Taking the Waters

It’s rare that one is granted a duck’s eye view of the world, and even rarer to experience the simple pleasure of sprawling idly in a babbling stream, contemplating the uncertainties of life, as the waters flow and eddy unconcernedly about one’s buttocks.

It wasn’t a conscious decision that found me and my bicycle prostrate in the depths of  Broughton Green ford, just a too-fast downhill approach and an injudicious touch on the brake, resulting in an involuntary flying header in to the middle of the ford. I landed with a splash and a thud on my left side and lay musing for a while, none too pleased with how the day  was turning out. You silly old fart, I thought, what if you can‘t get up? You must at least have broken your hip and you’ll probably go in to shock and drown where you lie.

I tried looking on the bright side. I was wearing clean underwear, so my widow wouldn’t be shamed in the mortuary when she identified me. And anyway, with luck, a motorist would find me and have sufficient compassion to stop and help, and not to drive round or, more likely, over me. On the other hand, if the driver was some harassed rural mom in her 4 x 4, late for the school run, that would probably be more than an elderly cyclist could expect, so I decided to try and vacate the stream before I was flattened beyond recall.

Surprisingly, tentative limb-waving indicated nothing obviously amiss about my person, so I picked myself and bike from the waters, waded to the shore and examined myself for signs of terminal injury while the water trickled slowly from my shoes and clothing.

I couldn’t believe my luck: not a mark on me, and no bike damage either. I’d got away with it this time, but I’ve had an uncomfortable feeling recently that the Grim Reaper is close by, loitering with intent, just looking for the chance to stuff his scythe through my front spokes. Best be more careful in future

Reflections on my 80th Birthday

21 was better.

21 was a bloody sight better.

The Gospel Truth

Recent Facebook pictures of a snow-covered Gospel Pass in the Black Mountains of Wales,reminded me that I'd laboured over there in the 120 km (76 miles) Welsh Marches Audax in April 2009.

The route contained 1600 metres of climbing, including some hilly stuff round Herefordshire, before scaling the Gospel Pass and dropping down to Hay on Wye, leaving an easy run in to the finish at Monkland near Leominster.

  I’d upped my mileage before the event but was fully aware that my 72 year old legs were in danger of being ripped off over the climbs and that I wouldn't be able to stay with the younger riders much past the first check at about 30 miles, I knew I could average about 14mph, on reasonably flat terrain, but the group I set off with was averaging 16’s after about 5 miles, uncomfortably fast for me, and I was on my own before the ride had really started.

I pinched this picture of the Gospel Pass off a website. If I remember correctly I took my own camera on the ride but when I came to take my panoramic views I found the battery had expired. 
I understand that the pass is the highest road in Wales. On the day I thought it was a bloody sight higher.

  I experienced an intense period of indignant distress at being shelled out so early and contemplated a return to the headquarters. But I rode on for a while, fantasising about the dreadful retribution that a Just God would wreak upon my erstwhile companions, and eventually reasoned that my early humiliation hadn't altered my plan, I just had to ride further on my own than I had originally calculated.

The ride to the first check was actually hillier than I had anticipated, and I had to walk a couple of short steep stretches, although I caught and passed a couple of stragglers, favouring them with a supercilious nod and a grunted greeting to leave them in no doubt of my superior standing in the cycling hierarchy.. 

  When I reached the first control, a cafe, some of my previous companions were still there, lolling about with coffee and cake and other fripperies, but I just got my card signed,and carried on, knowing full well that I would be overtaken again on the way to the second control at Hay on Wye. I was carrying an energy drink and cereal bars, so that I didn’t need a sit-down stop.The others passed me on a long grinding hill, a few miles after the café, and I was on my own again.This second section was much hillier than the first, several long hills interspersed with some welcome descents, but eventually I reached the start of the Gospel Pass.

          
  The pass is about eight miles long, up a very narrow road, with a drop and a widening valley to the right, giving some stunning views. It's a steady climb at first, but becomes a lot steeper as it approaches the summit. The days's previous climbs had done no favours for my geriatric legs, and I adopted my usual climbing style of sitting back, engaging 28 x29, swearing profusely, and hoping for the best  Eventually, after plodding for what seemed like half the morning,I came out on to open heath land, with a glorious view over the countryside that I’d just ridden through. A few hundred  more yards of steady climbing took me to the summit of the pass where there was a fantastic view towards Hay-on-Wye and across the Wye valley to the west.

 I caught up with the others at the café at Hay who, predictably were just leaving as I arrived. prompting a non-cycling customer to question the extent of my popularity. The ride back to Monkland was fortunately flat and I got through the last miles, pretty well knackered but in reasonable order.

I used this ride as preparation for the Beacon RCC 94 mile Cotswold Journey Audax, later that year, which I completed on my own, and without stops, a tactic that got me to the finish within the time limit..Just because you cant keep up with the kids doesn't mean you can't go out to play.

Shooting One's Mouth Off: The Veteran Cyclist's Occupational Hazard

Me and my stomach trundling round the Beacon RCC 107km Cotswold
Outing Audax in 2011

I've always talked a good bike ride. In my younger days, tucked comfortably behind my pint among a peloton of like-minded associates, I would hint, only half-jokingly, of my potential as world road champion and Tour de France prospect, and aged 17, filled with euphoria following a couple of top six road race placings, briefly believed my own publicity. After my National Service, I reluctantly abandoned my Tour ambitions, but even then, enthusiasm and over confidence for the coming season led me to make some unrealistic pronouncements, and an injudicious assertion, in the presence of the then President's lady, that I would that season destroy the club 100 mile time trial record, cost me a fortune in Green Goddess cocktails twelve months later.

      The eventual petering-out of my unremarkable racing career resulted in a shift of emphasis from forecasts of future glory to nostalgic accounts of past 'achievements'. Now decades away from reality, bog basic winter Reliability Trials like the Weston and Back and the LLangollen and Back, along with the 'characters' that were my clubmates have become the subject of myth and legend, embellished as they have been with unlikely anecdotes involving fixed-wheel training rides with brick-filled saddlebags and tales of derring-do during Bacchanalian youth hostel weekends. Some of these tales have a basis in fact, but at this distance in time I'm not sure where fact ends and fiction begins.

      Wittering on about the old days, and how bloody good you were, is the prerogative of geriatric cyclists, and although it's invariably accompanied by an attitude of disdain and derision concerning the abilities of the current crop of younger riders, it generally does no one any harm. However, this week, inspired by daughter training for a half-marathon running race, I had a momentary aberration and posted on Facebook my intention of riding the Beacon RCC 107km Cotswold Outing Audax in aid of the Prostate Cancer Charity.

      I'm not exactly regretting it, but...

      I've been round this particular Audax numerous times, and five years ago, aged 72, completed the 160 km (94 mile)Cotswold Journey which actually included hills, thankfully absent from the Cotswold Outing. So doing the Cotswold Outing again seemed like a damn good idea until I realised that I'm now 77, haven't done many miles since my prostate diagnosis in 2011, and no single ride of more than 35 miles in the last two years.

     While I was reflecting on the discrepancy between ambition and ability, and the potential consequences of having shot my mouth off, the till on my Just Giving page was ringing enthusiastically, with £240 donated within hours.  So, like it or not, I'm riding the Cotswold Outing Audax. 

      Fortunately, I'm not such a prat as I sometimes make out. (I'm not!) and have come up with a Training Plan, designed to get me round the course in relatively good order.

     It is foolproof, and based on 63 years of cycling experience, and if nothing else, will get me out on the bike regularly over the next 15 weeks. 

     I know exactly what I'm doing.

     What can possibly go wrong?

f you'd like to donate you;ll find my Just Giving page at:http://t.co/PUhFfH1BfN

      

It's Bloody January, again.

This is what you look like when you know you are about to take your 77
year old self out  on the bike, in to the cold, wet, and an annoying south-westerly,
 for no reason other than you'll have a bad conscience if you don't. Why doesn't
someone tell me I don't have to do it? 

As today there was no appreciable rain, nor gales, nor even the suggestion of an icy patch, I felt honour bound to open my 2014 cycling campaign, the 62nd consecutive year of my Battle of Attrition with the bicycle.
     I am aware that this a battle that I can no longer win, and even as I dragged the Trevor Jarvis from the shed, where it has been lurking with malevolent intent since early December, I was still nurturing an unreasonable hope that the tyres had rotted away and the rest of it had been consumed by rust.
     The worst that had occurred was a soft tyre, which, spitefully, responded to the application of the track pump, and I was soon on my way and immediately aware that my legs had no real inclination to participate in the venture. However, this is a standard reaction for first time out, even for the fitter individuals, so I changed down a gear and pretended to enjoy it.
     It took me about a mile to realise that the route that my brain had planned was inappropriate, inclining far more towards the vertical than my recalcitrant legs considered fair, so I skulked off down a side road and did three laps of a flattish circuit instead There was a nasty south-westerly breeze which tried to knacker me up down one side of the circuit and the tail-wind bits, which would normally have me in paroxysms of delight, I failed to appreciate, being generally in the throes of a near-death experience. However, I'd planned to be out for an hour, live or die, and I ground out an hour and ten minutes, just to show who's boss.
     Noticed that there actually  is some rust, bubbling up on the Trevor Jarvis' top tube. Be interested to see which rusts through first, the frame or me.


     

A War of Attrition

This is the closest I can get to a photo of me having direct dealings
with Attrition, taken Oct 3, 1954 in the Worcs. CA Hill Climb up
Beacon Hill, Lickey. Time 2min 43.8 sec. Only a cyclist will know
just how much agony you can pack in to less than three minutes effort. By
the look on my face I'm at the stage when red-hot needles are being
 jabbed in to my thighs I'm gasping for air, can taste blood in my
throat and I just want it all to stop. Great when it's over!

My sixty-plus years association with the bicycle has always had more than a touch of love/hate about it. Even the act of taking the bike from the shed has always carried a certain amount of nervous apprehension, wondering what the day had in store, and if a race, or hard training ride was involved, I often achieved a high state of anxiety, as my body anticipated its merciless subjection to a great deal of pain and suffering that it would much rather do without.

Once in to the ride, the early anxiety was replaced by the grim reality of the moment: the need to hold the wheel of the rider in front, to react to the attacks of those who would seek to rip your legs off by increasing the pace to inflict unbearable levels of pain, while you pedalled through the agony, whimpering inwardly, desperately straining to keep your front wheel no more than six inches from the wheel in front, because you knew that if that ‘elastic’ broke and the gap widened to a foot, a yard, a bike length, that your race was over and you were dead, buried, and in your own mind at least, deeply humiliated.

At least it was nice when it was over, and if you were in at the finish with the chance of a high placing, there was a certain satisfaction to it all, the fact that you had not only competed successfully with others, but that you had won the battle with yourself, pushed your body far past its comfort zone. I suppose I enjoyed it. Sort of.

Fifty odd years on from those days, I still feel that apprehension before I hoist my 77-year-old arse on to the saddle. Though I mainly ride alone now, it doesn’t mean I can bumble about willy-nilly. There are pedal revs to maintain, average speeds to aim for and hills to climb. Some hills, once relished as challenges, no longer feature in my ride plans, but unfortunately other climbs are now appearing in places where climbs never before existed. Apologies for hills, some not more than 100 metres long  that I would once have taken in the big chainring, but which now, week by week, with a display of shameless malevolence, seem to develop ever-steeper gradients.

I once enjoyed hills, the steeper the better. When I was young, and 9 stone wringing wet, I enjoyed powering my way to the top, mostly leaving my bigger companions in my wake. There was an exhilaration to be had in dancing on the pedals, pushing yourself through the pain to top the rise, a great sense of achievement. These days, fifty years down the line, and, for various reasons, weighing in at 13stone, even a long drag or minor climb becomes my personal War of Attrition.

No pedal dancing now, sit back on the saddle, grab the brake hoods, select a gear that you can turn reasonably comfortably, and on no account look at the top of the hill. Instead, fix your eyes on something a little way ahead, a drain cover, a telegraph pole, and ride to it. Just before you reach it, select another point a little further on, and move towards that. If the gradient steepens, change down a gear and Think of England, but concentrate on pushing the pedals round, and try to ignore the red hot needles penetrating your thighs and the apparent death-rattle that is your breathing. Swear as loudly and as often as necessary. Repeat gear changes until no further sprockets are available and then whimper pathetically, pray and redouble your efforts while willing the bike upwards. On no account look for the top of the hill, just keep pedalling, gasping and swearing. Eventually the gradient will ease, you've reached the top and you may permit yourself a laugh of triumph or a sob of pain, dependent on your mood.

I have to admit that I keep away from major hills now, no point in being stupid, and in the reasonably benign terrain I use, there's nothing I can't get up, albeit sometimes in a state geriatric disrepair. But I do know, realistically, that one day, next year, the year after, on one hill or another,I'm going to have to climb off and give it best. That will be traumatic, and will set off some soul-searching as to where I go from there.

But right now, I still enjoy it. Sort of.

An Old Grudge Remembered

I shall be operating the Welford-on-Avon Control at Beacon RCC’s Cotswold Audaxes on Sunday week. I’d intended riding the 110 km. event but a lack of miles in my elderly legs persuaded me to run the check, an activity allowing access to unlimited cake and coffee and enabling me to hand out unwanted cheer and advice to the legless and luckless as they pass through Welford.

      I’ve successfully completed this event many times, although not always without personal trauma. At the start, a few years ago, I momentarily thought I had been struck partially blind, before realising that the problem was the surprising absence of the right-hand lens of my reading glasses, which I needed to follow the details on the route card, clipped on my handlebars.

      There followed a voluble, if forgivable, tantrum. I could just about read the route provided I peered through the remaining lens and kept the other eye shut, but it was obvious that riding one-eyed, for 70 miles, was impractical, hazardous and potentially terminal, so I needed to ride with someone capable of reading the sheet. However, my friends, unaware of my plight, were long gone, and after a few miles I found myself alone at a junction, borderline berserk and vainly trying to decipher the route sheet hieroglyphics. But just as I decided to call it quits and go back, Johnny showed up.

      Johnny is older than me, a long-ago pro racer of considerable reputation. (he was reserve for the Great Britain Tour de France team in 1955) He was alone, having suffered a Senior Moment at the start, turning right instead of left from the HQ and ending up well down the wrong road before he realised his error. (The previous year he’d locked his car keys in his car at the headquarters, and had to break the window to get in, but that’s embarrassing for him, so I won’t mention it)

     Anyway, his eyesight was adequate, so we teamed up, and made good time to the first check at Honeybourne and on up the nasty little climb past Hidcote. I faltered a bit towards the top, but Johnny kept going, and as I watched him go I was mentally transported back almost fifty years to a road race, which incorporated two very hard laps of our club’s Little Mountain Time Trial course. 

      On the first long climb, up Stanford Bank, the bunch split in two, and I found myself in the wrong half, along with Johnny and twenty-odd others. After we’d topped the climb, a chase got going and we were moving well, though the leading group were out of sight. Thirteen miles on, at Knightwick, our bunch was still intact, but the long, steep, climb up Ankerdine followed by the hard grind to Gt, Witley, created havoc, and by the time we started up Stanford Bank for the second time, Johnny and me had dropped everyone else, and we could see the leading group about half a minute ahead of us on the climb, I congratulated myself on being back in the race with a chance, unaware that I was about to witness the darker side of human nature.

      I’d just upped my pace slightly, to steadily close the leaders down, when Johnny came past, out of the saddle and sprinting. Before I reacted he’d bridged the gap and joined the leaders, leaving me wallowing indignantly down the road. The whole group was out of sight again before I reached the top, and I didn’t see another soul until the finish at Hartlebury, 30 miles and a lifetime of suffering later. 

      Johnny did wait for me in the Audax, though, well, at least until that nasty drag up the last six miles when my legs expired quite spectacularly, but then, what’s the point of finishing an event not feeling knackered? If I’m paying nine quid for a ride, I feel it incumbent upon the organiser to provide me with my moneys-worth of pain. As I’ve got older, long rides have become a war of attrition, the objective being not to go belly up before the finish, but to feel quietly smug because you haven’t. Therein lies the enjoyment, possibly.

      At the Audax finish, I reminded Johnny of his un-gentlemanly conduct on Stanford Bank all those years ago. He claimed not to remember it, but I do, and it’s there, right at the top of my long list of cycling grudges. 

      I’ll save the others for later.