Four and a half hours into the race, my year's training efforts came to an abrupt end. My prone, cut and bruised body was halted by a traffic barrier. Six months of hard work slid down the road undone by a single mistake. My season's objective out of reach. Or was it?
I'm a voracious reader. I have the ability to read and digest at speed, much to the annoyance of my wife, who often teeters on the brink of sleeping only to be disturbed by my rapid and regular page turning in bed. I've made it my mission to plough through a library's worth of cycling biographys and training manuals and never cease to be inspired by those who have taken on the mountains and won. In my cycling lifetime I've set out to understand and empathise with my heros by taking on the role of a climber and setting about the gradients encountered on the club run.
Every year I make my annual pilgrimage to the mountains of Europe to test myself further in a long Gran Fondo that climbs a mountain of two. Usually I do “OK”, but my late night reading was giving me the impression that “OK” is just not good enough. So this year, I trained to go hard.
And I really did train. I rode hundreds of miles every week. I rode an additional two hours after every club Sunday ride. I time trialled, I raced, I recovery rode and performed interval training. I rode nearly one hundred hill repititions and really showed my mettle by removing every strand of hair from my legs in an extended two hour shaving session. Four thousand seven hundred training miles couldn't be wrong, especially given that they had got progressively faster.
My objective was the one hundred and twenty mile long “Fausto Coppi” Gran Fondo. I'd ridden it before in nearly ten hours, suffering badly on its two major climbs. This year, my masterplan said “eight hours”. Recent performances showed that I could achieve this and I also believed that I could. Self belief is usually worth an additional ten percent.
And so I crossed the start line and began the live the truth of my training manuals. To give them credit they were mostly right. I comfortably rode through the pack to join the lead group and stayed with them till the slopes of the first col beckoned with crooked finger. My bike raised an eyebrow in suprise as I piloted it to the top minutes faster than the previous year. So far, the eight hours were in reach. The next thirty kilometres must have been hidden in the training manual small print as I don't remember the bit about the pain remaining even when the fitness has increased.
After a brief descent the race went skywards again. An eighteen kilometer climb, in hot sun and without respite. Initially, I maintained a high pace and high gear, however, each new kilometre saw my legs fade a little further until I had run out of gears and had ceased passing others. I was beginning to understand that faster legs simply hasten the body to the point at which the pain begins. There does not appear to be a training program for self sythesis of morphine, I'm certainly going to be working on it.
However, the news was not all bad. I found that my training allowed me to ride through the pain and accept it. Others were in a similar position. The field had thinned out by the time we reached the top of the first mountain. Manners were left waiting as we collectively scrambled for food and water from the feeding station and then pushed off to address the steep, narrow descent that snaked down the other side.
I've always been a nervous descender on the bike. I've yet to find the courage to trust my mental geometric calculations to guide me at high speed through any corner. So, with no riders visible in front of me, my brakes remained firmly affixed to the wheel rims as I squeeked down the mountain. As I got lower, the road surface degenerated into “almost track” at one point requiring a dismount and short walk thanks to the Italian road builders who had removed the tarmac layer and then gone to lunch.
As I lost height, the surface began to improve, riders began to catch and pass me at speed. The road morphed into a series of fast swooping bends and I relinquished my iron grip on the brake levers and gathered more speed. The next rider that came past took longer to overtake. I reliased my own speed and increasing bravdo was a part of this and silently affirmed to follow his line to the bottom of the mountain.
Inadvertently he led me directly into the crash barrier.
Descending upon a bike gives a unique insight into the nature of courage. Some riders will risk all to enter and leave each corner at the fastest speed possible, often taking a gamble that no vehicles are approaching from the other direction. Others promote self preservation and descend tentatively in the knowledge that maybe the time lost going down can be safely regained on the flat or a climb later in the ride. Finally, there's the hybrid descender. Tentative in their own company, but willing to subscribe to the risks of a faster rider who may go pass. The abdicate their own judgement to the rider in front and assume that if they follow their line, then they too will arrive safely at the bottom.
To me, it is unclear who has the greater courage. The faster rider undoubtedly has the guts to survive by their own judgement. They take on the road alone, secure in the knoweldge that their decisions are right and their luck will hold.
The self preservist has the conviction to ignore the actions of their peers and descend at a rate that suits them. This may well mean a faster climb is required later in the ride or a more sustained effort upon the flat. The self preservist is prepared to manify their future suffering in the name of safety.
Finally, we have the follower. A rider who makes a split second decision to trust the judgement of a complete stranger. A rider who immediately assesses the ability of the cyclist in front matched with their own and decides in an instant to follow. A rider who is prepared to take someone elses chances.
I'm a follower and thus found myself leaning into a corner at close to 40 miles per hour at the beck of another rider's line. It was too fast. I realised that I wasn't prepared to lean my bike over at that speed and instictively pulled the brakes.
Mistake.
I can still vividly recall the moment at which I lost control. I'd locked the rear wheel up and the bike was trying to turn through 180 degrees. I felt myself lifted over the handlebars and clearly heard myself shout “Oh no!”.
“Oh No!”, what kind of an epitaph is that? Would Nelson have been so fondly remembered for looking up at Hardy and groaning “Oh no”? Would King Charles have made such an impression had he mounted the stand, caught sight of the block, turned to the crowd and mumbled “Oh no!”?
These were potentially my last words and the sentence didn't even contain a single profanity. Next time I have resolved to do much better.
I hit the ground hard on my left side. From that point onward all I can recall is motion. Fast, confused, blurred, disorienting motion. And then it stopped, hard, as I met the roadside crash barrier with my neck. A brief moment later my bike joined me and we lay there, a sorry pile of metal and flesh, alone at the bottom of a mountain pass.
I lay there for nearly a minute before I gained the courage to attempt to move my legs. Relief mixed with pain flooded through me as I was able to rise to my knees. My legs and arms were covered in blood with most of the skin removed from my elbows, shoulders and knees. I had a great deal of pain in my neck and my left hand, I hurt a lot, which meant I was alive.
Other riders started to come past, but nobody stopped due to the gradient and the speed of their travel. I was on my own, I hadn't prepared for this and all that I could think to do was to get back on the bike and carry on.
As soon as I was in the saddle I felt a weird kind of nausea. I really didn't want to be doing this at all. Something bad had happened and I just wanted to get away from the bike and the scene as quickly as possible. But the bike was the only option.
I coasted down the road until I found the next marshalling point. In a near daze I tried to continue along the race route and climbed onwards for nearly a hundred yards until my legs refused to turn the pedals anymore. I lacked the energy or mental capacity to unclip and simply fell sideways. Two concerned marshalls ran up the road and disentangled me from the bike. They caught sight of the blood and pointed back down the hill whilst jabbering in Italian. I haven't a clue what they said, I didn't need to know. They were telling me my race was over. And they were right.
An hour later I found myself back at the finish, covered in Iodine, resplendent in ripped lycra and full of regret. Since the crash I had carried out a lot of mental arithmatic. I realised that I was on for a very quick race time, nowhere near the winner, but possibly withinthe target eight hours I had set myself. That opportunity was now gone. I'd have to spend another year training, I'd have to lift my confidence in bike handling and kill the doubt that would whisper every time I started to lean the bike over. I'd have to clap my friends over the line and congratulate them on a ride completed whilst wishing I could share in their elation. I began to wonder whether I could have carried on after the crash. I'd managed to cycle back to the start, surely I could have recomposed myself, rested a while and then carried on.
It took me a few weeks to carefully squeeze the positives from my unfortunate accident. I have managed to rationalise it all. I was in the race to challenge myself to go faster but I had a crash. The crash was my fault. I was lucky enough to walk away.
As for my wasted preparation? Ulitmately training has to be largely formed of mental attitiude. For my training to have succeeded, I needed to find the strength to leave the crash barrier behind. To get back on the bike and return a safer, yet more determined rider.
And that's exaclty what I plan to do. I'll do the race again next year. I'll gain the courage to descend pensively away from the wheels of others and I'll cross the line a far more satisfied rider. This year's training has by no means been in vane
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