Possibilities

Well, it’s been a fun ride.

Waaay back in 2015 I started this humble blerg as a self-described “50-something, remarkably undistinguished club cyclist, all-round curmudgeon, and sometime smart-arse.” Now, eight years later I’m well into my sixth decade, though still stubbornly unexceptional, irascible, and cantankerous.

And still a dedicated club cyclist, too.

So some things remain, other things have evolved, moved on, changed completely. I mean, it really wasn’t that long ago that the Prof was the unchallenged owner of the smallest, leakiest bladder in the bunch. He’s now off, irrigating pastures new, while his vacant crown has been assuredly commandeered by Buster, who is scaling new heights, (or maybe plumbing new depths) in terms of how soon into a ride we need to stop in order to take a nature break. But I digress …

At the outset my mission – if that isn’t too grand a construct to attach to serial inane ramblings, was to deliver a eulogy to “the traditional club run in all of its eccentric, idiosyncratic, bizarre, compelling, colourful, and hugely entertaining glory.” This was back when the club was being suffocated and hobbled by an autocratic leadership structure which a weekly blerg (amongst other things) provided a release from and an opportunity for me to poke a little fun at.

Since then, and with a very firm, very welcome, final push from British Cycling, the club members have slowly found a way to outflank, circumvent, and eventually overturn said authority. Today the club has proper structures, a constitution, elected officers, alternative rides, social events, even a plan of succession … and appears to be thriving.

This months club newsletter (imagine, regular, open communication with members!) reported that we had recently broken through the barrier of achieving 100 fully paid-up club members, a 114% increase in numbers over the last 18 months and things are shockingly normal. So normal in fact that I recently completed a club run and had nothing much to write about, and this is now becoming the reality.

It put me in mind of my old English teacher’s assertion that above all else, successful drama needs an element of conflict. Now club runs are largely uneventful, peaceful, relaxing, and uncontentious. I feel less need to vent, or perhaps I’m no longer quite as irascible and cantankerous as I think and I have far less material than I would like. Did Achilles have the same doubts, regrets, and lack of direction once he’d slain Hector, I wonder?

Anyhow it’s extremely likely that blerg posts about club rides will become less frequent as they become less eventful. Perhaps there’s an opportunity to write about other things, but let’s see how I feel, I’ve no great plans but maybe one or two half-baked thoughts. After all, half-baked thoughts seem to be my métier.

Take my plans for a little more time-trialling this year, which haven’t really advanced all that much and came to a season’s close after 4 or 5 events, with our club-organised , open TT on Sunday 30th July. This takes place on the testing M12S course, a boxy-looking 12-mile route heading north out of Stamfordham, to Black Headon, west to the Quarry, and then south down to Matfen, before squaring things off with the final leg east and back to the start.

I knew from last year’s event that the first half was a draggy, seriously leg-draining, almost constantly upward grind, enlivened by numerous painful humps, lumps, and bumps along the way. Because of this, I’d left the aero bars off the bike as they make me far too lazy and discourage me from moving my hands to change gear. I knew without a doubt I’d be needing the full run of the cassette today.

Assigned a 10:34 start-time, at least I managed a bit of a lie-in before getting everything together to leave the house just after 9.00 for the drive across. Pro Tip: Chicken Dhansak and a bottle of Rioja the night before are probably not the ideal preparation for a time trial.

I arrived at the race HQ, went to sign on and Immediately put in a complaint with the organisers as the weather wasn’t what I’d ordered, and the wind, in particular, was thrashing wildly at the hedgerows and would be in our faces for the first and most gruelling part of the route.

I had a good hour for a warm-up and recon ride around the course, identifying all the potholes and hazards so I could unerringly plant my wheels in them on my actual run. It also gave me an idea of how troublesome the wind was, especially on some of the more exposed and attritional uphill stretches, and thankful that I’d never had the money, nor inclination to invest in solid disc wheels.

Warm-up and recon complete, I dropped my jacket off back at the car and called in at the race HQ for a quick pee. Outside I bumped into Crazy Legs, due to start 10 or so minutes after me and who craftily suggested a good aim might be to try and get around the course in a time that was within our start numbers. He would at least manage this very comfortably …

Then it was up to the start line where I said hello to ex-club member who would be setting off a minute behind me and who I expected to see again very, very shortly. I passed inspection with both front and rear lights working assuredly and shuffled forward as my number was called.

Richard Rex was getting in a good upper-body workout as the starter and dragged me back from where I’d rolled my front wheel over the start line, completely oblivious to my need for sneaky marginal gains, even if it was just a few centimetres. We inconclusively tried to calculate the likelihood of rain in the next half an hour or so (none, thankfully) and then I was away.

Well into the ride, the lane was scabby down the left, so I was barrelling down the white line in the middle of the road, aware only of the wind rushing past, the gurgling, gargling wheezing of my seriously dysfunctional lungs and the distinctly audible little whimpers that my legs had started to emit. It took an almost apologetic little toot from behind to tell me I was completely blocking the road and a car wanted to pass.

I swung over for some teeth-clattering action until the patient driver could pass, then it was back into the middle of the road until I took the first left onto the scabrous lane at Black Heddon and out onto the worst part of the course. I seriously struggled against wind, gradient and ultra-grippy road surface along here and it was where, as expected, my minute man caught and passed me.

It was the rider starting two minutes behind’s turn to catch me just before the final drag up to the Quarry turn, where I stood out of the saddle and stomped on the pedals to engage in some style-less, wild bike thrashing that would have made even Annemiek van Vleuten blush. It was all a vain attempt to keep the momentum going but sadly, gravity won this very unequal contest. I plonked back down again, ground around the corner and, finally, blessedly the road tipped down at last.

I’ve ridden the Quarry maybe a hundred times in the opposite direction and never noticed there’s a slight downhill halfway along. Now, travelling the other way, it became a hugely noticeable uphill that rapidly bled away any momentum I’d managed to gain. Then, around the next corner, the road dipped once more, but it was also horribly exposed and the wind punched me straight in the face and this downhill bit briefly became as hard as any of the uphill bits.

At the bottom of the Quarry, I finally turned to put the wind behind me and started to pick up the pace. Somewhere between Matfen and Fenwick my computer told me I was touching 37-38mph and I remember thinking I was going fast … but obviously not as fast as the rider who had started three minutes behind me and blasted past in a cacophony of swashing carbon.

Finally, I could see the church tower poking through the tree canopy and knew I was closing on the finish at Stamfordham and the final rush for the line. (For the record, I managed a time of 35:13, a credible and very pleasing 1:46 seconds faster than last year. The winner was 8 minutes faster, so if I continue to improve at the same rate, I could potentially challenge him by the time I turn 70.)

Oh well, maybe next year.

What Happened?

With a mandatory SLJ appearance at a wedding decreed last weekend, I could only accept I’d missed the perfect Saturday for a bike ride, or … I will begrudgingly accept, found the perfect one for any outdoor nuptials. So, another potentially fine day this time around was not to be missed, even if a club run isn’t really the ideal preparation for another little TT tilt the following day. (I’m guessing).

My ride across town was enlivened when I was passed by a motorcyclist wearing a Pikachu helmet – to be fair it didn’t make him look like Pikachu, rather he appeared to have a terrified Pokémon clinging for dear life to the back of his head. Made me smile. Then, if that wasn’t enough excitement for the day, I rode through the aftermath of what looked like a major police raid on a house in Denton. Exciting times.

I was on the final run to the meeting point when James III hustled past while totally blanking me. I couldn’t work out how I’d offended him, but maybe he’d picked up on the evil thoughts I’d harboured about the long, grey aero socks he was wearing a fortnight ago and my subsequent silent, sartorial disquiet?

Andy Mapp had devised another long, somewhat convoluted, and quite “climby” route for us this week, which included a rare ascent of Ritton Bank and elicited one or two complaints that some of his rides had people taking on almost 700 metres of climbing. Oh, the horror …

Bloody hell, the Garrulous Kid was back, recently graduated after 4 years of University. I can’t believe it’s been 4 years already, as I told him, it seems like only yesterday that we were all cheering because he was going away …

While the numbers slowly built, until we had over thirty cyclists strewn across the pavement and blocking the path, we kept a careful eye out for the Enigma. We thought we were going to be rewarded when we saw a cyclist glide effortlessly around the corner, before commencing a majestic, stately cruise by, but … this was a woman … on a road bike … wearing a Burberry Mac? Could this possibly be the Enigma reincarnated? Had this transformation been, as Another Engine suggested, prompted by British Cyclings’ declaration of a new “Open” race category? Does the Enigma now embody a riddle wrapped in a mystery? We simply don’t know.

Once again we had the perfect bell curve of rider distribution with low numbers in groups 1 and 3 and an overly swollen second group. I’ve no idea how we resolve this, but dropped into group 3 to try and balance things out.

There, I had a quick catch-up with Sneaky Pete, fresh from acquiring a new knee (or half a new knee as he insisted) and feeling his way back into riding. I was also labelled an instigator/agitator by Taffy Steve, which is perhaps the nicest thing he’s ever said about me.

It was a splendid ride in glorious weather and good company and everything was going swimmingly as I pushed onto the front and we started the descent down Curlicue Bank, a narrow, rutted and gravel strewn drop that runs parallel to the Trench.

There wasn’t a lot of room, but I passed a group of riders working their way upwards, reached the bottom, and had started climbing out the other side when I heard shouts behind and the Hammer called me back as someone had gone down.

It appeared that the Ticker, descending just behind me, had run full tilt into one of the riders coming up the other way and was now curled in a foetal position in the nettles by the side of the road. The rider he’d hit was lying higher up clutching his shoulder and swearing angrily. I knew it was bad when I found the Ticker’s front wheel completely detached from his bike, alone and abandoned in the centre of the road.

Carlton, G-Dawg and the Hammer managed to slowly extricate the Ticker from the bike and started to assess what damage he’d done. Remarkably nothing seemed broken or dislocated, but he’d taken a bang to the head, cracked his helmet and seemed badly concussed.

“What happened?” he asked. Then again, at least half a dozen times in the next few minutes, having no recollection of the accident and unable to retain any details when he was told.

Bar a sore shoulder, the other guy also seemed to have escaped major injury and, as far as we could tell his bike was unscathed too. The same couldn’t be said for the Ticker’s, the front forks had sheared completely away, which explained how his front wheel had become detached.

The other guy was phoning home and arranging for pick-up, while a good Samaritan passerby loaded the Ticker and the remains of his shattered bike into a Range Rover and took him to the nearest village, Netherwitton.

The rest of our group made our way there to join him shortly afterwards. The driver seemed mightily relieved to see us because the Ticker kept asking him what happened and he didn’t know how to answer. Carlton orchestrated an ambulance to get our fallen rider to hospital and checked out, with Taffy Steve providing the key “what3words” to ensure they could find our location.

Sadly, these were perfectly bland and unmemorable, so nothing like Carrizo Springs, Texas with its what3words combination of ‘huge-chunky-head’, Millard County, Utah’s ‘cats-with-thumbs’ or Kingswood, Bristol’s admonition to ‘shave-legs-fully.’ Nevertheless, the system worked fantastically well and a paramedic was with us within 15 minutes, so definitely a must-have app to take along on rides.

The wait only gave the Ticker time enough to ask us 15 times what had happened, with Taffy Steve at one point suggesting we should just make up random, bizarre answers to fill in the time and because our crash victim wouldn’t remember anyway.

Three or four of the group pushed on to complete the ride, while the rest of us waited. The paramedic diagnosed concussion and a call was put in for transfer to the nearest hospital at Cramlington for scans. Taffy Steve exchanged details with a friendly local who offered to keep all the pieces of the Tickers bike safe until it could be picked up and, with its owner now in safe hands, we felt we could continue on our way.

We’d lost about an hour waiting around, so completing the ride wasn’t really an option. We decided to climb the Trench and, after a little debate, settled on Kirkley cafe for our mandatory stop. A mile or two from the cafe, Liam the Chinese rockstar punctured but was determined not to delay us any longer and said he was just going to walk the rest of the way to the cafe.

I was convinced he didn’t realise just how far that actually was and tried to persuade him to stop and take the time to swap out his inner tube, but he was having none of it. We eventually left him to it and pushed on. It’s possible he just didn’t want a critical audience watching his amateur attempts to sort out the puncture (or is that just me?) and eventually sense prevailed, or the cleats on his shoe wore out, as he finally stopped walking to make the repairs and was able to join us at the cafe au velo.

It was here that I was shocked to learn that mild-mannered, gentlemanly Carlton had a secret past as a football ultra, and may, or may not, have been involved in some post-match vehicular destruction in his wilder days …

I routed home through Ponteland to shave a few miles off, arriving home only 20 minutes or so beyond what would typically be my latest arrival time, so not so late that any flares were sent up. An eventful ride with unfortunate consequences then, but certainly enjoyable in parts.

And, three people told me I had a very shiny bike.

It was a chilly and very unappealing early start to Sunday morning which found me traveling to Cramlington for the GTR Return To Life 10-mile timetrial. For charidee, no less, so at least my early start was for a good cause.

The event was being run on a new course to me, the M101, although it included stretches of the M102C I’d ridden last August. Like that event, this was almost exclusively on dual-carriageway so there was at least the opportunity for a good time. My one issue was it was on very unfamiliar roads where every stretch of dual carriageway looks identical to the next and I’d had horrible trouble finding the race start last time. Luckily, I was much better prepared, with my cheap, non-route-finding bike computer swapped for my iPhone with its all-singing, all-dancing navigational capabilities.

Using this, I found the start without any effort and, with plenty of time to spare, wandered off for a brief, very unscientific sort of warm-up. I stopped to quickly gulp down an energy gel, not because I felt I needed it and it would help, but simply because it had been lying around for far too long and was now irrevocably past its use-by date.

I rolled up to the line in good order and only had time to bitch to the starter that he shouldn’t have turned yesterday’s sun off, before he released me and I was underway.

Four and a bit miles in, I was passed by my minute man who blew past and disappeared quickly up the road. Then, as I completed the turn to start the return leg, I was passed by another rider who didn’t pull away quite so quickly and I was able to keep them in sight as a sort of visual spur for most of the rest of the ride.

Things seemed to be going smoothly until the final run for home when, under the shadow of a bridge, I clattered hard through a long, hidden divot in the road surface, hitting it with enough force to jar my tool tub loose. I paused momentarily while it clattered away, waiting for the dreaded rumble of rims that were no longer cushioned by a tyre full of air, but somehow I survived without a pinch flat. This was probably just as well as my spare tubes were in the tool tub which was now bouncing hopelessly down the road and lost to the traffic.

I completed the course at an average speed of 22.64 mph and in a time of 26:30, shaving another 15 seconds of my previous best and making me think a sub-26 minute ride is a stiff, but potentially achievable long-term target. With a long flat course and a good following wind, naturally. And a bit of drafting. Oh, and maybe some performance-enhancing drugs and a hidden motor too?

Family holidays are going to get in the way of the next few scheduled CTT events that aren’t too long or too hilly for me, but I’ll be back!

Day & Date:	Club Run, Saturday 3rd June 2023
Riding Time:	4 hours 19 minutes
Riding Distance:	105km/65 miles with 998m of climbing
Average Speed:	24.8km/h
Group Size:	30+ with 0 FNG’s
Temperature:	10℃
Weather in a word or two:	Let the sunshine
Year to date:	3,602km/2,238 miles with 34,642m of climbing

Once again we’re all indebted to Dub Devlin for capturing fantastic photos of these events.

Wet BlankeTT

Don’t tell me we’re back to that always raining on Saturday malarkey. I thought we’d done with that?

But no, apparently not.

This weather would have made for a truly grim club ride demanding full protective measures – thermals, rain jackets, mudguards, overshoes, casquette, spare gloves et al. The good news was I wasn’t heading out on a club run …

The bad news was I was heading out to my first time trial of the new season and this was likely to be just as grim, if not more so than the club run, but without the benefit of any of the protective measures.

Today was Team Kirkley Cycles’ 10-mile individual time trial where I was the 42nd rider off in a bumper field of 80. It was also about returning to the scene of the crime. my first ever time trial, way back in August 2018 (the horror of which can be relived here) when I was a callow, 55-year old. Now in a whole new age category, but seemingly none the wiser, I was about to do it all again, my 4th such competitive event, and the first on a course I actually knew and had ridden before.

At least my start time gave me an additional half an hour in bed beyond when I’m usually up and about on a Saturday morning. Sadly, it also gave time for the cold, dismal rain to settle in fully, like a depressing, soaking wet blanket thrown over the entire region. I arrived at Kirkley in plenty of time, parked up and finally worked up the courage to get out of the nicely warm car for a chat with a couple of team mates, while I pulled out the bike and started preparing.

I signed on and got briefed about potential hazards out on the course: gravel, potholes, and mud I was familiar with, especially on the lane past Ogle, and puddles and standing water were a given on a day like this, but open farm gates? I struggled to work out what hazard open farm gates posed – other than the not impossible scenario of me taking a wrong turn and riding into a newly ploughed field.

Once I’d pinned my number on my back, I wandered out for what I farcically term a warm-up, even though that was something that was almost impossible in the prevailing conditions, and it was more an exercise in trying not to get too wet and chilled while killing time before my start.

With a few minutes to go, I backtracked to the start line, just in time to witness a comedy of errors. First up, one tall rangy rider somehow slipped and majestically toppled like an up-rooted redwood. I can now safely report that If a time-triallist topples in a forest, and no one is around to hear, he does indeed make a sound, and that sound is undoubtedly a loud and explosive “Ooph!”

No damage seemed to be done and the rider picked himself up, dusted himself down and got underway, probably with a huge jolt of adrenaline as a boost.

The marshal’s then tried to fit a late-comer into the minute gap between the next rider up and the one immediately in front of me. The interloper jumped away 30 seconds into the minutes’ gap and made maybe 2 or 3 pedal strokes before his drivetrain imploded. The starter then leaped to the rescue and wrangled the bike upright and the chain back in place, helped the rider up off the floor, and got him underway, but not before the poor guy in front of me had to start with a foot on the ground, clip himself in and then steer carefully around the chaos unfolding in front of him.

Luckily, I had no such issues and managed to get underway in good order, grateful to be moving and hopefully generating some warmth. I made it to the descent just before Ogle before my minute man caught and passed me and I was on the final run for home before I was passed again. For me, this was quite an encouraging state of affairs.

Even better, as I approached the turn on the outward leg a flashing red light showed I was catching someone ahead and though it took a bit longer than anticipated I eventually passed them on the long straight road toward the finish. It’s always good to know you’re not going to be last! I was even closing on a second set of lights as I crested the final rise but ran out of road before I could make that catch.

Done, I then had to take the long loop around Berwick Hill to get back to the race HQ to (rightly) avoid riding on the actual race circuit. It was here that I realised just how tired I was and how chilled, soaked to the bone, and filthy I was too, and I hated every mile of this enforced detour. For a different perspective though, a much hardier rider from Weardale told me he thought this was the best bit of the route as he relished the smooth new tarmac on Berwick Hill after the crusty, potholed monstrosity that is the track from Ogle.

I didn’t hang around at the finish, but packed up as quickly as I could, pulled on as many layers as I had, although there wasn’t enough, and shivered all the way home, even with the heaters in the car cranked up to the maximum and the windows slowly fogging. It took a long hot shower and a couple of hours huddled indoors before I started to feel warm again. That was unexpectedly brutal.

I finished in 55th place out of the 70 starters who were brave or foolish enough to turn out in such miserable weather, and in a time of 29:14, almost exactly 2 minutes slower than my previous attempt on this circuit. If that rate of decline is anything to go by in another 5 years or so I won’t be able to ride fast enough to consistently stay upright, so I’d better enjoy my cycling while I can.

If I’m reading the results correctly the winner in the 60+ Vets category finished with a time of 26:17, which is better than I’ve ever managed on the fastest course in the most favourable conditions. Well, it’s something to aim for…