5th time doing this and head not in race mode. Still got started and going ok on first phase of climb. From where turned off the main track (everyone in front went on too far, and nobody behind seemed to want to follow me the right way...) began really struggling on the climb. Cough has come back a bit - and from the Col was finding that my breathing wasn't very effective, once lungs half full was coughing. Along with struggling legs had to slow it down and take big breaths and coughs to the top.
Ben went past on the flat before the top so gave somebody to look at, and his hills pace meant I was able to put in a bit of effort to hold on to him to the top.
Good ankle tried to give out on the first steps down from the top but otherwise managed to keep going at *reasonable* pace on the "flat". The last bit to Martin was the hardest.
Made quite a bit of effort on the descent (and tweaked good ankle too at the start) but think I'm lacking the core strength to do it as well as I probably am confident enough to for this. Still losing a lot of places going down but despite not being 100% still made a lot of them back on the uphills - passing them as though they were standing still. Ben having his own troubles with lung capacity going down so only about 1 min ahead at the end - with us both thinking we should be in the 57s not 60/61s.
Despite us both being a bit disappointed with result - and well beaten by John Aggleton - appears we still won the team prize! Maybe should have stayed at the end...
Nice race and good to see the Ashtons out marshalling, and the lesser-spotted Austin sweeping as a break from running virtually :-)
https://www.strava.com/activities/1717892658
Appears Strava is having problems today - uploaded manually and that took a while, and very few other runs up at the moment.