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.

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.

An astounding video found via the Morvelo Posterous blog asks What did I learn, at the end of the video entitled 10 things I have learned via Mountain Biking.

So here are my 10 things.

1. I am not lazy. Lazy does not get off the sofa in the wind and rain and pedal anyway. Nor does it ensure you organise your entire life to ensure you have money to buy more kit. Nor encourages you to keep on pedalling until you can’t speak any more. A lot of people told me I was lazy. Every crank turn says they were wrong.
2. How to make a decision and accept the consequences no matter what they may be. I pick a line, no one else. I choose whether that root looks too slippy or not, I choose whether the gap in traffic is big enough, and I choose when to push as hard as I possibly can and when not to. And I accept the consequences of those choices and adjust future decisions accordingly. No one else. I am, slowly but surely, taking this lesson into other areas of my life.
3. I under achieve. Consistently and without exception. I don’t push as hard as I should all the time. I am scared of failure. I am scared to commit my heart and soul to riding my bike to the absolute limits. But riding my mountain bike taught me this, I would never perhaps have known if I had not and as a result I will be setting myself much harder targets in future. Both on and off the bike.
4. I am not fat. Well, I am. But I do not have the mind of a fat person, I do not think like a fat person, I do not ride like a fat person (how does a fat person ride, even?), I do not breath nor run up stairs like a fat person. I do not, ever, use fat as an excuse. Mountain biking leaves no room for excuses and no room for fat. Either you’re riding at 100% of your ability and fitness or you are not.
5. I am mentally strong. So many times I have been told to toughen up, to get a thick skin, to let it all wash over me. I confused my inability to ignore others with my ability to continue. To carry on. To keep my head down and keep going no matter how much it hurts, no matter how bad the wind, or the rain or the pain. I didn’t know I could do that. I’d never had to do that. Riding my bike taught me that and I wear that knowledge like an invisible cloak of defence every time I feel weak or out of my depth.
6. Never think of the people in front of me, only the people behind me. I am always last. But the millions on the sofa behind me are further behind me than ‘last’. So what is last, and does it matter, even? Am I enjoying it any less than the person in front? Am I any less committed than the person in front? Am I less of a mountain biker than the person in front. No. I am a mountain biker and mud levels all.
7. My back wheel will skitter but I wont fall off. Learning to hold skids, slides, twitches and mistakes has been the biggest lesson to me. I thought every mistake would lead to pain. Not all do. As you get better your mistakes get less and you get better at controlling the ones which slip through. But there will always be the one. And it will always lead to hospital.
8. My bike will take me anywhere I want to go. Roads link, but bridleways lead to heaven. And hell. But mostly heaven. And not knowing what surface you’re going to find is half the fun.
9. I love mud. And puddles. And mud. Dust is cool, it’s fine, it’s alright, but compacted, just been rained on a few hours ago muddy singlegtrack is just about the best thing in the world to me. I live in the UK, lets face it it’s just as damn well.
10. It’s not what you ride. It’s how you ride it. It’s how much you love what you ride. It’s whether you remember every ding and nail varnish scuff. It’s the tick or not of a hub, it’s the whirr on tarmac of the knobbly bits, it’s the clunk as you flick up into the next gear and hit the end, no more, you ran out, where next, oh well spin harder spin faster more more more.

What have I learnt? You’d be as well asking what I didn’t learn.

No I hadn’t. Because if you think about these things too much, they don’t happen and they don’t happen not because of the physical, but because of the mental. But the simple fact is, no I had not.

I’d also not thought about dressing, undressing and time taken dithering over what food to eat. I’d not thought about balancing tired in the morning with getting ass in gear in the morning. I’d not thought about a pre-ride Tour of Britain road ride producing epic amounts of cyclists South and South West of Dalbeattie, right where Mabie and Dalbeattie forests are. I’d not thought about the hills and about cumulative damage.

I’ve never done anything like this before. I’ve never done any kind of endurance event. Nor ridden that far off road in one day. I’d never ridden Mabie or Ae or Newcastleton blue routes at all and so on-sighted them (a climbing term that I believe applies to mountain biking too). I’d also never bonked so bad.

However.

I’ve also never ridden such beautiful lines both up and down Dougies Bank and Electric Blue. I’ve never understood exactly how far the edges of pushing can be pushed before I land in a car park white faced and wobbly legged. I’ve never know before how to ward off the post ride core temperature plummet which sometimes leaves me sleeping practically inside our electric fire. I’ve never been so unembarrassed about my body that I’ve stripped in 5 car parks down to lycra and base layer and changed riding shorts in car parks because speed meant it was necessary. I’ve never seen a red squirrel (oh yes we did and it was amazing), nor frogs and skaters bouncing and skittering in the channels down the sides of the fire roads, and then there were the 2 doe’s and one very young stag deer, untold pheasants and grouses, a buzzard and a few other not quite identified birds of prey, the rabbits and the alpaccas. I’ve never seen so much wildlife in one short but long day, nor have I ever seen so many different varieties of mushrooms, some hideous, some menacing, some beautiful. I have never woken and emerged blinking from a tent at 5:20 in the morning to be greeted by a green and blue sky, with bright stars twinkling as if through holes cut in a canvas, bats darting and the river comfortingly rushing by. I have never appreciated so much, so very much laughter, giggling, and the support to psyche that people can contribute. I’ve never taken such an instant liking to someone because they’re simply awesome nor have I had the pleasure of such easy company through an entire day and not wanted to be alone by the end of it. I’ve never got lost so badly in my head but I’ve also never trusted someone else so much to know how to bring me back. I’ve never seen so much mist and cloud nor Scotland looking so well dressed.

5 trail centres, about 56 km or so, about 2200 feet of ascent. 2 lads who came to keep me company and never once moaned about how boring the lack of tech was.

And 12 months to ride more bike and try again.

Thanks guys. Thank girls. Proper proper good day.

5 pairs of gloves, 5 buffs, 5 pairs of riding socks. Legging base layer, 2 long sleeved base layers, 3 spare jerseys, spare fleece, jacket. Warm stuff for between.

Somewhere between 69km and 80km, 7 x 7 blue grade Stanes. Why blues? Because I couldn’t do the reds in one day, I’ll be honest, and I think a large part of that would be the journeys between them – it’s about 300 miles round trip all in all and that takes time to drive apart from anything else – it would take longer to ride the reds.

I also want to close the blues off. I can’t quite explain it, but my relationship with blue routes has been a love affair. I love the zoom. I love the climbing – it’s never too much but just enough to remind me it’s not a walk in the park. The singletrack is never complicated but Dalbeattie, Glentress and Kirroughtree certainly focus the mind a little. And in focussing the mind, the of course also allow for some considerable more speed than the reds do.

On a personal level, I wanted to do this because I wanted to know if I could do this. What comes next? Well I hope something else randomly challenging. I like random challenges. I always have. There’s room for stuff like SITS. There is. But in the middle, inbetween, there needs to be random.

But you know what’s really interesting?

I own enough spare kit to fill a big weekend duffle bag. Imagine that.

A long time ago in a far away land….a girl avoided getting the train to work because getting it home again involved a walk up a very steep hill. We live about 300 feet up – which means any time we wanted to ride from the door, we either had another 500 feet or so to go to the top, or we ended on a very steep 300 feet climb as it rises 300 feet in about 1/4 mile if that.

I used to not be able to walk up that hill. Lets make that incredibly clear. I tried, a number of times and always ended up giving in and waiting for the bus.

This evening I rode back up from the bottom of the hill to our house with no dramas, a bit out of breath, with between 3 and 5 gears left and without stopping.

I was sort of supposed to be taking it easy, and the ride before that point was a nice easy spin of an hour all told, I promise :O)

In the post this evening were a Morvelo cap and some lovely velo love socks which I shall wear with pride and a merino top from Howies which is lovely and is slightly too big. I’m keeping it because it’s reassuringly too big instead of annoyingly too big. I also acquired a hoodie two sizes smaller than I used to take.

So.

Lets see what sort of time we end up with shall we? :O)))