Making mistakes

Today, I am tired and angry and I think that I have made mistakes. I think I have made mistakes, because I am changing, and if I am changing, I am learning, and if I am learning, maybe it is through making mistakes? I cannot be sure of them all.

I definitely made a mistake two weeks ago. Someone had triple-parked in a bike-gated cul-de-sac, so I had to edge the bike between two cars on the off-pavement side, standing on the pedals at walking speed. As I got to the back corner of the opaque 4x4, a woman stepped out, and, unable to stop, I lowered my head and caught her in the nose with my helmet.

The gap too thin to walk with the bike, the car too tall to see over, I had to admit it was my fault. People are always going to triple-park. Pedestrians are always going to walk out blind. So it was my fault.

I should have called out.

Then there was the news of Wiggins and Shane Sutton colliding with obliviousness. All Hell broke loose. I played my part in a radio interview, and said nothing of what needed to be said. I read the fora, listened to the opinions. My worst fears were realised, as I discovered just how many people have no idea what it is to ride our roads. The rights we have, and we have fought for. The fear we fight.

There is so much ground to cover, so much to iterate and re-iterate to explain to, it seems, so many people, about why they must resist de-humanising cyclists. Why they shouldn't focus on the differences, but the similarities.

But I must try.

Road cycling is a beautiful sport. I assert this, because to me, it is, and to a large number of people internationally, it is. I should not need to rationalise it, because so long as a benign hobby brings so much joy to so many people, that should be all that is required to support it. But I shall try to explain.

Cycling is still a sport of the people. It races among the people, on the streets, the roads, that we know. To ride the same roads is to taste a fraction of the same glory as our heroes. It is true that the equipment at the high end has grown ever more unattainable, but there are certainly more bicycles than people in the UK. You do not require a livery stable, a gym membership, or a team. All you require is a bike - the same bike that can take you to work, that you visit friends on, that can be an integral part of your life every single day. That can take you on holiday, to places you've never seen, or back to family long missed.

The sport itself is as thrilling to participate in as any you're likely to come across. It rewards fitness and stamina, but also cunning, teamwork and intuition. For every racer, there is a race.

Ignoring the history, the sport is a natural evolution of people moving every day under their own power - an ambition that no civilised society should wish to stymie. As long as there are bicycles, there shall be bicycle races, legal or illegal; impromptu or organised.

If cycling is not "your" sport, please understand, for many people, it is "our" sport, and represents as healthy and fulfilling niche in society as football, rugby, badminton, curling... even, dare I say it, golf, which I have personal reservations about due to the environmental damage that its pursuit can entail.

With cycling as a sport established, I can move onto the roads. That is, if people will let me.

It is crazy. Crazy that I should feel fear, every night, to participate in the sport that I love. Crazy that I should find myself hovering at the door, wondering if I can push myself for another 3 hours, not because I am physically tired, but because I can't stand the confrontation any more. The sensation of being unwanted, out of place. Like a ballerina in a boxing ring, I feel like I am setting myself up for a fall. It is crazy that some of my friends should feel the need to bring video cameras to document their training, the shadow of a policeman behind the tutu. Like a strip-search on the way into the football training ground, it is a symbol of distrust ten times more powerful than a high-vis vest or a helmet. It is a bold accusation to everyone else on the road - a sign saying "I know you want to hurt me, but I'll make sure you pay if you do."

I hate that he is probably right.

Cycling is a low-impact aerobic sport, primarily. To be successful in it, one requires a good deal of aerobic training, and a good field of competitors against whom to pit yourself against. Without a "grass roots", there would not be a Team Sky.

So there are numbers of us - maybe thousands, maybe tens of thousands - who must train. We accept that we will never be "the next Wiggo", but we are there at the grass roots. Racing for the thrill, providing the fodder for the greats but bettering ourselves race on race and season on season. This training can be hard, and it must fit around who we are.

As a young man with few attachments, I can afford to give myself 3 hours training a day after work, and 6 hours a day on the weekend, for this base training period. The time taken for this will naturally overlap with the time that some people will be travelling to and from work, or to friends, or to pick up their children, in cars. In the morning, I would run a higher risk of ice or of running late, so I train in the evening.

It is not possible to train in a gym for 30 hours per week at aerobic intensities. It would drive any sane person mad, and leave any mad person drenched in their own sweat night after night.

It is not possible for me to train off-road for all of this time. Off-road tracks are shared with pedestrians and dogs. They can only be safely traversed with a mountain bike, because multiple punctures or snapped spokes thirty miles from home on an inaccessible cycle track in the pouring rain at a few degrees above zero are a dangerous proposition. In the case of freezing weather, they cannot be used at all due to untreated surfaces. In windy weather, they frequently cannot be used due to the threat of falling branches.

That is why I am there, on the road, slogging along, as you get stuck behind me in the pitch dark.

Let me make this clear, though. You are usually not caught behind me because I am a cyclist. You can overtake cyclists. Usually, you are trapped behind me because of oncoming traffic. If they, or you, were on bicycles, this "problem" would not exist. Remember that.

So that is why I am there. What of my behaviour?

What of it?

I do my best to behave myself, even though I see infractions on all sides, day in, day out. It seems, though, that, to many people, this doesn't matter. Many cyclists break the rules, therefore they are involved in accidents.

I may be jumping to conclusions, but I am willing to bet that Bradley Wiggins did not break the rules. I am willing to bet that Shane Sutton did not break the rules.

Spend any time reading the racing press, following club fora or just being involved in cycling, and you very quickly become aware that these accidents and deaths are not just occurring to people caught on the inside of lorries in cities. Riders, good riders, excellent riders, from grassroots to international elite, are involved in collisions with blithely unaware drivers.

Do not pass the blame onto bad cyclists.

That is my job.

What bad cyclists are doing is allowing the issues to be diverted. They are allowing drivers to consider cyclists as "other", as "rule flouters". They are allowing drivers to become disengaged, because they feel that the threat to cyclists comes from the behaviour of the cyclists themselves.

In the case of Wiggins? In the case of Sutton?

Complacent drivers are the biggest hazard I come across. Those that don't look. Those that assume it's clear. Even more so than the cut-in, aggressive, vicious weaponised madmen on the road. At least they know where you are when they intimidate you. No, for me, it's the person who doesn't worry about cyclists. Who hasn't had a "near miss". Who only sees cyclists when they are misbehaving.

It is these drivers that I see as most dangerous, and, so long as there is argument about the actions of cyclists, they are the people disengaged from the message.

It is true that a number of drivers do not realise the reality of riding on roads, and on cycle paths. They do not realise that on an unknown road, a cyclist may not use the cycle lane because (1) they may not even have realised it exists, since they certainly cannot be guaranteed. (2) They may not know where the path ends, and do not wish to be exposed to the frequent bad junctions that cycle paths lead them to. (3) They do not know where the path will take them full stop, because they are frequently poorly labeled. (4) The surface cannot be guaranteed to allow them to complete their journey. (5) There may be large numbers of potentially oblivious pedestrians or dogs using the cycle path... and so on. Similarly, many cyclists do not know how visible they are. It is difficult to get a good idea of how brightly lit you are when compared to the numerous different lighting conditions that a cyclist may go through on a ride, from pitch black (usually fairly visible, so long as there is some light on board) to full sodium floodlamps (how much does a high-vis stand out when the whole street is orange and covered in specular reflections from car windshields?). I cannot guarantee that a cyclist will take criticism well, because of the antagonism that is part-and-parcel of being on the road at the moment, but, from another cyclist, or, said politely, enough times, they may change their habits. They may find another £5 and get a secondary rear light. They may realise their battery needs replacing.

I know that I am pro-cyclist. I know that I believe that responsibility should follow the Copenhagen model. I can sympathise, though, with drivers. I do know that cyclists can be hard to spot, and that inexperienced cyclists can struggle to know when they are hard to spot, such as in areas of high contrast, when, if unlit, a cyclist must purely and simply expect to need to take evasive action - you wouldn't race full-pelt through fog, so why would you in any other situation of limited visibility? Similarly, I know that a small, steady light is still very difficult to spot in a street of specular reflections. It does take a second look.

That said: take the second look.

I will try to share what I know. I will try to reduce the mistakes made by myself, and by those I can communicate with. But people do not and cannot be expected to know everything. In some of the spurious arguments from the cyclist side, I see myself from merely a few years ago. We must make the time to think through what we can do to help motorists keep us safe, and how we can protect pedestrians. Motorists must take the time to look, to "think bike", to expect us as the rule, not the exception.

We alll need to think ahead to the next accident.

Otherwise, we can only learn from our mistakes.

B.A.S.E.

Building Aerobic System Endurance

Beating All Spring Entrants

Brag About Souplesse Enhancements

Break After Season's End

Bring Along Something to Eat

Beer and Alcoholic Spirits Encouraged

Blowy And Showery Everywhere

Branches And Sharps Endemic

Boring And Slow Excursions

Best Avoid Steep Escarpments

Begin Another Sodding Exercise

Believe Another Scientific Experiment

Buy Another Set of Everything

Bright Afternoons, Starry Evenings

Better Alongside Someone Else

Begin Again to Surprise Everyone

On Irrational Proprietary Feelings

Day on day and year on year

Night and morn and eve,

I ride on in from there to here,

Because here my bike I leave

It's not special, that space of mine

Under tree, by the stand,

And it's not that I wish to whine,

But there's history there, between me and land

That's the spot for which I aim,

Where my charge is secure,

And though I cannot leave my name,

I leave something else for sure

So if on that loop of steel you see

A lock that seems forgot,

Please roll on by and think of me

And please don't nick my spot.

The Le Mans of Knockhill

It's been a long night.

The pits echo with the whirr of turbo trainers and rollers, and murmured syllables in front of the screen tracking the results. The computer tells me that the air temperature has dropped to three degrees - colder in here than out there - and I am wearing almost everything I have as I gently spin my legs back into action.

Gloves on, buff on. I change my hat so quickly that the draft perceptibly cools my head. That's not the worst part, though. The worst part is always the jersey - switching out the fleece, the coat, for a layer of polyester, a rain jacket, and a gilet. No, wait, that's not the worst. The worst is dragging myself out of my sleeping bag, fetid now with the constantly-replaced sweat, prizing my eyes open to start this whole cycle again. The changing. The warm-up. The rolling out into the pin-pricked night to roll back and forth up the pit lane as I wait for that mini sun that is Jim's light.

But I do it anyway. I do it because I just checked my watch, and I know it's time to start. I start now, because I need to be there for Jim. Jim goes out, time and time again, because he knows Andy is counting on him being there. And time after time, Andy is right there when I need him. No question, no consideration that things would ever be otherwise.

That is why I peel back the sleeping bag.

The transfer of the wrist-band "baton" is getting slower now, but with lap times lengthening the changeover is less critical. Better safe than searching.

It's a smile and a wave from the Enable girls, then a hop over the drain at the end of the pit lane and out onto the track, zero to thirty miles an hour in a hundred metres. The first right hander is taken flat-out and pedalling, the apex long memorized. Then it's down into the sweeping left. The more I put on, the more I'll have to scrub off after though, so I drop my right leg and swoop through, holding the left edge of the track as I come into turn three. There's a floodlight here, and a car parked to highlight the apex with its beams, but I cautiously drop the speed back to below 30 to avoid running wide on the exit. Punching out the other side, it's up to 32 as I'm slingshotted up the following slope, taking the straight line through the chicane.

It's the hardest part of the circuit, the drag up through the next corner. I pass solo riders, now into the mentally destructive, metabolism-crippling early morning hours that require a stern will and infinite patience to crank your way through. I say hello, but it is muffled by the buff.

All weight onto legs as I wrench around the right-hander onto the back straight. It would be suicidal if I was doing more than 8 or 9 laps, but with these short stints, I can't hold back too much.

The headwind is vicious now, and I'm in the drops and as flat-backed as I can go, but spinning lightly. By this point I need more air than I can draw through the buff, and drop it off my nose, the sharp shock of it like cut crystal. My light reflects off highlights on legswarmers that piston in front of me, then slide off to one side.

I take the sharp inside line through the hairpin as the strongest rider from Fife showed me. It's one of the fastest ways to get around, but, more importantly, if you've picked up any hangers-on with no strength left, you can drop them here instantly. It's cruel, but every lap counts.

The buffer is already considerable, but we're only just over half-way. I won't feel comfortable until the last hour, when the caffeine I've pumped direct into my stomach lining has pulled out some of my fastest half hours so far as the morning mist burns off and I celebrate my final outing on the track by stripping down to shorts and a jersey and trying to beat Beaumont's three minute lap. I don't make it, but it doesn't matter. John and Nicola are there cheering me on, and so is everyone else, and we've done it. I pull in to give Andy the glory of bringing it home, the adrenaline still coursing through my veins. We pulled out almost 20 miles on our nearest competitors, and led from start to finish.

That a three-man team could win through 24 hours of racing versus four-men teams is surprising, and that we could do it so thoroughly is astonishing, but, truth be told, we won because we had no weak riders. None of us were as fresh as us at our best, but, similarly, none of us was significantly slower than the others. So we kept it up, lap after lap, rarely letting others pass whilst putting the other teams further into deficit when they fielded weaker riders.

We also had great support, John and Nicola paying us a visit when it mattered most, and making us as comfortable as guys spending thirty out of every ninety minutes flying around a track in the dark could be.

Most importantly, we had motivation. Friends and family had kindly donated over £1300 to Enable Scotland, the charity the event was in aid of, on the basis that we were going to ride our hearts out and, yes, win. As soon as I heard of the event, I knew we had the riders to win it, and we proved that.

We'll be back next year, to break the record.

Our record.

Crashing out and in

I wonder if there's ever been a time where I'd have been happy with 8th.

Probably not.

The South West Scotland Cycling Project's 4th race of the season took place this weekend, down around Dalbeattie, which, in common with all SWSCP races, is virtually impossible to get to via public transport. I was grateful, then, of the lift from Jim, one of the five club members to make the trip, making it our most gregarious race ever. Since we all finished, I suppose it was also our most successful, and the race could certainly be painted in a positive light. Then again, with crashes involving two of us, and riders getting dropped, it could also be painted in colours more closely attributed to Munch's 'Scream'. Indeed, it was a tale of two races. Here they are.

Race One: A dark day in Hell.

It wasn't supposed to be like this. The rain and clouds should have moved away in the early morning, leaving clean, sticky roads. They weren't supposed to linger, to smother the dank dolmens of Galloway and oppress the steel sea, as riders rolled eyes and wheels in an industrial car park, wondering if we were going to get any dry races this season.

The roll-out, when it came, was blisteringly quick, only hurrying the descent into carnage. Taking my customary position near the centre of the road, I let myself drift too far back, wary as I was of crossing the centreline on such an unknown route, and with dire warnings from the commissaires. In such a position, I could see the pack compress and swerve as rider after rider stopped dead, even on descents, parting the spandex sea with a raised fist of frustration as another sharp splintered through a tread.

The first crash was uphill, on a straight. After checking that Jim was alright, enough was enough and jumped hard, a lead group of about 20 forming out of the debris. It was another mile before the second crash, on flat road with good visibility. As the riders at the front of the pack binned it, the rider in front of me drifted to the right, into the fray. Yelling with dismay, as I realised the deceleration had put me into overlap, I had no choice but to go with him until he hit the verge and took me down.

Bloodied down my left side, I was back on my bike in a handful of seconds, and regretting it in a couple of seconds more as I wrenched my left shifter back into position and found the lever jammed like a compound fracture forty five degrees off the vertical. Rear brake control was still possible, but only from the hoods. At least I was stuck in the big ring.

The descent took far too long, but it allowed a small group of four to form - myself, my club mate Graham, and two Classic Racing Team riders. The pack were in view, but pegging them back would take some work.

We worked.

To my dismay, whenever the first CRT  rider came by, though, we slowed, and his team-mate left him too long before taking up the pace. A few miles down the road, we had no choice but to drop him, and Graham. We needed to make it to the back of the cars.

Three private vehicles were caught behind the comissaire's car, and with a massive burst of effort I was finally able to latch onto the recirculation zone of the last of them. At last, a chance to relax, get my breath back before working our way up.

Not a chance.

The car drove with all the smooth purpose of a man deciding whether to chop off his own arm or foot, dropping back, then booting towards the queue again. I sprinted almost into the rear bumper time and time again, before finally having the breath to jump around the outside.

Race Two: An instinct for speed.

The comissaire pulled out and let us through on the inside, where we were welcomed back into the bosom of the pack and invited to rest. A break had already gone up the road, and I was in no condition to pin it back, so I let what happen unfold.

There were periods where no-one spoke at all; where the sun broke through and the roads claimed no further victims. We worked, we rode quickly, but we were past fighting, and I had nothing to prove. The bloody streak on my elbow showed that.

As we entered our final lap, Edinburgh Road Club tried to put a few riders up the road, and worried that they might be strong enough to get away, I made the jump. As soon as I completed my first turn, though, it was clear that we weren't going anywhere, and I relaxed as the pack reeled us back in. They launched a counter-attack that was more faint than feint, and I settled in for the minor sprint. For all I knew, Andy could have still be up the road.

Coming over the hill for the final time, I began to become anxious. Knowing the strength of the rider I had bridged back to the group with, I stuck his wheel as he brought himself to the front.

A mile to go, riders popping off the front and getting pegged back. I'm not panicking, just watching. A rider in blue comes past - not fast enough to get away, just fast enough that he wants to be in the front 3 riders as we see the line. That's fine. I follow him up and sit, middle of the road, second wheel back, as we enter the final kilometre.

Last corner now. It's a draggy left-hander. I know the finish line, three hundred metres down a slight slope. It's early to go, but no-one can see the line. No-one's ready.

I sprint.

Slightly over the centre-line, I allow myself to drift back into lane as the music of dismayed shouts echoes behind my wheel. I have just ruined ten riders' day.

A hundred metres to go, and I start to get worried. The commissaire's car is on the line. On it. I'm sprinting towards it. If he doesn't move, I'm going to hit it.

The hesitation is enough to let a rider slip round on my right. I lunge five metres too early, and roll over the line virtually collapsing from the effort.

I reflect on the best sprint I have ever performed; my growing instinct for positioning, for timing. I am happy with my determination - my stubborness in telling myself "you haven't suffered this much just to give up now" as we chased on, as I prepared and sprinted and picked up 3 regional points.

The cost of the race was high. Jim broke his Garmin. I repaired my shifter with resin, my shorts and jersey with needle and thread, and my mitts were beyond repair. I can't even remember the issue that Andy had.

Was it worth it? I can't say. The race happened as it did. It cannot have happened any other way. Am I happy with the way I raced? Yes. Not conceitedly so, and I know I still need to improve my descending, and I could have been more forgiving when working to get back to the cars, but, overall, yes. Am I happy with the way some other riders raced? No. But in crashing and recovering, I found myself working with other riders in a way that far exceeded the one-eye-one-the-prize cynicism of a breakaway.

Do I still love racing? That's the only question that needs to be asked. The answer?

Well, sometimes, I think, one needs to draw a line.

Because I want to be first over it.

Backdated - Negative racing and the EKRR

By now, most of Britain will have seen or heard about the disappointing failure of the British men's road squad to bring home a gold, and will be aware, on some level, that this was brought about by a number of other countries 'racing 'negatively' or 'against' GB. It was surprising  to see so little help from Germany, and GB made a big mistake in keeping to their initial tactics when O' Grady went up the road - if the Aussies had needed a sprint finish, they would have been powerful allies to have.

I'll pull back now from the armchair speculation, and get to my point - if such negative racing can prevail when the stakes are so high, what happens when the stakes are low?

So to the East Kilbride Road Race.

It was your standard 50 miles cat 4 race - 3 laps around the Stewarton course. The weather, on par for the summer so far, promised to be disruptive, and most of the chat beforehand was on how waterproof we needed to be.

The lead-out behind the neutral car was a mess of grabbed brakes and surges, with riders' heads down and peaks low as the rain and road spray miasmed ahead of us. Once the car accelerated away, the peleton rushed to stretch its legs up the first climb to white loch, the groups splitting, as ever, under the influence of gravity. I plonked myself neatly in the back third of the lead group as it chased down a breakaway pair, to see how things would unfold.

We rolled pleasantly to the A77, and then stopped. There was no other way to put it. With a slight, but not forbidding, headwind, no-one was willing to put in any work.

I wasn't either, but, then, I wasn't willing to sit at this pace, either. Too many fresh legs would make my life difficult in the final - I would only excel against a similarly tired field. So I did the only thing I could in the situation. I attacked.

In retrospect, this was stupid. As a matter of fact, at the time, it was stupid. It was completely against plan. I am not a flatland rider. I have relatively poor power to drag, especially when compared to power to weight. A flat road, into a headwind, is never a great place to attack, and yet there I went.

Even this makes it sound more premeditated than it was. This is getting so far off track now that in a few paragraphs I'll undoubtedly have to yank the handbrake and pull a u-ey, but, since accidentally getting into breakaways was a recurring theme of the day, I'll go into it in more detail. Here was the actual thought process:

Seriously? 15mph? Now? Sod this.

I rode up on the outside of the group, aiming to pull for a bit, and spotting a solo rider up the road.

You know what, why should I work for these lazy gits?

I put in a tiny bit of extra pace, and instead of pulling in at the head of the line, I ride up, and up, and up onto the soloist's wheel.

Well, that was easy - oh. He's just a kid. We'll never hold out two and a half laps. Well, since I'm up here, might as well do a bit of work...

After far too long, and after picking up a few other vaguely-interested break men, the real break went by. This one was going places, and I charged to try and bridge, all too aware that I was towing three other guys. I got to the wheel, but that was it. Spent. There was no way I was going to be able to keep that pace. I apologised to the guys on my wheel and sat up, but they were either too bushed themselves or didn't get the message, and didn't come around. So we let them go, and the bunch came back.

I played with them on the hill, aware that the KOM points would go to the break. Again, I accidentally popped off the front, but at least had the good sense this time to sit up and fall back. I would need the bunch to chase down this break. If only they'd start working...

They didn't, so I did. In the end, it was probably only half a dozen disparate riders who did any real work in that race; frequently left dangling on the front of the pack as no-one would come around. I was furious by the last lap - 'what are we, racing for second?'. Again, I messed around with the bunch on the hill, sitting up and tootling past the front-runners who were attacking the line as it it were the finish. Again, I found myself in a break, which I went with until the clunch road, but it was a half-hearted affair. I wanted to use the bunch to bring our man back.

I shouldn't have been so foolish.

We didn't get our man, and, exhausted by my chasing efforts, I didn't have enough for the last sprint hill and creaked up at the back of the pack. So it goes.

Been on a bit of a holiday...

About a Ride

I want to tell you about this bike ride I took.

It was a ride in brilliant weather, so hot that I took to riding through puddles for the alka-seltzer fizz of the watery bubbles settling on my leg hair. It was my first ride after shaving my ponytail off, and the wind channelled through the short stubble was the most refreshing thing I have ever felt, like a fluid massage of my brain.

It was also winter, though, and the icy breeze was tickling me through my sodden and somewhat sparse beard, as I dragged raindrops off my chin with my upper lip. I was soaked through, and had never been so cold, but we would find relief in the unlocked toilets of that hotel where we stood under the hand driers for half an hour.

It was two in the morning and it was the best part of my day, cruising home from Truro and praying I didn't hit back ice, but I also had the chance to see first light and know that today I would go further than I had ever gone before, until I was chasing my shadow through the red evening where my tinted sunglasses turned my cyclist tan into something European and the angle made my shadow's legs 90% of its body and my shoulders rolled just ever so slightly and my form was just so beautiful in that shadow that I was resentful of the aches starting in my lower back that would make me sit up and ruin this picture.

I was riding alone, with nothing but my thoughts, riding until I thought about nothing but riding and forgot about the girl who wouldn't return my message or the arse that I'd made of myself that night or how I was faster than I had been another time but still not as fast as how I had been that one time, but I was also among friends. Or I was riding to meet them, riding with a bag full of camera gear to record a million half-completed skateboard flips for the one that came off. I was following Rhodri's dad through the fiftieth mile as he span so easily and I wondered at how incredibly shaped were his legs and I wondered if my legs would be that shape at his age. I was riding with my family, as my little sister lost her footing on her little crossbar saddle and her tiny foot went into Dad's front wheel and we knew it wasn't broken but she cried a fearful amount and we never used that saddle again. I was riding with the club, chaining around like Belgians and looking amazingly dapper, but I was also wearing my cross-country gear because whenever I got to where I was going, I didn't want to have to look like a cyclist.

I was riding strong, but I got dropped on the first hill and wanted a pack of cigarettes to give me an excuse, but it was also that ride where I had to drag everyone along, knowing that we were still unlikely to make the train and it was partially my fault because I had thought they were stronger than they were and took them on an unresearched route, because we would be able to make good any errors.

It was also that ride where I tried to outbrake Seth on his mountainbike into a hairpin turn and had to bail and roll the bike sideways at waist height along the retaining wall above the sea cliff, puncturing a tyre and bending the forks, but that was ok because later I'd take that road bike to the old mine workings and rag it over the dirt jumps and weaken the frame until it gave up on the ride into college and I had to run it up the hill because I get up that hill as fast any person on campus under their own power and to hell with the bike.

I overtook cars at fifty miles an hour, but later I would bonk and get re-taken at less than ten. I held onto a trailer on the way to the fourth vineyard not really because I was tired or drunk but because why not? I was laughing, because of the ridiculousness of my slick tyre spinning uselessly in the loose mud so close and yet so far from home; laughing because I was too tired to do anything else; but mostly laughing because this moment could not be taken away from me, and it could never be denied that I had felt this way and, therefore, I had not missed it.

I stopped in this cafe, a great open space where the air above could percolate between the overabundance of tables that were nestled like grounds in the filter. I met someone else there, doing his first half-century in half a decade, and I made sure his tyres were up to pressure. This was also the place where I had sold my old bike, my old bike that was built of so many new and replaced parts that it was really my newest bike. I never got the chance to ride it. That was to the guy who changed my life; changed my course, changed where I lived, changed who I met and perhaps most importantly changed how I rode.

The ride took me through fields, but not really through them. Over them. Separated from them by fences or just the millimetres of air between my pedals and the dirt, and I missed the dirt because I was going somewhere and couldn't stop and I couldn't even really smell it but I could remember the smell and that was why I missed it. But this was also the ride where Gerry and Andy crashed and we all set on the bank in the sun for an hour and we could feel the warm stones of the old wall and the cold, brittle stems of the long grass and we were all so sorry that it had happened but so glad that it should happen on this day and not any other.

It was that ride where I spent two hours trying to manual and never getting it, but being really happy with my bunny hop so it was ok.

It was definitely that ride where I came into gravel time and time again too fast, and skidded out every time and the blood welled through the decapitated capillaries in tiny dots and then joined and spread until my whole knee was covered and I got blood on my gloves which turned so dark I thought it was brake dust. It was that ride where I caught up that piece of babyhead gravel in the spokes on the front and numbed my last two fingers on my right hand for two years since I took the impact on my elbow, but as I flew it was that ride that was my first on my Halfords' special full suspension, when I felt like I could take on anything and went over the handlebars on the first descent, like on my practice lap at my first cross-country race where the downhillers jeered as the ladies overtook me and I snuck off after the first lap.

It was that ride that my derailleur hanger sheared and bent the chain and I had to hitch a lift to the station and I couldn't have been more grateful, but also that ride where I ran out of patch kits and had to call my mates away from whale-watching on a south african beach to rescue me and their mild resentment couldn't match my shame.

But then it was also that ride that I saw a whale of my own, entirely unexpectedly, and a sparrow hawk that perched on a branch three feet from my face. It was that ride where the golden gorse swamped the lower slopes and the vivid pink of the Rhodedendrons speckled on the loch banks made the whole glen look like an estate garden.

It was that ride that I carried my bike over a mountain, and ran up and down Ben Lomond before pedalling home. It was that ride that I went from home in London to home in Caerphilly and I kept on having to call Sadie so that she could find me on map and tell me where to go. It was that ride where I rode for 24 hours even though I had crashed on the first lap. It was when I went to visit my Dad for the first time under my own power after I had been getting closer and closer and it was a surprise for him and it was a surprise for me that today was the day that I didn't need to call for help.

I had to get a train home. I could barely keep my eyes open. My bike dripped leftover mud in the vestibule. The green and grey swished past my face but I wasn't going through it because it wasn't in front of me or on either side of those bobbing shoulders and blurring past that blurry wheel which I shouldn't have been looking at but sometimes all you can do is watch the wheel and stay there, right there, because you are so afraid of how much harder it will be if you don't.

That was done, now, and I was done and I was on an aeroplane, an aeroplane at just the right altitude so that I could see every inch of the path that I had sweated and swooshed and cranked and span along and the achievement was in no way dimished.

I loved that ride.

The VC Glasgow South Road Race

So, it was the VC Glasgow South Road Race this weekend, a fifty mile, three lap loop of a moderately hilly circuit followed by a climb to Whitelee Wind Farm, making a perfect course for me. Luckily for you, Eurosport commentators David Harmon and Sean Kelly took an early flight from Milan to give us their thoughts, which I've edited down to the bits relevant to me, which also happens to coincide with the things I saw and know about. Funny that.

...

DH: So Sean, as the riders get underway behind the cars for this neutralised section of the Velo Club Glasgow South Road Race, what would you choose as your strategy today? It's a very, very hot - glorious day... does that change things at all? Where would you try to be?

SK: Well, er, I think that definitely, we're going to see some riders struggling with this heat. At this sort of level, there are going to be a lot of riders who are not used to taking on so much fluid as they go, and maybe, with the hills, the fitness won't be there, so, you know, but I think it's certainly a lot safer than in the real heavy weather like we have seen in the past number of months. But it is still good to get forward in the bunch, always. There are going to be some nervous riders, even in this neutralised section, and the last thing you want is to be caught in an accident at this early stage.

...

DH: And the riders are coming around to the climb up to White Loch for the first of three times now, and, so far, I have to say, not a lot going on.

SK: No, as you can see, we've got this small number of riders willing to make the pace, and the rest of the peloton just sitting in behind very comfortable.

DH: Would you be tempted, at this point, to break away?

SK: Well, with a big number of kilometres left to race, you would have to make a group of strong, strong riders to make a break for the win.

DH: And, of course, there's a lot of unproven legs out there.

SK: Yes, well, as you can see, there are a number of riders looking about, trying to pick wheels to follow, whilst some riders are already starting to blow on these smaller climbs. I think it's difficult, at this level, to know whether your breakaway companions are really going to go for it or not.

...

DH: ...along this section of the A77 with this brutal headwind. And, Sean, it's all seemed to settle down a bit now, hasn't it?

SK: Well, as you can see, nobody's really willing to go away now as we can see riders coming around to try their legs, but there's no willingness to form a group and chase away. At this early stage, a break would have to get a big advantage over the peloton to go for the win, and most of the big favourites will be making that calculation - do I play it safe until that last climb?

DH: At this level of racing, do you think maybe putting a sprint or king of the mountains prime might liven things up a bit?

SK: Yes.

Well, with a peloton moving this slow, you would expect to see some of the riders maybe not so capable of a sprint trying to go away if there were intermediate points on offer, but with only the race win, you see a lot of hesitation in the bunch.

DH: They just don't want to risk blowing too early.

...

DH: They're sitting comfortably here as they make their second run along the Clunch road and-

SK: -Puncture.

DH: -Hold on, there's a mechanical. It's a Glasgow Green rider. Yup, his hand's in the air, definitely a- yup the back wheel's out, definitely a puncture. And that's... Yoong! Ròberto Yoong! And that's going to be a big, big problem for the young rider.

SK: Well, that's certainly not what he would have wanted. He was going real strong, real good in the front group there, and he'll have to work real hard now to chase back on.

DH: He'll start clawing his way back n- no! He's got another puncture! He's not at all happy with the wheel he's received from the service car.

SK: Well, this is going to cost him a number of minutes.

DH: What a stroke of bad luck for the man in the black and white strip of Glasgow Green. He'll have a hell of a job to catch back onto the group now.

...

DH: Another Glasgow Green rider! This time it has to be Aandie Dòbinson! And this is turning out to be a terribly unfortunate day for the young city centre club - two mechanicals in this second lap, with one rider still  desperately trying to chase on.

SK: Yes, well, as we can see, his chain's just come off the inside of the chainwheel there and not been caught and has jammed between the chain watcher and the chain wheel.

DH: The service car's cleared him quickly, and he'll be able to jump back on to the back of that group...

...

DH: It's gone again! I don't believe it! The chain's jumped on the outside this time!

...

DH: And that's it for Dòbinson, he's had enough. Was looking like a really good day for him, but enough's enough.

SK: Well, when your chain's coming off like that, you have to be able to trust your equipment. In a real hard effort losing the chain will just push the bike sideways and, you know. Can be real dangerous.

...

DH: And poor old Yoong's just hanging out there, unable to close that gap into this headwind. Even if he did, the riders in the group are getting so much shelter - surely there won't be much he can do?

SK: Well, he'll certainly be digging into his reserves now. When your hanging out the back for a number of kilometres,  the wind can be a real - can really eat into your strength. But, you know, in a race of this length, you've got to keep going to the finish if you can. A lot can happen, and if he can regain contact with a good bunch, you can get your legs back a bit.

DH: He's a proven climber, and he would have favoured this course. We caught up with him earlier.

###

RY: I reckon I can give it a good try. The headwind over the final climb's going to make a bit of difference to the tactics, and I think it's going to keep the whole race together for much longer, but, so long as I don't get any mechanicals, I should be in with a good shot.

###

DH: Famous last words for Yoong there. Well, some days it's your day, and some days it really isn't. We have to take a commercial break...

...

DH: ...and Crooickshahnks goes early! That's set the ball rolling at five hundred metres, but is it too early?

SK: Yes.

DH: I think it probably was. Here comes the field...

...

DH: And here comes Yoong up this final climb. Ooh, that is a mask of pain. He's still passing the backmarkers, though.

SK: I think he's on a training ride now.

DH: Yes, a twenty mile time trial to finish just outside the bunch. I think it's pride, as much as anything, Sean - he's saying "I wasn't dropped, I'm still as strong as any of you."

SK: I think what he maybe said was "AAARGH!"

Photo © Sandy Auston, some rights reserved

Cycling as a Game

When I was fourteen, I could ride a skateboard like a pro.

I pressed triangle to grind.

I could out-drive Sebastian Loeb.

Just press circle to handbrake-turn.

I could out-gun a repressive alien overwatch.

Right-click to fire secondary.

I'm still learning how to kill dragons, reverse time and fly helicopters every now and again, but there's only one high score I care about.

My Strava segments.

Pedal to go faster.

Strava is combination of one of the second or third wave of fitness-tracking applications, and one of the first wave of competitive augmented-reality games. The concept is simple - after recording a ride with a GPS device, you upload the data to the Strava site and it compares your route to segments of roads designated by users to be worth timing yourself over - usually hill climbs. You then get a ranking for that climb, against everyone who's ridden it so far, and a record of every time you've ridden it, so you can track your performance. The sections you are "King" or "Queen of the Mountain" on go on a list of palmares, and anybody who is following you gets to see a little crown on your ride summary, telling the world that "I'm the fastest person yet."

It feels good, getting one of these sections.

In Strava, we are seeing the beginnings of road cycling developing as not just a sport, but a game - something that can be picked up and played at any time, without organisation or pressure. Of course, cyclists have always enjoyed the not-a-race sprints and hillclimbs on a group ride, and knowing that they've beaten their previous best up their nemesis slope, but the formalism of the competition; the ability to compare yourself against anyone and everyone, from pro riders to that rider in the local club who took the sprint from you last weekend, opens up a new world of challenge and gratification.

Sounds good, right? Well, currently, it is, but it is our job as consumers and riders to make sure that this emerging "game" plays by rules we can agree with and adds to, rather than takes away from, the enjoyment we find on a bike.

Strava hit the headlines in the USA recently in the tragic story of a pedestrian in San Francisco being struck and killed by a cyclist crossing an intersection. The full details of the case are not fully nailed down yet, but what is known is that the cyclist uploaded the ride later to Strava, which showed him riding at 35mph through the intersection.

Some writers seized this information and used it to express discontent with the concept of Strava in general - http://bit.ly/IJ7SJI. A local blogger felt that Strava was encouraging inconsiderate and dangerous cycling.

There are two pertinent facts that should here be made clear - firstly, there is no Strava segment that crosses the intersection, or that runs into the intersection. Indeed, the only downhill segment in the area is currently under review as dangerous, which leads me into fact two - Strava provides a function to allow users to flag segments as dangerous, at which time they are immediately removed for review.

With those two facts out of the way, it is time to address some (but by no means all - it would take me many, many posts to dissect the lot!) of the concerns of the Marin County blogger.

There are undoubtedly cases where Strava sections may be set-up in inappropriate places, or places where at some but not all times, they may become inappropriate. I know of a few local ones which I would not challenge for to protect my own personal safety, and a few that I could see becoming dangerous. I might as well name one, so we can examine how we can control safety whilst allowing competition.

The descent from the top of the Crow Road south into Lennoxtown is part of a Strava segment that crosses the mountain. In my opinion, it is right that this segment should exist - the full traverse of the Crow is a well-respected ride with a long history. Whilst the descent is usually safe whilst ridden within the limits of the rider, there is one danger zone that would allow a reckless rider an advantage.

There is a sharp left-hander before the car-park that obscures view of hikers and dog walkers crossing from the car-park onto the mountain. Taking this corner at the limit of the bike's ability would give the rider seconds of advantage, but few options if they met a walker and an oncoming car simultaneously.

As a community, we need to decide what to do in this sort of situation, as more users compete and times get tighter. It might be easy for me to just suggest that riders ride safely and accept the unimportance of the segment, since I have access to organised competition to get my kicks, and I am capable of taking lower-speed, less dangerous uphill segments. It might be necessary to put non-timed sections in on descents like this, and this would seem to be the ideal solution.

What of those that think that competition outside of official races is a bad thing anyway? It's certainly true that as a young man, riding hard on a bike put me in some dangerous frames of mind, where the slightest transgression by another road user would send me into a fit of self-righteous rage.

But that was before Strava.

The issue with the hot-headedness of competitors isn't going to go away if you take away the competition. The solutions lie in sanctioned competition - more frequent races with lower cost of entry; and education - encouragement to bring young riders into the fold with clubs, where behaviour on the bike can be monitored and remedied.

It must be remembered that we are in a transition state, not just with regard to regular cyclists and new technology, but also with the whole country becoming more aware of cycling. With the World Champion racing for the UK, the Olympics looking good for the UK cycling squad and even a potential grand tour winner currently representing the state, as well as national cycling advocacy campaigns, we could be looking at a sea change in how cycling is viewed in this country.

Let the games begin.

Too Wet on Two Wheels

"Where are you heading - the Himalayas?"

Twenty miles later, the taste of those words was stuck in my frozen throat.

I had been looking forward to the Brenig Road Race from Denbigh with something like the same enthusiasm that Igor Anton had for stage 19 of last year's Vuelta. Riding in Wales always feels just that extra bit special - the roads, the mountains, the villages; everything just feels 'right'. Pushing the outside pedal down into a corner just doesn't feel the same unless you've just been told to 'ARAF'.

It helped that the event was classed as a regional A. I would be rolling with the Cat 2s, aiming for 7th or above to advance my own category. I had no fear of them. They may have had more experience, but a rider can only get so good on this many races a year, and my legs were feeling fine. I'd keep the pace without question.

Nevertheless, my nerves were extreme. There was a lot that could go wrong, but so much riding on things going right. Jumping a category now could change the shape of my entire season, and a first win in Wales - not an impossibility - would have been the crowning glory of the year, a moment of poetic fortune that I would remember for the rest of my life.

First, though, I would have to weather the storm.

From Tuesday onwards, the forecast was unanimous. "It will rain on Sunday." Soon, that was upgraded to "it will rain hard on Sunday." Then came the warnings - first yellow, then, as race day dawned, amber. Category: severe weather.

The sky was overcast, but still bright as we made our way to Denbigh, and I elected to run without a coat. With all my other gear, I would hopefully be generating enough heat to stay in the game, and I didn't want to be faffing with a coat over my race number coming into the finish.

The overall feeling at HQ as we signed on was one of disbelief. What were we putting ourselves in for? This would be a war of attrition. Of the field of 80, only 54 signed on. Those 26 were the lucky ones.

We trudged to the grandstand two by two, looking like prisoners of war. The rider next to me joked that he didn't care if he looked daft as he put his gilet on outside his coat, looking like a snooker player in a waistcoat but deftly solving the race number issue.

I didn't laugh.

Why the heck didn't I think of that?

We rolled straight out, getting underway so early that we had to stop on the road as stragglers scrambled to get their bikes. The sudden stop nearly put me into the back of the rider in front - still running the stock 105 pads, it took Herculean amounts of force to slow the wheels in this sort of dampness. Why hadn't I switched? I knew it was an issue, and yet here I was. Panicking.

The rider behind me was wearing a bright orange parka, complete with hood. He certainly didn't look like he was part of a bicycle race.

"Where are you heading?" I joked, nervously. "The Himalayas?"

He finished seventh.

He finished.

We rolled out of Denbigh.

The race started.

It ended very shortly thereafter.

I was enjoying myself on the climb. The wind was roughly at our backs, and riders were suffering whilst I wasn't. I rode conservatively and stayed with the lead group. It wasn't exactly easy, but I was leaving a lot in the tank.

Going downhill was a different story. Not trusting my brakes, unable to see for crests and my now opaque glasses, I allowed myself to drop back slightly, knowing that I would catch the group on the climbs. This worked a couple of times. Then I got lazy.

There were a couple of other lads dropped back. I decided I would use them and we could work together to get back up.

We weren't quick enough.

They faded, leaving me with as large a gap to jump as I had started with. Pushing hard on my own into the headwind, my temperature started to drop. My heart rate started to drop. My body started to shut down.

Barely twenty miles in, I went to put in a dig and found I couldn't. My arms were shaking so much I couldn't hold the bike straight, my fingers couldn't find the controls and my legs were jelly. I stopped in the shelter of a small forestry plantation. It was over. The air temperature was 1 degree over freezing, there was sleet in the air and a 20mph headwind. I was done.

Desperately trying to thumb a lift from everyone and anyone, it wasn't until the race doctor got back to me that I could climb in somewhere warm. I transferred to the sag wagon once we crossed paths, and we headed back to HQ, all vehicles full of shivering riders; marshals' cars being drafted in by those in desperate need. Everyone behind that lead group failed to finish. The lone rider who broke away was caught in the first lap of the circuit and, unable to shift and body shutting down, failed to finish.

HQ was full of ashen faces and spilled coffee from trembling hands. We were all glad to be there. We made jokes, noted that there were so few riders left; surely everyone would get points? If only we'd stayed out.

Not one of us could have.

I wrung out my new waterproof gloves. I could have filled a water bottle.

Of the 54 starters, 14 hardy souls finished.

Everybody got home safely.

My most heartfelt thanks to the organisers, marshals, outriders and doctor who made the race happen, and kept it safe despite the most treacherous of situations. It is truly a must-ride race, and I shall hopefully be back next year, in better weather or with better kit.

Good trails!

'Anging about in Angus

It is hard to make something this long-form both interesting for the general reader and for myself, who just wishes to have some form of travel-log. It would arguably have been better to write a couple of posts about just one or two of the events of my ride, but that would then have left me without any recollection of the minutiae, especially given my lack of photographs. I hope that the reader will excuse, then, the sloppiness of this post. It serves less to enlighten or entertain than simply to record, which, as poor a use as it may be of your time, may nevertheless be said to be essentially in keeping with the spirit of the internet.

Had I planned this?

The wood pigeons were cooing their good-night calls in the privately managed forest just west of Aboyne as I examined my printed maps by the blue light of my headtorch. I had made good use of most of them. Over the next couple of days, I would use a heavy proportion of the remainder. But not all.

Like this one, showing the roads out to St Andrews. Or this one, stretching out to Aberdeen. No – I had prepared myself for a number of sensible options, but I hadn't actually planned anything. There was nothing deterministic in these maps, any more than there was an inevitability that I was going to make it over the pass from Glen Esk. Soon, though, time would turn against me and choices would narrow. From almost an infinity of roads I would be reduced to a half dozen. Then maybe a couple. Then one, leading me home. When it came, most drivers would be patient, but bank holiday traffic would put pressure on the frequently blind-cornered A-roads leading back into the city and I would receive abuse from white van drivers without the presence of mind to realise that my destination was the same as theirs, and as such, I was liable to take the same roads. I would ride slowly and into the wind, and it would be an unfitting end to a ride characterised by wide-open space, scale, and freedom.

To avoid those same choke points, I had left the city at dawn on Good Friday. My rack piled high with camping equipment; my panniers bulging with warm clothes and food; encumbered by half my body weight I made stately progress to Crieff for an early lunch. By that point, I had already set new benchmarks for lack of speed – for the first time in I simply cannot remember how long, I was overtaken by a cyclist on the open road, and an elderly one at that. He was riding with someone who I presumed to be his daughter, and her cheery “good morning” so startled me on a minor road out of Dunblane that I almost swerved into her. I re-took the pair shortly thereafter, slightly embarrassed by my shock at the noise over my shoulder. It is more of a statement of the number and type of cyclists on the road than my own fitness that I have only ever been the giver of such greetings, rather than the receiver.

From Crieff, the roads were entirely new to me, and I soon took a turning off the A road to climb to Glen Almond. Almost instantly I was rewarded with near isolation. I was not passed by a single car as I wound along the road that threads the estate, noting the neatly-trimmed hedges and trees that served as signatures of the landowner's wealth.

Glen Almond

Perthshire and Angus were characterised by a huge, arable plain that the westerly breeze chased me down. The land was too valuable for the eponymous cattle, and I passed fields of turnips and swedes being harvested to make way for the summer crops. The fort on Kinpurney Hill, tiny and solitary, nevertheless attracted ocular attention on its steep hilltop purely by virtue of it being so regular and square. It would have commanded a sweeping view over the wide valley – at least, on a clear day.

Kinpurney Hill

On the basis that it had the county name in its own, I stopped for a coffee at Coupar Angus, which was considerably smaller than expected and featured virtually nothing of note. As it happens, Forfar is much more the county town, but, with an aim to visit Glen Esk the following day, and not wishing to reach the retreat before it opened at mid-day, I diverted around it, towards Arbroath. It was almost four thirty when I reached Glamis, which would have just gotten me in for the final tour, but I elected to carry on instead, rather than rush things. For some reason, the village name of “Inverarity” had caught my eye, so, with some swearing and stamping up a steep hill, I found my way through there to carry on my journey to the coast.

With the cloud descending and light failing, I could hardly wait until six before darting into a small stretch of woodland and setting up camp. I left myself with an easy downhill run to Arbroath in the morning, but would not be dining on herring that night – the tuna pasta bake weighing on my panniers was plenty. Not fancying them for breakfast either, I made just a quick pit-stop in the supermarket after rising with the dawn and rode directly out of town, pausing only momentarily to study the (still rather large) red remnants of Arbroath Abbey.

Creepy Red Castle

The coastal road to Montrose kicked, bucked and swung around the cliffs, as abrupt and sharp as a railing after absorbing the impact of an automobile, though allowing one brief stretch of rolling directness to lead you to ruins of the delapidated red castle, now more cliff remnant than fortified dwelling.

The roads had so taken the wind out of me that I neglected stopping at Montrose, electing for an early lunch/late breakfast and coffee at Brechin, taking the not particularly pleasant, but nevertheless direct, A935.

The town hardly seemed buzzing, and indeed probably never gets near the meaning of the word, but the old bakehouse cafe that I found myself in was deservedly popular, and allowed me plenty of time to study my maps, get my legs back and think about the next stage. I had essentially resigned to Glen Esk being a short curiosity tour – up to the retreat, to say that I had been there, followed by a rapid return (or retreat, one might suggest) to the old military road to skirt the Grampians to the east.

Into Glen Esk

 Fully recovered and ready for a hard climb, I pushed north into the glen, passing under the arch at Edzell, prim and trim as it is. The glen road didn't kick up instantly, but I was soon in recognisable highland country – shaggy coos and all. Snow streaked the peaks, following the shadowy rivulets of the burns and rills, but was not so much as to worry me. The ratio was inverted on some of the higher summits in the centre of the range, but I wouldn't be going anywhere near those.

The retreat, when I got to it, was nicely modernised, and would have been a thoroughly nice place to eat lunch, had I not already taken it. I bought a drink in the shop and had a look around, nattering to the owner before asking the killer question.

“Is there a way to get over the top to Deeside from here – save me going back down again?”

I knew from some of my older maps that there was some form of trail going across the mountain – the Fungle Road. Indeed, on my small-scale road map, it even showed it as passable to vehicles. It took us a good ten minutes and a longer conversation with some mountain bikers to ascertain the state of things, though.

“Should be fine. Most of it's just been resurfaced. Pretty much just fire roads”

“And the fords across the burns?”

“Should be alright. Might not be able to hit them full speed without suspension.”

The start of the Fungle Road

After a few more minutes explaining that my bike, whilst technically a mountain bike, was probably unsuited to anything more treacherous than a canal towpath, the verdict was maintained and I purchased an Explorer map with the track clearly marked on it. I hoped that it would be as clear on the ground

Almost the top

Wishing the friendly staff farewell, I headed out to the mountain. Almost instantly, I was in the granny ring for the first time on the trip, spinning over grapeshot gravel and picking lines around potholes. If climbing was hard, though, descending was perilous – so much weight being resisted by cantilever brakes holding back on semi-slick tyres meant the only safe speed was none at all. And then there were the gates. Nothing to lean the bike against, no desire to drop it, no ability to manouvre it. It took at least 5 minutes to get past every one.

 A couple of times on the ascent, I had to push – a concession to weakness that might have been humiliating, had there been anything other than grouse to observe it. I consoled myself with the thought that things would be easier once I passed the summit.

Every single ford

An hour later, and I was there. Or there abouts. 600M in altitude, I was now having to dodge snow drifts where possible, and plough my way through where not.

You'll be descending in a minute.

Well, maybe more than a minute.

I was descending for longer than I climbed.

The brakes and tyres were simply unable to stop the combined weight of luggage and rider, so I was forced to walk alongside the unwieldy machine very nearly the whole way down. The fords were frequent, deep, steep, and always covered with at least two feet of snow. Tackling them involved holding the bike on its brakes on the near bank, stepping out into mid-flow, dropping the bike into the ford, hoping against hope that it didn't slip over the inevitable precipice supporting the ford, then throwing yourself and the bike with all your might at the snow drift on the far side, scrabbling for purchase, until you could lever the whole contraption up the five-foot bank. Since the bike weighed about 30kg, with a balance point no more than an inch in front of the rear axle, lifting the bike involved counterweighting the handlebars with such force that you were essentially dead-lifting almost 50kg with your other hand. 

Shimano may have Icetech brakes, but I was
testing some prototype Hope Ice Hubs

I was exhausted. It didn't occur to me to take the luggage off and transport things bit-by-bit for the simple reason that I didn't know for how long these fords would continue, and the bike was just a tiny bit easier to roll along than carrying panniers by hand would have been – though, holding the bike on its brakes with one hand as I switched sides after a switchback, the veracity of this statement could be questioned.

Nevertheless, I made it though. A serious adventure – a quest into the unknown. A quest that I would absolutely not repeat if I had, actually, known. As I rolled along the road from Ballochan, I kept looking back and laughing giddily. The tiny goat track that sketched its way into the high reaches of the pass looked preposterously steep and rugged. That I had dragged a heavily-laden bicycle over it was both remarkable and ridiculous. As my achievements go, there are not many that get quite so close to the upper-right-hand corner of the graph of impressiveness versus foolishness.

In the woods just past Aboyne, I pushed the bike up the steep, muddy track to find some cover to sleep behind. I laughed again.

My arms hurt.

How brilliant was that? Here I was, on a bike tour to nowhere, getting the miles in my legs, seeing Scotland, breathing in the pine-fresh air of fresh cuttings, and my arms hurt.

It would be this night, and the next, and then I'd be home. I looked over my maps, and realised that my options were closing in. There were only a few choices left to make, and they were practically taken already.

Had I planned this?

I noticed that my hand holding the maps was shaking.

No. There was no way I would ever have planned anything so stupid, so tough – I'd have never done it. I certainly wouldn't do it again – even if I did know that it was passable.

Sometimes, the best surprise is discovering the ability to surprise yourself.

Top of the Cairnwell - no fanfare

The next day, I chugged my way over the Cairnwell, having fully appreciated my serene glide up the perfectly-sized River Dee. The previous day was obvious in my fatigue, but I carried on over to Pitlochry, which was so disappointingly crowded with tourists that I didn't explore as I had been planning, but instead headed directly onto Loch Tay. I was back on familiar ground now, but took the number 7 cycle route on the south side of the loch, rather than the road to the north, hoping to spy out a place to sleep with less than an hour's ride to Killin the next morning.

The south side road was incredibly frustrating, charging steeply up every bank before falling away again to the lochside, but it did provide some of the most beautiful views of the trip. The showery skies released bolts of sunlight onto the loch and surrounding mountains, haloing peaks with rain-mist and arching a rainbow over Taymouth. I found shelter from the strengthening wind in the lee of the sole remaining wall of a crofter's cottage at the highest side of a field opposite Ben Lawers, and set up my tent with one of the best views it has ever experienced.

The sun breaks through

The Crannog Centre

Shelter from the wind

Rainbow over Loch Tay

The final day's slog home was longer and more tiring than anticipated, as the number 7 cycle route appeared to be in competition with itself for providing the most pointless, steep climbs possible. After an enormous breakfast in Callander, I was ready for home, and pointed myself into the wind.

Loch Earn

Once again, the report peters out here. My epilogue has now been moved to the prologue – I shall waste no more time. 

Is this it?

"Is this it?"

I don't know how much he could read of me through my mirrored glasses, but the question; the intonation; the eagerness for an affirmative must have given number 62, the powerful veteran in blue, all the context he needed.

"Yup". We were going away. Til the end.

It was the second time that day that I'd showed up somewhere uninvited and felt perfectly welcomed. It wasn't until late the previous evening that I'd realised that there was even a chance of a race. Initially intending to go out to Fenwick to support club mates Andy and Ray in the APR, I browsed over the Braveheart fund forums to check what groups they were in.

"Huh," I mused, deliberately, offhandedly towards Fiona; deliberately indeliberate. "There's only two reserves left.

"... I might take the CAAD."

With what I took to be at least a half-approving smile, "I knew you were going to say that" was the prescient answer.

Ray and Andy, having been on the reserves until the night before, had made other plans. Their loss was my gain, and I was put into group 3 of 4, with a time gap of 6 minutes on a 33 mile course.

Two laps around a fairly simple loop, the Fenwick APR would take us into the wind along the A77, before bringing us back on the lumpy Dodside road. I took a look through the profile, scanned through my memory of those roads, and picked the point at which the race would blow apart. I had barely an inkling then that I would be a part of what instigated such a detonation.

The spot was easy to pick - the climb up to White Loch - a spikey, on/off series of micro-climbs that raised us a hundred metres in about two miles. It was ideal parcours for me, and, on the second lap, was the obvious point at which chain-gang cooperation would cease to be in most riders' interest. Most of all, myself and number 62.

Though not exactly small, I had clocked the man in blue - a vet from L.A.B R.A.T CC called Hamish Maclean - as one to watch almost from the off. His form on the bike was just too good to ignore, and he confidently took control of his patch. Everything about him marked him out as a danger-man - not least his lack of a club showing. Like me, if he went away, he'd need to make it stick. There'd be no-one left in the pack to pick up the sprint for the team.

Also to watch were the boys in green - the VC Glasgow South lads. At the counterpart to this APR a fortnight ago - the Drumclog APR - their control of the group speed, drive to split the pack and subsequent train to the line had given them near total control over the race and earned them a rightful victory, demoting me to a cheeky third-place after holding their wheels to the final kilometre. Unlike last time, though, I failed to overhear their strategy as they discussed it at the head of the group. I would just have to watch for the signs, and play things by ear.

It was because I was marking the two most dangerous-looking VCGS lads at the front of the pack that I was in the right place to jump across to Hamish when he went. Dangerous as they were, they were too tired to make the jump themselves after allowing themselves to drive the head of the pack for a mile or two. Knowing my man, and that the game was afoot, I was away before they had time to wind back up again.

As alert as I had been to the players of the game, though, I was missing some vital information, and had picked up misinformation along the way. The second time along the A77, we had passed group after dropped group of starters from the first two time brackets, and the fastest of us made some attempt to drop our own group size to just the most capable by losing them among all the cracked. With a rotating group of about a dozen, I overheard that "that was the last of them." We were away and free.

I think both Hamish and I knew that that was wishful thinking. There was no way that we'd gone hard enough to get everybody within twenty-five miles. Sure enough, as pull came to push came to flying sprints in the breakaway, we began to pass riders.

To say we weren't hanging around would be an instance of litotes bordering on the ridiculous. We were caning it. As the gradient swooped upwards, it was possible to feel the saddle bending under you as the whole bike strained to change the direction of your momentum from forward to up. It was a rollercoaster without the safety harness and we were giving it everything.

One or two of the ones and twos that we passed grabbed on, number 11 - Gary Davidson of VC Astar Anderside - particularly coming to mind as helping us maintain speed. There was no choice. Here we were, riders without anybody in the bunch to control things, and no representatives of other, chasing clubs with us - we had no option but to stay away, and the bunch had no choice but to catch us.

As we turned toward the finish, though, there was a change in the group. Hamish and Gary were tiring, a number of other caught riders were fighting at the same speed, and it was getting too easy to pop off the front. The chase had gone out of the group, and they were preparing for the sprint.

So should I.

As I sat second wheel, it wasn't until the final mile that I realised the danger we were in. Not from behind - although the lethal-looking scratch group caught the remnants of group 3 at the base of the final climb - but from the front. A motorcycle outrider gave us the bad news.

"Thirty seconds".

What?

There were riders still out there. A whole bunch in front - mostly from group two, as it turned out. I had had no idea. And now we had no time to catch them.

I looked left, right, span my legs and looked for the response. Nothing. No-one was going anywhere. They weren't just holding back for the sprint. They were bushed.

Maybe so was I.

Thirty seconds would have been too much, surely, for any man to make up over that distance.

I should have gone anyway.

As the yellow flags came into view, Hamish went. Scott [Newman, Inverclyde Velo] went. I went.

In slow motion, I rolled past them, looking at nothing but those riders now dismounting on the shady roadside the other side of the line.

How many were there?

It was a sprint won at eighteen miles an hour, spinning exasperation past a field of exhausted legs.

It was a sprint for eighth.

It was enough for prize money - enough to recoup my entry fee - but it was hard not to feel that it was a waste of what, for me, was an almost ideal course.

Don't misunderstand me - it was a great race, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. I mixed it up in my first breakaway, I maintained control and I won a sprint. With my monitoring of danger-men and successful positioning, I felt like in many ways I'd played the game, and won.

Sadly, though, that won't be what's written down, and unlike the hard men in the scratch group who have a string of palmares under them regardless of whether they catch the rest of us, it matters to me. It's probably already cost me races.

There are so few points scoring opportunities for a Cat 4 racer in Scotland - especially when I want to jump to Cat 3 by the British University Championships. My only shot this month was the Dunfermline road race, and I haven't gotten into that. My next shot might not come until May.

Cat 3 differentiates the would-be racers from the have-a-go racers. If you want to get into points-scoring races as a Cat 4 - best already have points. Or at least results.

I know that I'm good enough for Cat 3.

I need to be given a chance.

Photo courtesy Ian "LeesLang" (http://www.flickr.com/photos/ianmh247/7011870259/) all rights reserved