How do you beat that!?

Mountain Mayhem 2009.

Jo, my long suffering other half and our mate, Matt were on the solo race list. There were also lots of other good names there, just to make sure that the racing was exciting.

It didn't fail to impress...

...and I'm knackered, still. I didn't even ride my bike.

Matt won, after a proper nail biting final 6hrs, but it had been A tense race all of the way through since the lead kept swapping back and forward as he made sure he knew what strategy to use in the end. It worked, enough said. He was awesome, and inspiring.

Jo?


Well, she was awesome too. Stalwart pig headedness saw her let some of the "fast" folk shoot off, fall back and drop out.

She also managed to show me up with respect to the amount of food that she can put away during a race. She still surprised me with her ability to eat hotdogs at 16 and 20 hours into the ride. I wish I could do that.

Jo was 2nd, and now has a lovely pair of Crank Bros Cobalt wheels to show for her toils.

I like 'em. I wonder if she'd notice if I swapped them over.

Rob turned up after work with Matt from Certini and brought the new Team Lights. Maxx2Daddy and Joystick Maxx2. 6 sets!

Jo used them all, we just kept changing them every lap as she filled her face. Full power; singeing the trees. Marvellous. She didn't even notice us changing the lights over! Miss Focussed, or what?

The Exposure lights that Rory has sorted out for us are well blinged up. Chrome ends, with our names in place of the light designation. Mine are the Maxx2 DAVE.

I like those too!

After the race, I went up to "Rory" in his South Downs Racing shirt, and said thanks for the lights, and that they were superb. He looked at me funny. I said, "I'm Dave off of the Ironhorse-Extreme Team." His look remained unchanged, and I heard him say, "I've never seen him before in my life."

I kept digging, "You even sent me a text to congratulate me on my C2C."

It wasn't him. It sort of looked like him, but was blatantly not. I felt like a right weapon. The South Downs Shirt denoted the guy as coming from around the same area, so that just confused me at 30hrs into the day without sleep.

Oops.

I tried to find the real Rory, instead of this imposter and usurper of my devoted thanks, but he had disappeared.

Training hasn't been great this week as I have a little bug. But before it hit me I managed a 3 1/4hr ride on the roadie, with stupid one sided road pedals, and managed an average of 20.5mph.

So this will be a light week, and weekend, just to make sure I am illness free.

Dave

The Dragon Sportive

Another great weekend, followed by creaky knees and sore glutes on a Monday morning...

It's only the third time I have ridden my road bike this year. Could have been a mistake!

Saturday night and I got invited out for a meal with the team from Jim Walker, the Title Sponsors of IronHorse-Extreme. We had a lovely bit of Italian grub, cooked for us by an avid cyclist who was also due to ride the next day's Dragon Sportive.

It was a well chilled out night with like minded and friendly individuals. I didn't want to go home.

A bit more strangley though, was the fact that I was sat opposite a guy that I did my apprenticeship with (20years ago!) Hiya, Neil Craig, the bike shop owner from Llantwit Major.

I used to rip the mick out of him for shaving his legs, but how things have turned around...

Ian, John, Jaco, et al had the nicest bikes I ever saw, and my jealousy shone through as pure lust. I had time to look at them closely because they managed to get me right to the front of the start with them and other VIP's.

It felt good, but scary with 3000 riders behind us.

The hooter blew and off we set. At the first roundabout one of the marshall motorcyclists pulled off and turned left off of the roundabout. He did this at just the wrong time, and everyone followed him...

...in diametrically the opposite direction to that of the route.

One guy fell off, because he got a bit excited and pulled over onto gravel. Ouch.

So we turned around and got back on the course, laughing at the jolly jape that the marshall had caused. Of course we were all sheep and kept following him, and some other riders, off of the course. Idiots.

I had had a fantastic idea on the previous day. We knew that it was going to be warm, so I froze my camelbak.

It was still 1/2 full and frozen when I got home that night, and had sat high on my back like a rigid sail for the first 15miles.

Camelbaks don't defrost that quickly-- Note to self.

We got to the first climb and I caught up with one of the Jim Walker boys, but was quickly breathing out of my ears as he sort of cruised off. I would catch him up on the flats and the downs, but lose out on the climbs. This happened for 4hrs and I was starting to get a bit disheartened by it...

...Maybe my legs are still shot from the 12hr solo at Bristol last week? I feel rubbish, my legs feel empty. Why are these guys just riding off and leaving me on the hills?

I tried to stay in a group of 10 or so riders, but struggled to keep up as it was surging and stalling and not holding a steady speed at all. I lost them, and entered the above thought process again...

...What's going on?

I waited for the next group to catch me up. Same again. They dropped me and my legs started to feel like they were turning inside out. Then something funny happened. A guy called Rob Lynne (I remembered his number and checked up on him) passed me after Fan Gyhyrych. He has these big scary, veiny, muscley legs and a little body. A switch flicked and I managed to follow him all the way to the climb that takes you to Glynneath which was probably a distance of 10-12 miles. The average speed went up to about 22mph, and my body seemed to wake up and decide it wanted to cycle--4hrs in.

Thanks, body. Next time, set the clock properly.

I said to him, "I'd love to take a stint in front, but I can't, you're killing me!" He laughed and said not to worry. Thank goodness for that!

When we got to the climb, he left me at a heck of a rate of knots.

I caught up my 2 peletons, and worked my way through them. I took my stint on the front for about 2 minutes and looked back to say I was peeling off...

...They were gone. I'd dropped them.

I'm feeling better now. Everything changed from that point and I could manage to stand up and run on my pedals, passing people that had passed me earlier, and their groups. I was on my own though, with no groups to follow or get assistance from.

Billy no-mates, me.

I think Jaco, from Jim Walker was 4th place finisher. Crikey! He wants to come out mountainbiking in my local area, so I need to think of some excuses to get out of it. He'll kill me!

I can't wait to see the photos that Ian's photographer got!

Obviously I have none. I was a bit busy.

Cheers All!

Whacky Races!

My favourite photo of the year. Thanks Jo!


Three of us did the 12hr solo at Bristol Bike Fest.

It's always nice to have a foreboding weather forecast and everyone was expecting a mud bath. They got it!

Rob, Josh and I lined up for the fisty cuffs "Le Mans" start in the wet grassy field. There were hundreds of us aiming to get away and pick up our bikes on a doubletrack 300metres away.

The hooter went, and the friends that I had been standing next to dissapeared as I got engulfed in blood lusting, baying animals.

I didn't see them again and I got to our bike monitor (Josh' Dad) to see that mine was the only one left, so I took it and got going.

This was going to be a proper muddy race. Some bits did dry out and some dry lines developed, but other parts stayed just as, if not more, slippy. It was chaos on the first few singletrack sections as normally happens at these events, but the mud compounded things.

People were falling off, usually due to the mud, all the way through the race. It was full of comedy value, but you knew fine and well that some of these guys were hurting themselves. Someone would slip on an off-camber sections as you rode around them on the outside (on a few really wide sections) and you could hear the air rushing out of their lungs as they got the smackdown treatment.

"You ok?" Well, you have to ask.

gasp, wheeze, splutter...

"Yes, keep going."

So I did, about 150 times.

I'm so glad that I can handle a bit of mud and slime, because the bike hardly went straight for the whole of the race. Well, to be clear, it hardly went straight for the bottom 3rd of the course because it stayed wet and "exciting."

Marvellous!

I was drinking too much for the temperature of the day and was stopping to pee every lap, so I revised my plan and drank a bit less. Perfect.

Hour 5 and my right foot felt all floppy. I stopped to have a look and was surprised to find that my cleat was loose. Really loose. I was close to losing it. 5 or so minutes later and I had fixed it back in place, rounded one of the allen bolts off and muttered a small and silent prayer that it would stay in place.

I've finally found my pace. Having talked to my Coach last week he had suggested a pace that I should aim for. But it made me ride ragged, and my legs hurt. So I dropped my pace by a bit and settled in. It was my 24hr pace, it felt good, and I got stronger throughout the race. At 8hrs my long distance gaze started- I was in the mode!

At 11hrs 30min (the race was started late due to traffic issues) I was just about ready to keep going for another 12hrs. Well I would have been if my upper body hadn't been battered to pieces by the course.

Josh was 2nd solo, Rob was 2nd singlespeed solo, and I was 4th in the solo.

I think that I did 17 or 18 laps last year in the dry and superfast conditions that prevailed then. I did 17 this year, and that "could" have been 18 if I could have fished about 10mins back during the day, but hey!

Well chuffed.

Dragon road race next week. I'm not too great on a road bike, but it's good training.

After that, a few weeks solitary training and then 24/12!

I think I'll be ready, just don't tell anyone else.

...and she showed me her knickers!

Life has been a busy of late, and I just realised that I've missed a week or so of blogs.

You could probably do with a break, anyway.

This weekend was a good one, having done the 100km open at "The Big Welsh Weekend" at Margam Park. I missed the entry to the Championships, but that would have been a lost cause, anyway.

Also, I have finally fully realised that the grumbling knee problem I have had since my coast to coast is "nearly" gone. I feel it but it doesn't trouble me, but I am super sensitive to seat height variations at the moment. My tape measure is coming out, and I'm going to write this down, keep it and use it.

The weather was Scorchio! I'm pale blue and Scottish. Heat doesn't agree with me. It's, surprisingly, the first 100km marathon event I've ever done and I have to admit to being a bit nervous both about the event and the heat.

As it turned out, it was good practice for next weeks 12hr solo at Bristol, because I only really felt comfortable at 5-10% above my 24hr pace. Any more than that and my eyeballs started melting and I lost control of my heart rate; which was high all day anyway, for some reason. The heat?



My aim was 6hrs at a steady pace for the 100Km, so I was happy to come in at 5hrs 19min. My pacing is good at the moment...

...for me.

At the top of Margam we entered a rutted downhill and a guy had a proper, dramatic, off infront of me. His bike had buried itself somewhere quite personal and he was sqealing like a stuck pig. I got off and helped him out, but nobody else bothered their backside. I was surprised by this, since he was making a lot of noise and lying straight across the track. People had to work hard to get past us.

Thanks Guys. I asked a couple of folk for help to get him off the track, but they were obviously going for World dominance (in the mid-pack).

Anyway, I sorted him out by extricating the bike from him, and realised that he was just winded. At that, he started to move himself around and stand up. After a while and making sure he wasn't going to flake out I got going again.

It was pretty uneventful up to the mid point of the race then. A guy got out of the way for me on a little steep offroad section at the top of the last climb. He was perched kind of precariously above a steep slope but had left plenty of room for me to get past...

...His right pedal turned out to be in my way, as I cycled past and my foot caught his on it's upstroke. The contact between our feet was quite momentous, as it launched him and his bike down the slope.

Oops.

He was fine and shouted at me to keep going. I think he laughed, but I felt really guilty.

Another thing that will stick in my mind, apart from the 10 or so riders I watched toss their used gel wrappers aside on the trail and the subsequent detritous, is feeling moisture speckle my face on a downhill firetrack. It was quites pleasant, until I looked up to see what was happening. A guy that I was catching up because he wasn't peddling had his old boy out and was peeing over the top of his shorts, on the move. Spray was going everywhere, and I had to change position on the track to make sure I stayed dry.

Personally, I'd stop if I wasn't in the top flight of riders there; which we weren't.

I bet he smelled nice afterwards.

Then a member of the RAF was running down the hill with his bike in one hand and a front wheel in the other. He'd lost his pump and had a pinch flat. I reckoned he would catch me up again, as he had been in front anyway, so I stopped and gave him my posh little pump. He had other problems though and had to quit, so he waited for me at the feeding transition in the arena and gave it back to me as I rode through for my final lap. Good lad.

I started to feel right in the groove on the last lap: I had "warmed up" now, and was entering "the long ride zone".

Was I fast? Nope. Could I have gone any faster? Probably not in that heat, maybe slightly faster if it was cool. Was I happy with my performance? Yip.

My feeding and fluid strategy is working well although it seems like I still have one speed at which I can do reasonably well--24hr pace. This 2-6hr xc stuff is too quick for me and I'll always be an "also-ran" but it's fun! However, my long distance endurance pace is getting higher. I have to keep reminding myself that I came into this game late, and didn't follow the more normal route of xc racing followed by enduros and then 24's. That's why I have only one speed.

Sat with our friends later in their van and eating all of their food, Kate seemed really pleased that she had Snoopy knickers on. She was so pleased that she showed them to us!

Nutter.