The second I was told that 24 Hour Pedal Car racing was An Actual Thing, I knew I had to give it a go. I rounded up a posse of like-minded 24 hour racers – Phil, Budge, Dave and Guy – hoodwinked Michael into doing it (“it’ll be fine, just go for a couple of runs around the reservoir before the race or something”), arranged a car for us to hire (It’s a rental let’s go mental!) and we were all set.

I’d met a few pedal car racers during the tandem ride me and Guy did at Goodwood last year. Lovely people – dead enthusiastic about what we were doing, the world of Human Powered Vehicles and as it turned out, the pedal car racing ‘scene’. Did you know there’s a pedal car racing scene? There is….

Plans were made between Pedal Car stalwarts Alan Goodman (who helped adjudicate our world record attempt) and Pedal Car league organiser, Jes Featherstone. We were going to make our debut at the Shenington 24 Hour race, where teams would drive on a challenging karting circuit in a Le Mans-format that anyone (like us) who’s taken part in an endurance mountain bike race would be familiar with.

that yellow thing was very fast

That’s pretty much where the familiarity ends. Apart from mine and Guy’s recumbent cycling experience from last year, none of us really knew what to expect. We wouldn’t get to see the car until the day of the race and we had no idea how a pedal car race normally unfolds.

We all decided on a running order (Guy was late, so we had to improvise a running order for the first couple of hours). Our strategy wasn’t really discussed, apart from “try not to crash” and “let’s see what happens”.

What happens is that some cars go around the track very slowly. Some go around the track very quickly. We opted for the latter of the two strategies and basically went mental, trying to go as fast as possible, no drafting and overtaking everything that we found ourselves behind. We went for 30 minutes in the car each – you can throw caution to the wind and not bother pacing your efforts if you’re going flat-out for half an hour with two-and-a-half hours to have a sit down and some food and it seemed to serve us well.

The weather at first was pretty boring. Nice and sunny, but predictable and grippy. But then for the last few hours it got interesting – the wind picked up and the rain arrived. Lots of rain. Visibility was getting quite poor and the spray (filled with small fragments of rubber from hundreds of tortured pedal car tyres) from everyone’s wheels was reaching 8 or 9 feet into the air. It was a hell of an environment to be tearing around a track in a very fast, built-for-grown-ups pedal car.

Guy drove for three 30 minute stints before having to head back to work but in that time managed to have the car airborne then drove away from a 4-car pile-up. Dave took the Crash With Style Award of the weekend though by clipping the kerb on the inside of a hairpin, sending the car tumbling over and coming to rest on Dave’s head. Awesome!!

We finished in 4^th place. Not bad for our first effort. Things might have been different if we’d thought about drafting other cars a bit more often but the mountain biker-mentality took over and we just drove full gas as much as possible. Maybe we’ll be a bit more tactically aware next time….hmmm. One thing’s for certain, the competition at a pedal car race is as fierce as I’ve experienced in any bike race – many of the teams were fit enough and fast enough to drive for hundreds and hundreds of miles over the duration of the race, the second and third places on the podium were decided by a finish line sprint. Fast, committed, highly-skilled and tactical racing. Brilliant.

Thanks to Alan, Jes, the Apollo Team for the loan of the car (and for mending the car when we wore our tyres out) and everyone involved in the Shenington 24 Hour race – racers, caterers, helpers and hangers-on. See you next year and cheers!

I’m sort of saving myself this year. In my head, there’s always been a chance that I might be able to get to the World 24 Hour Champs in California in the autumn.

As a result I’ve tried to start the year steady and limit the number of 24 hour solo races I do. I think 2015’s total of three 24 hour solos is the lowest number since I started doing them – I remember the years gone by when I’d happily attempt 5 or 6…not this time though. Experience over the past 8 or so years has taught me that if I did my usual ‘thing’ of entering every endurance race I could possibly think of as a soloist, by the time I reached October I’d be ready for a fortnight of sleep rather than a very fast, expensive and competitive endurance race.

And so it came to pass that I was able to enter that big endurance race in California and I’m starting to make some plans. Flights are booked. It’s happening.

It was a good job then that I’d decided some time ago to race at Mountain Mayhem in the pairs category (the mixed pairs, to be precise) rather than defend my 2014 solo title. Instead I’ll be racing in the 24 hour solo at TwentyFour12 in July instead – my one and only solo race this summer.

So my mate Beate and I hatched a plan. Beate’s pretty fast nowadays – a few years of road, cross and mountain bike racing has given her decent levels of speed and endurance and I reckoned that we’d do well.

We agreed that due to the relatively short course, we’d ride 2 laps each throughout the race. From the start we were in the lead and the dry, fast course was a real pleasure to ride. Even at 3am.

Meanwhile Debbie was supporting us both – in fact she stayed up all night (like she does when I’m soloing) just to make sure that we didn’t stop and to make sure we both had whatever we needed and to pass on messages. We were a team of three really.

I was struggling to breathe early on in the race so I brought the pace down and kept things ‘friendly’ from that point on. Every time I tried to ride ‘properly’ fast I’d get out of breath again, which was worrying and more than a little bit annoying. I was however LOVING the rare treat of being able to stop for a sit down and a cuppa after every couple of laps 🙂

Nice and steady. No idea why I was having respiratory problems– I assumed it was because of the humid, warm conditions.

I was riding the new Santa Cruz Highball C – it’s the first time I’ve raced for longer than an hour on this bike and after my experiences of spending 24 hours on my old Highball, I was expecting the bone-dry course to give me a battering. I’d borrowed a new USE EVO-91 carbon seatpost a few minutes before the start of the race (thanks Tom) which helped and the new bike was remarkably comfortable throughout. The Highball is definitely much more of a cross-country race bike than it was before, longer, lighter and a frame more suited to endurance racing.

Lighting the way (and Beate’s way after they lent her some lights), my USE Exposure Reflex and Equinox combo meant I could ride at daylight speeds even in the dark and a good supply of fuel was provided by Honey Stinger gels and waffles. In between laps though, I was all over the chicken fajitas and tinned ravioli ;0)

Apart from a slight ‘wobble’ in the small hours when Beate had a fairly routine gastric complaint (remedied by her altering the food she was eating and having a little sit down), my weird breathing issue and an early snapped chain (thanks to Jo Burt for helping out with that one) it was a pretty flawless race. We won. In fact, if Beate was a bloke we’d have been 4^th in the male pairs, possibly third if we hadn’t finished early to drink tea in the food tent.

And I was reunited with my old friend the Princess Royal. I’m sure she was wearing the same clothes as last year…..

The last few weeks have been relatively quiet on the bike racing-front – with only a few weeks to go before I race as one half of a pairs team at Mountain Mayhem and after that a 24 hour solo race at Twentyfour12, I’ve been keeping busy by working on regaining my cycling fitness after a winter of “just getting the miles in” and running. Gradually re-introducing structure to my riding while leaving out the added stress of preparing for and taking part in races.

Apart from the half marathon I ran in Tenerife, the local cross-country mountain bike race I did last night was the first race I’ve been a part of since Battle on the Beach back in March. I know that’s only a few weeks and a change is as good as a rest, etc…but it’s always surprising how unfamiliar everything feels even after a relatively short break.

A very slow but frantic drive to the race in regular Manchester traffic meant I arrived with only a few minutes to spare before the start, so I leapt from the car already wearing cycling clothes, pulled my singlespeed (which hasn’t turned a wheel since the Strathpuffer) from the boot and headed for the start line.

The start line was down a flat, wide dirt track. Before I knew what was going on, everyone turned around 180 degrees and so I found myself at the back. Right at the back. Bugger. Nothing like a schoolboy error to start the first round of a race series.

Off we went – my lack of gears meant that I was having go spin my legs at around a million rpm just to keep up on the flat sections of the course but could then catch up and pass other riders on the short climbs of the Clayton Vale course.

Overtaking opportunities however were few and far between – the long, wide sections were mainly quite flat so my lack of top speed meant I was having to work very hard just to hold the wheel in front, never mind get past it. I was having fun testing myself though, after the shock of the first lap oxygen debt subsided.

I’ve no idea where I finished. To be honest I don’t think I want to look at the results, but I’m pretty sure that I finished further up the pack than where I started…

In spite of my self-inflicted bike and starting position deficiencies, it was 6 laps of brilliant, breathless fun and I’m looking forward to round two in a couple of weeks.

In the context of a week’s family holiday to Tenerife, 12 hours of riding my bike plus a half marathon isn’t bad going. The fact that while you’re riding a bike in Tenerife you’re spending the vast majority of your time grovelling uphill and that some of the grovelling is at a high enough altitude so that it hurts a lot more, it’s perhaps 12 hours that would be equal to a few more hours than 12 in the UK. Perhaps.

Regardless of how much fitness Tenerife can kick out of you, the weather, the views and the varied and often breathtaking surroundings make the whole island one of  my favourite places on earth.

far, far from the beach

The half marathon Debbie and I did was a little bit larger than I was expecting. I thought it was going to be a rather small, grass-roots type of thing in a small village on the coast. When we arrived and saw the hundreds of runners, huge start/finish gantry, grandstands, live music and TV cameras I knew we were taking part in something rather large.

It was a brilliant event. Two laps of a hilly course (typical of Tenerife) along closed roads, water stations every couple of kilometres and lovely weather, if a bit on the warm side for Northern Englanders. I reached the finish line in 1 hour 36, Debbie crossed the line 20 or so minutes later.

I spent the rest of the week riding up and down the mountain while gradually shaking off a thigh injury picked up in the half marathon. Sometimes up the main roads with easier gradients, sometimes up the unrelentingly-steep minor roads while being barked at by (and sometimes chased by) large and demonic farm dogs. Ok, the small West Highland terrier that gave chase wasn’t demonic but they’ve all got teeth…

I took a mountain bike (once it arrived as it somehow missed the flight that I was on) because I knew there was good (and dry!) off-road riding to be had, the only problem was I couldn’t find too much legal stuff that I was prepared to tackle on my own. I’m not a massive fan of falling off cliffs without someone to call the helicopter. What I did ride was good fun but there wasn’t loads of it – I’ll stick to the road bike in future I think. Or grow a pair 🙂

As well as the bike, I took some Craft cycling and running clothing that up until last week I’d not had the chance to wear. The Craft gear I’ve been wearing all winter is mainly windproof, rain-proof and thermal but the jerseys and shorts I took to Tenerife were somewhat thinner and lighter.

The ‘Move’ jersey I was wearing whilst toiling in 28 degrees centigrade are covered in mesh panels and are the next-best thing to wearing nothing at all. I’m not sure what the naked cycling laws are in the Canaries but I assume it’s not allowed….

I also took a whole box of Honey Stinger Waffles – I was starting my rides early therefore there was no chance of having breakfast before I set off so I took those to avoid the dreaded bonk two or three hours into a hard ride. They were ideal – not only do they taste good they kept my legs turning and they fit nicely in my pockets 😉

Time to start counting down the days to our next trip.

Holidays are for relaxing, aren’t they? Not for doing loads of strenuous exercise. Just sitting down, doing very little…
Wrong! They’re for doing stuff in new places. Mad stuff. Big stuff. Stuff that makes you all puffed out, dirty and/or sweaty. That’s what holidays are for.

As a warm-up before the half marathon me and Deb are doing in Tenerife soon, I decided that while we were spending a nice weekend away in North Wales for Easter, a local fell race might be a good plan. I dragged my family and my mate Jamie (who’s a good runner but had never done a fell race in his life) the few miles down the road to the Fron Four fell race. It was only 8 or so miles, how hard could it be?

“just run up that”

Very hard as it turned out. In fact apart from the 3 Peaks Race I don’t think I’ve taken part in a fell race as hard as this one. The amount of pain and suffering in store for all 33 participants started to become clear as the race organiser pointed to the summit of the nearest mountain – Mynydd Mawr – and explained that we’d see that summit up close. Twice. The rest of the route was pretty bloody hilly as well, not to mention the rocks, slate and frankly ridiculous 45-degree hillside traverse that I thought was going to snap my right foot off.

85 minutes later it was all over. I’d finished in 13th place (7th vet), just behind the first-placed female who looked like she was still at school. I apologised to Jamie as he reached the finish line a few minutes later – the poor lad’s first experience of fell running was a proper baptism of fire but he was still smiling.

My description of the Fron Four race might sound like a moan and give you the impression that I didn’t enjoy it. On the contrary, I thought it was utterly brilliant and I’ll definitely do it again next year.

The incredibly tough course, the three pounds and fifty pence entry fee, the cuppa at the end and the usual warm welcome from all involved (that is as much a part of the fell running experience as the running itself) all combine to equal a brilliant way to spend a couple of hours on a spring afternoon. Fabulous stuff.