Mud in my eyes

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.