Mud in my eyes

Standing outside a station in the freezing cold. Smoking. Yes, I know. Sugar Free Red Bull clutched in one hand and suitcase handle in the other. Day dreaming. Enjoying briefly that beautiful moment while I can before I quit again of the silence and the mind drift and the almost day dreaming though never quite managing to and…

Click.

Head snaps up, contemplation disappearing like my smoke wisps in the wind. Unmistakeable sound. Unmistakeable heart thud. Unmistakeable blood surge.

The sounds of riding out bikes are not confined to riding our bikes. They ripple through the air in front of us when we least expect it and snap us back into the here and now, a reminder that tomorrow, or the day after, or this weekend, there will be the same sounds, the same ridiculous looking clothing and we wont care because we’d rather be in that ridiculous clothing than this ridiculous clothing which most of us despise wearing but know we must in order to blend in and not show our true dirt loving colours.

Just one click.

30 minutes of day dreaming of the perfect bit of singletrack.

Last year I got a GPS for xmas. So one year later, I’ve ridden 356 miles. Except I know I’ve ridden more because I didn’t always remember to take the gps with me on rides where I knew where I was going. Well duh, why would you. Except of course, now I know. Data.

Flicking through my activities list there are some big numbers ridden. 20 and 30 mile rides up and down dale. But they’re just numbers, a list of data that doesn’t mean anything to me until I remember the actual rides themselves.

I’m a bit of a secret data addict – I love spreadsheets, love finding the stories in data, love tracking trends and producing shiny graphs and infographics to make it easier for people to understand the enormity of numbers. But when it comes to my own – well what does 350 miles mean?

I suppose for someone who was over 19 stone, quite a lot. I pushed that 19 stone up a lot of hills with muscles far stronger and connected than they had any right to be.  Eventually I stopped sweating and panting and started to serenely climb hills, looking forward to the quiet peace which comes from there being nothing else in the world but getting to the top. I found quiet in my mind and quiet lanes out in the countryside. I found bike handling skills which meant I rode my cross bike on roads the same way I would a mountain bike, cornering and leaning and body position just so, no skidding, no skittering, just glee at preserving momentum. I mastered flicking bar end gears instead of thumb shifting and I finally learnt about using gears properly both up and down in order to not end up expending too much energy on the climbs.

I met some amazing people and got to know some others better. I learn that in the same way football can be the glue of social chatter, so too can a love of the Tour De France. I watched men destroy themselves to win and understood, just a little, every such a little, the pain but also the weird pleasure in stripping everything in your body back, that place where your mind has gone walkabout but your body carries on functioning anyway because it knows it has to and getting to the end is all that matters.

I rode 5 of the 7 Stanes in a day. I spent some time with someone awesome whose quietness rubbed off on me a little. I got a few nasty lesson in fuelling and took them with me too. I lost all embarrassment at my body in a car park somewhere in Scotland and understood that power comes in many packages and mines just a little bit different.

I lost a stone. Already it’s making pedalling a different experience. It’s more pleasurable but it’s tempered none of the determination to push as hard as possible up hills. My breath is ragged now because I’ve set out with the express intention of making it so, not because I’m out of control and unfit enough that simply pedalling makes me out of breath.

I over took people slower than me. Hundreds I think. And in the middle of a sportive entered by just under a 1,000 people I found a whole entire road to myself and felt something else, a feeling I’d not felt since I came second in a cross country race a really really long time ago. I felt achievement. It hurt, and there were tears, but people sponsored and were kind and the money went somewhere incredibly important and it was worth every second for the click which happened on that road alone.

So that was the last year. What of the next?

I’ve got some targets. I want to go back and complete 7 of the 7 Stanes. But the main target I suspect will help with that – to be a size 14 by next Xmas. Realistically, really realistically, it will be an easy target to hit and I should, by that point, have been a size 14 for some time. But size isn’t everything of course, fitness is. So along with that, I need to ride a lot of miles, and a lot of road miles at that, to build a set of muscles which will take me up the hills I want to climb.

I want to go on a mini adventure. Lots of mini adventures. I want to enter the Singletrack silliness at Lee Quarry this year – but there are a tonne of other things I want to do too.

But ultimately, really, all I want to do is ride my bike. Everything else is a bonus. I just want to ride my bike. Lots. I want to break my Brooks saddle in and I want to ride the drops on my handlebars comfortably. I want to learn how to really take my cross check off road and make it earn its keep. I want to commute to work in sunshine and I want to sit on the top of a mountain and know I can ride all the way back down.

But most of all, very most of all, I want to be able to ride in a group of people, a big group of people, and just keep up. Be in the middle somewhere. Drift around and chat a bit. Relax enough about my fitness that sparing conversation wont impact on my ability to complete the ride. Because if you’ve ridden with me and found me quiet – that’s why. I am not a fun person to ride with at the moment. I conserve breath because I need to.

By this time next year, I want to be able to ride with the girls and keep up. That’s all.

That’ll do.

It’s just like riding a bike, people often say. People who I can see are strangers to the wonders of matt lycra. Who don’t understand Presta vs Schrader and why knowing which you are is important. Who are oblivious to the snaking networks of connected shortcuts littering out urban landscapes (and our rural ones too).

But the thing is, they’re right. Even if they haven’t been on a bike in 20 years, they’re right. Getting back in the saddle after a rather embarrassing few months off is…well…just like getting back on a bike.

I can remember which way to flick the gear changes on the end of my odd looking but much loved drops. I can remember where the edges of the big wheel to small wheel cross overs are before the chain jumps. I can remember always to have my opposite leg at the top of the rotation when turning left or right so as not to bump into the mudguard. I can remember to switch down before decelerating and back up again after bridges, my dog dodging foo is strong and my people dodging skills are even stronger.

What I can’t remember, it transpires is how to work my works on both types of valves pump leading to my standing by the side of the canal towpath as people passed me by in oblivion as I utterly forgot how to work not only the pump but the valves on the tyres as well.

Not my finest hour. So instead I nursed the poor limping  Cross Check home distributing weight carefully so as not to let the rims hit the bumps.

But.

The sounds of the wind whistling in my ears, of moor hens splashing, of fish jumping in the stillness of the canal behind me, of birds circling and the colour of the sky in the distance over the Bowland Fells. The beauty of the brief silences in the lee of afternoon walkers from Blackburn, Rishton and Church. Inside nature instead of bubbled away from it, experiencing instead of just seeing it.

I’m a stone lighter, and oddly it makes a difference. I push and the bike just goes. I’m running in the same gears  before I stopped. I can sprint up the little hills still but the biggest difference is my riding position. I am comfortable, finally, riding on the hoods. Not on the drops, that’s going to be another 2 stone or so, but for know I’ll settle for pulling on the hoods, head bobbing and feeling the acceleration that no one is generating but me.

I don’t much care how silly I look any more. My weight is going the right way – down.  And the power in my legs is still there. And really, that’s all that matters to me right now.

Merry Xmas :O)

Appropriately named place is appropriately named

It looked innocuous enough, the route I’d planned.

Figure of 8, nice and simple. Admittedly, we’d never ridden any of it before, but it looked fine on Basecamp. 1000 feet of ascent, 7.8 miles – should be easy compared to what we’ve done before.

This was not easy.

The first inkling something was wrong was when the bridleway running over a track indicated on the map turned out to be a tractor wide ditch with something approaching a stagnant stream and reeds growing voraciously down it. I say down it because the gradient was not unrideable but it was definitely a climb.

No, the issue was not the gradient. The issue was initially the miniature ponies. You see what Basecamp and the OS maps within it don’t tell you is that the first farm we passed was the home of Only Foals and Horses. No, I’m not making it up.

So after my other half negotiated passage with the guard ponies by the gate, and they all attempted to consume his bike we discovered the next obstacle. Bogs. Lots of bogs. Stunning effort geologically, that the water even managed to stay in one place long enough to create one considering the gradient, but there you are. Ankle deep intermittent slodging. Interspersed with occasional riding.

Get to the top. Scare off some sheep. Through a farm yard with barking accompanied by a rather worrying thudding against some corrugated iron. Onto the Grane. Past a photographer with tripod looking way to cool to be out in the middle of nowhere on a windy moor. Yell ‘nice shot’ as I pass – well it will be.

Play hunt the bridleway. Find the bridleway. Lose the bridleway. Through another farms yard. Find the bridleway. Lose the bridleway. Over a style.

Fun descent down a track through puddles and mud. Yelps echo from in front as partner discovers perils of not scoping trail ahead in winter. Much laughter.

Another ridiculous climb, past a row of terrace houses clinging tenuously to the  side of yet another steep but thankfully short incline. Feel a teeny bit like landed in Kansas. Sit. Listen to complete silence inbetween Cockerels crowing.

Hear the unmistakeable tap of crutches. Around the corner comes a 12 or so year old lad, crutches slipping and sliding on the choppy surface of an unadopted road which hasn’t seen fresh tarmac in 30 or more years.

‘You’re brave’ I say. He smiles and pauses ‘what happened?’
‘Fell off a motorbike’ grins sheepishly. ‘I bet it was worth it?’ and off he taps again. Don’t realise until later there was mud on my glasses, my face, my helmet……well everywhere, truly. Didn’t think maybe……maybe.

Onwards. Road descent. Cross as it’s not the point of today, though make a mental note to bring the Cross Check back. Turn onto what we think is a fine thing to ride, as it’s a footpath on a track. Turns out, no, the track doesn’t make it okay. Definitely doesn’t make it okay. Find a slightly trying not to be too cross farmer at the end of a difficult sluchy sloshy slurry filled climb. Gasp apologies. Get permission to ride on up the now tarmaced track. Make suitably grateful gasps.

Climb some more. And more. Admire the views. See the houses at the top of the hill we’re heading for. Realise that according to the Basecamp route we’re now half way around. Turn onto road. More climbing. Shove the last of the jelly babies in. Raid the pub for some emergency fuel. Make the executive decision to cut the ride short and not do the other bit of the 8. Crawl up the hill. Back across the farmyard with the rubber dogs. Back down the bog covered bridleways, back wheel skittering, off the brakes for the first time all day.

As you will notice if you click the route summary at the top, final distance and ascent on the ground equalled the total of the predicted route doing the full figure of 8. Yeah. Basecamp is officially dumped.

The moral of this story?

It’s all miles in the bank. It’s all route finding experience.

The post title?

No word of a lie, as I reached the end of the last little bit of track to arrive back on Haslingden Old Road, past me there swept, silently and gracefully, a peloton of road riders – around 15 or so. Multi coloured jerseys, all black lycra shorts, silent and serene.

Swans and hippos my friends, swans and hippos.

It wasn’t the most auspicious of starts. I’ve got restless legs syndrome and tendonitis (so the doctors say, and yes, I’m aware the list is getting ever longer, and I hope so are they) and both of them have kicked off massively the last two weeks along with other things.

I don’t tell you this for sympathy. I tell you this as a background to the slightly edgy, lack of sleep ridden, hyper woman who arrived at Tatton Park at 8:50am yesterday morning and stood waiting for 30 minutes as assorted team members from various directions congregated. Add a professional photographer, small dog, other peoples lack of pumps, and my mobile phone not actually going off and I arrived at the start line less petrified and more stressed.

With absolutely rock hard calf muscles.

I don’t  for a second think it was a good training regime. I think it was being a bit broken, but there was absolutely no way, once I’d started turning pedals, that I was going to be able to go slow. It was exactly the same feeling I get at night in bed – the utter inability to keep legs still and a driving need to kick and twitch. Except pedalling was the only thing that was going to make the feeling go away. So I pedalled. I pedalled and pedalled and pedalled and my lungs didn’t break and my heart rate was just fine and my headaches didn’t appear and I pedalled some more and passed a group of girls in orange who got narked and passed me back by which point I was pissed at the words I’d heard that I think I was sposed to hear so I pedalled some more and sprinted up a hill past them in my top ring because actually, I forgot I had a little ring and suddenly my bike position clicked and I understood why you needed arm strength to pull you up hill and round corners I went merrily yelling thank you at the marshals, and I never saw those girls in orange again.

In the middle I met a girl who rides the A666 despite being a little overweight and having had a gastric band fitted a year ago and who was my godsend, because we chatted and I had breath left to and well there was a shock too and we rode to the first feed station together and I couldn’t believe we’d got there in an hour – 14 miles all told – and I held her bike while she went to the loo and I did my stretches and my calves still didn’t feel like the demons were out of them so we set off again and I pedalled on and explained about the team but not about the being ill, about writing but not for a living but being a geek and she was a stay at home mum and we were so different, so very different and yet we got each other through and she said she’d seen me go past and hooked on my back wheel and decided to stick with me because I was on a mission and I wanted to explain but I just didn’t want to either. We parted company as I sprinted up another hill (it’s Cheshire, they’re not that big, honestly) but she caught me, but I think she knew and I knew we’d done just fine and she was the first person who mentioned the magic words ‘under 2 hours’.

I wasn’t trying to.

I wasn’t lying when I said 3.5 hours. I wasn’t lying when I said I’d stay with the slowest. But the simple fact was there were a number of medical things colliding and my legs weren’t the only things threatening to break, so I made a decision. Get around. Get around before things hurt too bad. So I did.

And I guess, on the hill coming back into Tatton Park which is not much of a hill either but which felt like hell, I mean really felt like hell, on which I passed another 15 people and then died quietly and was passed myself for the second time on the road by a few people, I sat and followed someone else’s wheel. I sat and hurt. And hurt. And sweated and hurt some more. Around into Tatton itself, down the drive and off to the left, non sportive cyclists getting in the way and taking up road space which was already coned off and quite narrow nearly resulting in an accident which I confess I was the sole cause of but by that point I must admit I’d wandered off a bit in my head and so it was I had company going down the hill on the drive and alone going around the roundabout and coming back up it again and I must confess also that I talked myself up the hill telling myself to relax and glide and keep it smooth and not jerk and not think and just relax damnit and at the top were two blokes who knew, they must have known because I am afraid I must have looked quite quite staring and bright red and around the corner and suddenly there was the cattle grid and there was the finish line and the tears came and I grinned so big and so hard, because the commentator said ‘well done 618, really well done’ and I could hear the slight surprise I was feeling too.

And that’s the story of how I am a shit team mate, but accidentally a racer, a racer against no one but myself. I didn’t mean to. It just hurt and I needed to make it not hurt. And then suddenly once I was out there and spinning it seemed easier to just keep attacking and it was absolutely the best feeling in the world. Just the best. I never pushed myself so hard in my life. I never found the edges and kept pushing on anyway. I never felt so intensely happy in my life. I never believed in myself so much as I did right then.

So I might be broken. I might be a long list of ‘conditions’ and ‘syndromes’ and ‘diseases’. I might be fat and wobble and hate stairs. But I worked hard this summer. I put in some 60 mile weeks. I screwed up rest and I screwed up recovery. I didn’t eat properly in some places due to a complete loss of appetite and I ate too damn much in others thanks for a hunger that simply wouldn’t go away.

I few weeks ago I said to one of our team members that everyone else had got so much out of the training for Cycletta and what had I got. I then worked out that I’d got the pleasure of watching cycling change others as it has changed me. And I stand by that, and I am grateful to know the strong, determined, amazing women who have accompanied me on that journey.

But what did I get?

I got me. Me. My legs, my lungs, my head, my heart, my central nervous system, my calves, my tendons, my toes, my balance, my vertigo, my pain. I got all of it and wrapped it up in a box and threw it in the frikking river and turned my back on it and rode my frikking heart out.

And no one, not a single person in the entire world, will ever know what that means, will ever know that I truly didn’t believe for a second it could be done, will ever know how it feels to be me and to push and not hold back, to try, with 100% of my heart and mind, to commit to something and to achieve it.

1 hour 51 minutes and 36km later I know it is nothing to most of you. But it is everything to me.

I said I’d be honest.

All my life and I do mean all my life since I left school, I have been afraid of trying to do something in case I failed. The fear of failure was so big that I’d avoid doing anything at all that I wasn’t guaranteed to succeed at.

I didn’t do much for a lot of years. I avoided being ambitious. I avoided having aspirations. I excused being good at things as accidental and attributed any success fiercely to other people. I simply didn’t want to concede that being good at something meant you should try at it and work at it – until you inevitably hit the wall where you weren’t any good at it any more compared to the experts around you and you were forced to admit failure.

I have spent my entire life avoiding hitting that wall. From giving up playing the flute despite being good, to refusing to long distance run despite enjoying it, to fluffing up javelin throwing once at a County Games and refusing to pick the damn thing up again – the avoidance started early and it just never got challenged because I was clever and hid it.

Actually, I didn’t consciously hide it. I didn’t know there was an issue. It’s carried on from where it started in primary school into my 20′s and then my 30′s. I quit jobs I shouldn’t have, I gave up trying on friendships I shouldn’t have, I avoided forming friendships that I really should have had the balls to stick with.

I have no idea where this comes from. I was an A/B grade student in top sets for everything bar science that I sucked at. I was awkward sportswise but could whack a ball with a rounders bat. I could read faster than anyone I knew. Good things. Positive things.

Things I never focused on.

A few weeks ago I failed at something. It wasn’t so bad. With the help of two girls, I kind of got my head around it and where initially I beat myself up about it, I managed to stop, turn it around and understand that in that case trying really did count for something and that even in failing I’d achieved something.

Last week I accepted my body had simply had enough and was giving up on me whether I liked it or not. It took 48 hours of horribleness for me to understand but eventually I did – it wasn’t a failure to not go to work, it simply needed to happen, and there was no choice.

This Sunday I’m riding 40km. 10 days ago I couldn’t stand up for longer than 60 seconds and getting to the loo required help. My fingers hurt. My wrists hurt. My elbows hurt. I’m probably going to get a migraine this evening and tomorrow and the next day and the next. I’m going to ride my bike because I like riding my bike. For no other reason. Because it makes me feel better. Because I’d rather feel pain I’d earned and earned well.

But most of all because I don’t believe in not trying any more. I don’t believe in being scared of failing. I don’t believe failing is a bad thing any more. It just is. I don’t believe in beating myself up for it, I don’t believe in being embarrassed about it.

My body is entirely out of my control right now. It’s not my fault it’s broken. I didn’t do anything wrong. I didn’t choose anything. But a life lived avoiding is a life lived drifting, never making choices, never fighting back, never allowing passion and belief to colour anything, never permitting dreams to be dreamt and chances to  be taken.

I don’t want to live my life with it being dictated by my body and its predictabilities. But in realising that, I also have to grown the hell up and accept I have to take responsibility for my mind too. I musn’t let my fear of failure stop me doing anything any more.

Life is too damn short.

Stating the obvious, I know. But they are. I just wobbled through a pathetic 8km which clearly showed I’m not race ready but it’s not my calf muscles causing the issue, there’s more down force being produced by them than ever before.

No.

It’s my head. I’m not really accustomed to finding myself in places I didn’t actively choose to be on bikes any more. I can look behind and hold a line, I can keep my wheels in 6 inch ruts and the only thing I struggle with are pedal strikes when it’s a deep rut. I can ride compressions on a cross easily, I can skitter and skate on mud on skinny tyres quite happily.

I ended up a channel full of slutchy sludgy mud. And I really honestly don’t quite remember how I got there.

But, I’ve got power. And I think the fitness will come back if I ride the next 4 days, just a little bit further and faster each day. It’s not going to be an awesome time on Sunday. But it is going to be a time and I am going to finish, of that I’m pretty sure.

Now I just need to get rid of 3 weeks of relative inactivity’s tummy. And work out why my waist is smaller, my bones are a little bit more there yet I feel horrendously fat. Oh. Wait. That’d be water then.

All things considered, I can honestly say the last weeks neurological explosion has left less permanent damage than I thought.

I haven’t ridden for a while. My calf muscles decided to take a vacation without warning. I couldn’t support my weight never mind push it on a bike.

So now I have 7 days with weak muscles and incredibly sore hand/wrist/elbow joints to try and scrabble back some of the shape I was in. I am scared to start in case I DNF. But I have to start so I will. But if you pass a fat girl pouring with sweat, it will be because she’s going through menopause and not because of the effort of riding 40km. It will be because she’s hurting and not because she’s not fit but because her body sometimes goes into attack mode for no reason at all.

I don’t know how I’m going to do this. But I’m going to damn well try.

In 10 miles I;

bunny hopped a branch and missed the branch entirely, rode a neat little step up onto some northshore, rode some steps down again, zoomed through some twisty singletrack, sat in the middle ring as much as I could possibly bear to, got stung and scratched by Scotlands finest flora, was fed and watered by Scotland’s finest cooks, wondered why the hill looked hard but I wasn’t finding it that difficult, pulled off a hill start I never thought would be possible in a million years, dodged a fallen tree, rode across a swinging bridge, conquered demons and felled fears, and finally, finally, when no one was watching, I stopped holding back and damn well just got on with it.

10 miles, 2 stiles, 3 road crossings, untold mud sucking pits of hell. Too many nettles, too many thistles, not enough rest stops, not enough jelly babies. Lots  of love, lots of patience, lots of hand felted hares fallen in love with.

My bike is my passport. To the other world it feels like very few people can see.

I’m going on holiday. Yes, again. I know. But the other 4 people we’re going with had to have a say in the date too and so this week it was. 4 of the 6  people going are photographers (some exhibit), 1 is an artist (exhibits more), 4 are paid geeks and I am one of them and I have been leant a ‘bridge’ camera to have a bit of a play with.

Only 2 of us are taking bikes. 4 of us are slightly leftfield board game addicts (Catan, Carcasonne etc). 2 of us knit, but 1 most definitely better than the other. I’m the only one who cross stitches because it’s thread programming, and I’ll take my iPad to try and do some more silly biking cartoons. I’m taking my laptop to write some articles, and I’ve committed to riding my bike every single day. There will be films, there will be music, all kinds of music from old school rave to classic rock.

We are all, however, creative in some way. Except that…we’re not. But we are. Each of us can see beauty, be it in words or photographs or on canvas. And we all love being outside. Our number contain a recently outed twitcher, a few recently outed architecture obsessives, some tree spotters, a few owl adorers and every single one of us can appreciate a really good flower or two.

Why is this edit here? Because I spent Sunday immersed in bikes. I spent Saturday immersed in planning for bikes. I spent the preceding weeks obsessing about getting enough miles in my legs, enough hills in my legs, enough distance in my legs.

The focus of next week, for me, is recovery. Lots of spinning, hence the riding at least once a day thing, but also, lots of pausing and remembering why I love to ride my bike. Riding my bike will not always be fun. I am comfortable with that and made peace with that, somewhere on a fire road around Dalbeattie. But I want the riding next week to be the indulgent, slow, meandering, spotting the details on the dragonfly that just flew past kind of riding. And I don’t want it to be the centre of the holiday. I want it to be enfolded into it, so that it becomes natural.

And part of that, is going on holiday with friends and my bike coming with me, and it simply being a part of me, in the same way that J is an artist, A is a photographer, S is a photographer too, L is a chef and the other A is a jack of all trades (photographer/fixer/planner/motivator/hacker/cook/stargazer).

Riding a bike is becoming a part of my personality, is what I am trying to explain, but very badly. In fact this is possibly the clumsiest edit I’ve ever written and there is at least one person laughing loudly at that. But it’s important to me that this is recognised, this tipping point, yet another waymarker on the journey to who knows where.

I always had a serious case of wanderlust. I always wanted to know what was around the next corner. I’ve discovered the means of tapping that curiosity and turning it into something healthy and positive and good – and I am very grateful.