 class, were racing too and us 3 went off hard at the start. Casper took off and the was the last that Kerian and I saw of him till the end of the race. Kerian and I stayed close, alternating second and third between us for the first 25km till... went down into a gully and shot straight up this mud slide of a hill. We both jumped of and ran up the hill trying to stay with each other. Jumped back on the biked and went to push down on the pedal but they didnt move. Jumped back off and looked back and my rear wheel with the chain all mixed up in between ahhh!!!, it was the biggest chain stuck of the year. 10min passed and I was back on pushing hard to catch back up. I realised that I wasnt going to catching him with about 10km to go, so I paced my self up the last hill which was about 124235km long till the last 4km of down hill till the finish line. Crossed the line in 3rd place after 2hr 27min of riding, average HR 180, Average Speed 16.5kph Max 55.1kph. 19min behind Casper, and 5min behind Kerian. Finished 12th last year after 3hrs of riding so got to be happy, 9 places higher and just over 30min faster.