As long-distance PB
chasing goes, this is…..
It’s another slight cheat as courses go as the finish
is several hundred feet lower than the start. You start in Rhigos, make your
way onto the A465 then p-l-u-n-g-e into the valley of the river Neath which you
follow for the next 10 miles before looping back on yourself and finishing in Glynneath. So, apart from the ski-jump at the beginning, it’s mainly flat.
Lots of differing
anecdotes about which wind direction was the quickest for this course but I had
no control over that so just hoped for the best. As long as it wasn’t a
screaming crosswind, it’d be quick!
At the start of the
season, I’d made a sub 21 min 10 and a sub 53 minute 25 my goals for the season
but based on my really pleasing run of Open 10 mile TT times (5 sub 21 on the
bounce), plus the recent slightly half-hearted 53:07 on the E2 made me adjust
the goal posts slightly. Sub 53 was going to be easy. I now wanted sub 52!
I was originally
going to go on my own but Sue decided she’d like to come which was great
because that meant we could make a mini holiday out of it. So we dragged the camping gear out and set
off….
 |
| Hmmm, camping. My favourite.... |
We arrived at the
campsite just inside the Brecon Beacons National Park late Saturday afternoon
and was a lovely spot, although a bit rowdy as a couple of drunken BBQ’s were
in full swing. Sue did all the technical
stuff like putting the tent up while I did the man stuff and lit the barbie.
The rowdies gradually drank themselves unconscious and we were left with a
magnificent view of the night sky (the area is one of those Dark Sky Reserve thingies)… and
millions of midges! They didn’t really
bother me but they were tucking into Sue with relish. Chucking the odd handful
of wet grass / leaves onto the fire to make smoke worked reasonably well (or so
we thought) but we decided that insect repellent was definitely top of the
shopping list in the morning.
Race day and a
cracking morning. Light winds and bright sunshine but slightly chilly.
Unfortunately, we were both absolutely covered in bites and were itching like
mad. Sue had faired much worse and looked like she’d had a severe bout of
chickenpox or something. Have to get this TT out the way then straight down to
the nearest Boots for anti-histamines!! But first, find the race HQ….
The sat nav took us
on an impromptu tour of several Welsh villages before we eventually gave up and
leapt in behind a couple of cars with TT bikes on the roof and followed them.
Sure enough, we arrived at the Rhigos Rugby Club!! HQ for the day!
Bit disappointed
warming up on the turbo – felt a bit lethargic and puny but put it down to
spending hours sitting in the car and sleeping in a tent etc and tried to put
any negative thoughts to the back of my mind. Besides, performance on the turbo
often bears no resemblance to what happens out on the road later. Or so I hoped….
I left Sue sewing
in the car, or doing her best to without her contact lenses in – we’d forgotten
the lens cleaning solution! Something else to add to the Boots shopping list!
I arrived at the
start much earlier than I liked to – either it hadn’t been quite as far as I
thought or the timekeepers weren’t running to the same version of UTC as me.
Must be WST (Welsh Summer Time) or something… Ah well…
The start was
directly opposite a bungalow which was having a load of renovation work done
and the builders took great delight in taking the piss out of every new rider
who queued at the start. Envy – that must have been it, or all those
middle-aged bellies hanging over the top tubes…
Anyway, concentrate Captain Cosmic, nearly your turn…
3 – 2 – 1 Go!
Woo! Downhill
straight away, hey, this is good! Road rough as arseholes though, watch out…
Oh, an uphill bit…
and another… I thought this course was supposed to be bloody fast… Roundabout…
Ah another downhill bit… another roundabout… Left onto the dual carriageway,
Here we go Trigger, woohoo!!!
Feels really
treacly today… What was the atmospheric pressure? Can’t remember… must just be
me going crap… Hopefully not a headwind out. 15 out, only 10 back, not ideal.
The road slowly
starts to tip downhill and then all of a sudden you’re on the famous concrete
ski-jump. It’s not as steep as the one
on the F11/10 as I can carry on pedaling most of the way down it. Goes on and
on then levels out steadily but it still feels like a very steady descent for
miles and miles. I’m 30 mph plus average for a loooong long time.
At 12.5 miles, I’m
on for a 49 minute ride! This is just too good to be true! Still a good 2.5
miles to the turn and the speed has been slowly bleeding off for the last few
minutes – I think I’m going very slightly uphill again or the wind has picked
up. I like to arrive at halfway at about a 3 or 4 out of 10 on the
‘Cook-o-meter’ but I’m probably feeling at about a 5 or 6. I think the occasion
might have got to me. Still, I’m mega motivated and will have no problem
hanging on today!
I arrive at the
turn at 15 miles still on for a mid-50. Climbing the sliproad, the ‘10’ man who
started 3 mins behind flies past out of the saddle. I really must do something
about my crap climbing skills…
“Go on mate,” he
offers. What a nice chap.
 |
| Getting my knee down on a roundabout! Not done that for a while! |
A car came past
just before the mini roundabout at the top of the sliproad and went to go
straight on… before turning sharp left right across me at the last minute and
nearly had me off. It was a major near miss. Thing is, the stupid c**t had the
cheek to wave and gesticulate madly at me as if it was my fault. I had enough
time to give the roof of his car a good bang with my fist. Twat…
Fortunately it all
happened in full view of a marshall who reassuringly offered his opinion of the
driver with a surreptitious ‘wanker’ sign…
Loop over the dual
carriageway then back down onto the other side. Oh dear, it felt much less
slippery on the way back, only occasionally nudging the magic 30mph this time.
If I could knock out a 21 minute 10 from here though, I’d just creep under 52
mins. A 51 minute 25? Fucking hell mate!
Something
definitely changed on the way back, the wind, gradient or something as it was
much tougher. It was quite bizarre. I wasn’t the only one who experienced it,
several riders mentioned how tough the last five miles were, even the guy who
caught me for 3 mins at the turn. Thing is, I must have been doing something
right as I kept him in sight, within a minute or so the whole way back, so he
must have been slowed up much more than me.
If I ever ride this course again, I’ll definitely save a bit for this
last part.
With 5 or 6 miles
to go, my exciting long distance PB chasing trip to Wales
A roundabout and
the break in rhythm caused by those bloody awful rumble strip things nearly
finished me off. Aaaarrrggghhh….
I knew I was starting
to unravel as a lorry air horn in the distance somewhere seemed to play the
tune from an annoying TV advert from my childhood and I spent the next few
moments trying to get it out of my head…
“They’re tasty,
tasty, very, very tasty… they’re very tasty….”
What the bloody
hell was that? Crunchy Nut Cornflakes or something wasn’t it? *** I’d Google it
back at the campsite….
I don’t know about you but there’s something
really special in those moments of intense ‘mindfulness’ towards the end of a
long effort. There’s a Zen-like quality to it – all you can do and all you
think about is being on the bike, right then and there, and keeping the pedals
going over. I don’t know if you’re
actually tripping out on the endophines etc or are plunging right into one of
those legendary ‘alpha’ states of consciousness but it’s a kind of
euphoria.
This time I was
particularly lucid in my delirium and can pretty much remember my whole surreal
train of thought. It went a little like
this:
Bloody hell, how
are we doing? FREDA… (It’s an en route flying acronym – see below)
- Fuel – gone!
- Radio – talking to myself again…. Ha ha ha….
- Engine – T’s & P’s… Hot, totally cooked! Pressure, no pressure, no pressure…
- DI – following a dual carriageway, you nob! How’s my mental compass? Hmmm, guessing ENE, 070…
- Altitude – zero feet agl! Following a river… almost sea level… but going uphill slightly… defo going uphill…
Perhaps it’s years
spent flying for a living, but I realized all of a sudden that my TT’ing consists
of a series of drills, time checks, flight planning, sort of….
What could FREDA
stand for here on this DC in Wales
‘Not Waving but
Drowning?’ Who wrote that? I recited the first couple of lines (That’s public
school for you – filling your head with useless crap to make you seem
intelligent!):
Nobody heard him, the dead
man,
But still he lay moaning:
I was much further out than you thought
And not waving but drowning
The
words seemed strangely poignant considering my current predicament and it made
me smile! Why the hell could I still
remember that after all these years? I then realised that I could still
remember all the prepositions that took the dative case in German… Aus, außer, bei, mit,
nach, zeit, von, zu, gegenüber ….
I remember my German teacher Mr Beasley
prancing around the classroom like a demented Teutonic chimp. “Durch, für, gegen, weider, ohne, um,
entlang, bis…” What was that list? Genitive?
God knows…
 |
| Come on! Pedal faster Fatty! |
FREDA… 48 Mins ticked over. 22.8 miles behind me…. Speed… 28.5mph. Arse, the 51 minute ride was gone. Arse, bugger, bollocks…
But a huge PB was in the bag… perhaps I could ease up just a bit? I mean 52:05 or 52:30, what did it matter? I’d still failed! Hang on though, you’d come all this fucking way, slept in a bloody tent, got eaten alive by sodding mosquitoes… I’ll be buggered if I drive home thinking, “I reckon I could have ridden those last 2 miles faster….”
Plus, the course could be short. Or my computer could be wrongly calibrated. The sliproad would be downhill, that’s worth a few seconds. A convoy of tractors going at 40mph could squeeze past and give me a tow. Anything could happen! Smash it!
I know I say this frequently, but those last 4 minutes were probably the longest, most uncomfortable, most painful time I’ve ever spent on a bicycle. I pushed as hard as I could on the pedals but it didn’t seem to make me go any faster.
Where was the fucking sliproad! Hey, here it is! 52 minutes ticked over. Sprint, sprint, sprint… Shit, wish I’d recce’d the finish… Wonder how close the finish line is to those traffic lights…
T junction and I heard a loud whistle from a marshall. Hey, just like on the telly! Like it! He waved me left… Fuck me, there’s the finish line… Aaaaaaaaaaarrrrrggghhhhhhhhh…..
Across the line then hard on the brakes as the traffic lights were on red.
52:15 ish.
Well, that was about as good as I could have expected really. Slightly overcooked but a little more course knowledge would have clinched it I think. Really wishing I’d made the time to ride the course properly instead of just flying around it on Google Earth. Not too shabby though.
Semi-conscious, I pulled over to the pavement, leant the bike against a metal railing and flopped onto the floor. There was a strange moaning noise coming out of my mouth which must have sounded like me trying to do a Jimmy Saville impersonation. God I was in agony…
I was suddenly aware of someone standing next to me – it was an old lady pulling a shopping trolley. I’d collapsed right in front of her, blocking the path.
“Having a bit of a rest?” she smiled in a lovely Welsh voice.
“Yes… I’m in your way,” I panted, “I’m sorry…”
“Were your friends a bit too fast for you?” she offered kindly.
“Yes,” I grinned, “something like that!”
A top tip for anyone hoping to try this
course is to a) have your wife / girlfriend / mate pick you up near the finish
or b) fit a small chainring to allow you to climb the enormous long, steep hill
from Glynneath to the HQ in Rhigos! Bloody hell, it nearly killed me on a 56 x
18, in fact I thought about taking my shoes off and walking at one point but
decided to man up a bit.
As usual, back at the HQ it was hand number
back, sling Trigger in the car and get out of Dodge asap. The crowd around the
results board was about 20 deep anyway and I’d have needed a telescope to see
my confirmed time. However, I was in there long enough to hear several comments
along the lines of “it wasn’t a very fast day,” and “the wind was in the wrong
direction” etc so that was quite pleasing. (Is the wind EVER in the right
direction??!!). Winning time was a mere 48 something by the rider that had past
me at turn and sportingly offered a spot of encouragement.
Time confirmed later as 52:13. That’s
28.72mph. That’s faster than you need to go to beat 21 mins in a 10.
That
made me feel a bit better.
Those 14 seconds at 28.72mph that I missed
the sub 52 by is a mere 180 metres however. 180 metres too far. Just 180 poxy metres.
That made me feel considerably worse and I put the calculator away….
Time trialing is such a great individual quest - after events like this dozens of personal triumphs and disappointments surround you, like the couple of older riders who'd gone under the hour for the first time. You'd have thought they'd have won the Olympics or something by the size of their grins, it's brilliant. Then the disappointment of the bloke who'd missed doing a 49 by a few seconds etc.
Time trialing is such a great individual quest - after events like this dozens of personal triumphs and disappointments surround you, like the couple of older riders who'd gone under the hour for the first time. You'd have thought they'd have won the Olympics or something by the size of their grins, it's brilliant. Then the disappointment of the bloke who'd missed doing a 49 by a few seconds etc.
Definitely felt slightly psychologically
battered after this ride though, sort of “Not sure I want to do that to myself
any time soon…” type of thing. That’s not good really, especially as so much of
this TT’ing lark is about where your head is. My 10 time is pretty much
unbeatable ever really and this was the best chance of 2014 to smash a fast 25
PB, so where does that leave your motivation for the rest of the season?
A 50 PB perhaps? Yeah, but form / health is
definitely on one of its long season-ending slides and the next suitable fast
50 is in September! Dunno though – rest up for august, smash a couple of hard
weeks training in early September and have a crack at it perhaps? Hmm, we’ll
see.
I’m feeling bloody shattered at the minute
though – I’ve DNS’ed pretty much every ride I’ve entered the last few weeks.
Yeah, I’ll just rest up for a while and see how it goes….
*** It was actually Kelloggs Bran Flakes!
*** It was actually Kelloggs Bran Flakes!
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