It was ‘Global Fat Bike Day’ at the weekend. I’m not entirely sure what I should have been doing with a fat bike on Global Fat Bike Day but it was a good excuse to borrow one from Rich and Shona at Keep Pedalling, Manchester’s foremost purveyors of unusual, cool and epic machinery 🙂

As luck would have it Rich has just finished building a custom Salsa Mukluk. Hope Fat Hubs, lightweight (yes, LIGHTWEIGHT) Surly Marge Lite rims, some XTR bits and bobs. For a bike with 4 inch-wide tyres it’s surprisingly light and nimble and I had no worries about taking it out for an extended ride. I even did some ‘proper training’ on it.

A lack of time on the actual Fat Bike Day meant that I nipped out for just a couple of hours on local trails – the bike attracted the usual, almost disbelieving stares from other riders and people out walking. The only downside was that the recent rain had left the trails quite wet and while the tyres (Surly Knard 3.8 at the front and a 4.0 Endomorph at the back) didn’t struggle for traction and grip, rubber as wide as that can produce a shower of water quite unlike any other bicycle. It really is like sitting on a muck spreader sometimes. At least it keeps you cool 😉

I had a bigger ride planned for Sunday so I decided I’d have a Global Fat Bike Weekend and drag it out a bit. I headed for the hills for a few hours and while I stopped a couple of times to fix punctures after an encounter with a sea of hawthorns, the bike was brilliant for a big ride. You really don’t need a beach or a snowy climate for these bikes to make sense.

The level of comfort and amount of traction on loose surfaces is remarkable and I’m always surprised at how well every fatbike I’ve ever ridden accelerates and maintains momentum. Of course, inflating a tyre after you’ve replaced a tube can take a while longer than with ‘normal’ bikes but it’s not too bad if you’ve got a decent pump and I’ve not even bothered experimenting with tubeless (although I’m sure that’s a development that can’t be too far away) but these are small problems when you consider the actual amount of fun and enjoyment you can get from a ride bike like this.

I need to find some races and think of some really long rides so that I can borrow this bike again….

When you’re riding a very light, rigid-forked, singlespeed mountain bike at speed on a narrow, rocky trail at night it’s easy to forget (or deliberately ignore) the fact that you’re only really a fraction of an inch from potential disaster. Every twist and turn, bump and depression in the trail successfully negotiated simply results in more confidence, more concentration and more speed. More bravery. Faster and faster we go….

I’d not ridden this (very light, rigid-forked, singlespeed) bike since the Strathpuffer last year. I’d built it more or less specifically for that race – one gear, no suspension, very, very light. It’s a fantastic bike to ride – involving, responsive, rewarding, etc, etc. Not much in the way of compromise and on paper, definitely not ideal for riding for 24 hours in one go. You can put the front wheel where you want it to be without a great deal of effort. Likewise, ride something bumpy and the front wheel can be knocked off it’s line quite easily – belt it into even a small rock with enough gusto and all of a sudden you’re making a big correction just to stay upright/not in a bush.

I’m pretty sure I hit something largish the other night while hurtling down one of the amazing singletrack trails at Penmachno. One second I’m flying down the trail, the next I’m flying through the air. The bike, knocked off the narrow trail onto a patch of sticky mud and weeds at the side of the trail, coincided with me reaching the limit of my reaction speed and ability and suddenly pitched me forwards, into the air and onto my head. From that point things got a bit worse as I tumbled down the steep, muddy bank at the side of the trail – tumbling over 3 or 4 times I hit rocks with my arms and legs on the way down and thankfully came to a halt before I fell down a hole or off a cliff.

In hindsight I don’t think there was a cliff and I’m not sure if there was a hole, but I knew it would be in my best interests to stop rolling down this hill kind of soonish.

I knew it was a big crash because Phil, who was riding behind me at the time, wasn’t laughing. Instead he was running/sliding down the embankment towards me.

As I lay there, I waited for the adrenaline to start to wear off so I’d be able to tell if I’d broken my arm. It felt like I might have done – it was bloody painful but not so painful that I was crying out. Maybe I’d got away with it. My legs were hurting and already my neck was getting stiff from the initial impact. I’d also belted my chest into the bars as the bike and I parted company and the pain that I experienced when I inhaled suggested that I’d cracked a rib or something.

Great. Just great. I seem to have spent the past couple of months either injured or full of some kind of snot disease.

I’d also lost my helmet light – I’ve no idea where that went but it’d either gone out or was buried because we couldn’t find it.

Thankfully the bike was ok so I wasn’t looking at a 10 mile walk back to the car.

As I sat in Dave’s car, waiting for Dave, Budge and Phil to complete the ride (I insisted that there wasn’t much point in everyone sacking it off on my account), I gradually warmed up, ate the remainder of my food and decided that I’d not broken my arm as I watched it swell and go a funny colour.

Hopefully in a few days I’ll be able to turn my head fully and ride a bike again without constantly swearing and grimacing in pain…

In the past couple of weeks I’ve decided that “recovery” hurts. Yeah, yeah, yeah I know it’s necessary and all that and to be fair if I’d not taken a couple of weeks off, as in doing nothing at all, after dragging my already-pretty tired carcass around the Relentless course for 24 and a half hours I’d have probably ended up in hospital anyway…but GOOD GRIEF I JUST WANT TO BE THIN AND FAST AGAIN.

I’ve not bothered weighing myself for a while. No point. I know I’ve overindulged on crappy food and red wine and I can tell that I’ve eaten very little in the way of healthy food because I’ve had a cold for a week and I’m constantly sleepy – presumably something to do with a lack of vitamins or something. Dunno.

That’s all out of my system now though and as far as I’m concerned I’m fully recovered and rested. If I try to recover any more I’ll just go mad and probably start running around outside in my underpants with a colander on my head.

So….my return to Doing Stuff and Eating Properly Again has coincided with the arrival of the autumn miserable weather and almost-constant darkness. After a road ride in the Dales with Dan where my extra bulk became obvious during a particularly painful ascent of Fleet Moss, I’ve spent the last week or so getting wet and muddy; slipping and sliding on local trails that not too long ago were dry and dusty. At least I’ve got the place to myself again.

To remind me what can be achieved with a lot of hard work and dedication (and not sitting around eating pasties), this arrived today. My medal from the World Solo Champs. Ok it’s 17 months since that race but it’s still lovely.

Unsurprisingly, racing a fifth 24 hour solo in 12 months was a pretty uncomfortable experience. I’d had a good few days of taking things easy after a slightly-harder-than-I-thought-it-was-going-to-be Bristol Oktoberfest, I was nice and organised (apart from the fact we didn’t arrive in Fort William until 1am the night before the race) and I was feeling ok. In reality though, I didn’t really have the legs for a 24 hour race last weekend and I’m still quite surprised that I was able to finish it, never mind win it.

I was fine for the first few hours. In fact, I created a nice big gap between me and everyone else at the start of lap three by making a Heroic Big Move™ and hammering it to the top of the first climb after spending the previous couple of hours to-ing, fro-ing and “getting into it” with a fresh-looking Jason Hynd.

After 6 hours or so the running order behind me was starting to settle down (Matt Jones was putting in some nice consistent lap times in second place) and the gap was now somewhere between 20 and 30 minutes. It wasn’t getting any bigger though and I was starting to become frustrated at my inability to kill things off and make the gap bigger. I was feeling tired and if I’m honest, I was hanging on and praying that I didn’t have a mechanical – if I had some catching up to do I wouldn’t be doing it today…

Debbie arrived four hours into the race and after a 6 hour drive, immediately dropped into her role of supporting me while I immediately slipped into my role of grumpily barking orders J

It was raining. I was getting cold and my shorts seemed to be filling up with fragments of Scottish granite. I wasn’t so much ‘tapping out laps’ as ‘grinding round the course’. I was suffering but I wasn’t planning to sack the race off because I’d put £120 of diesel in the van to get here.

The course was trying to break me and to be fair, it was doing a pretty good job of it. The first climb from the start/finish line was testing my patience as well as my legs and some of the tricky downhill sections were getting sketchy too (including one muddy bit that by now had a rut that looked like it had been caused by a meteorite).

I kept grinding out the laps. Matt would put in a faster lap and I’d somehow respond by doing the same. The gap never extended beyond 31 minutes. I was going to have to ride for longer than 24 hours ‘just to make sure’. My 23^rd and final lap was enough for the win and as I rode for the final time to the finish line towards a cheering throng of 4 people, my rear mech finally packed in, seemingly in sympathy with my wretched and crumpled body.

It was time for chips, gravy and a bloody good rest. Big thanks to everyone who was there for putting up with my monosyllabic grunting, especially Deb, Jacqui and Phil. Thanks also to Frazer and Spook for their hospitality and for organising the race, John and all the guys at Exposure Lights for shouting encouragement as I rode past 23 times and finally a massive “bloody well done lad” to Matt Jones for a super-strong ride for 2nd place.

Let’s start with the plan. Arrive late the night before the race, camp out, get up early, do the race. Dig deep but not too deep – remember you’ve got a 24 hour solo next weekend. Just dig deep enough to make the trip to Bristol worthwhile, make sure all is well with the bikes you’ll use next week and maybe win some beer. Drive home.

…for a change, that’s pretty much what happened. Almost. The drive down was late enough to be trouble-free and 3 hours after leaving Manchester I arrived at a dark Ashton Court in Bristol and pitched the tent (just how ace are pop-up tents?). A solid night’s sleep and a relatively stress-free couple of hours of pre-race faffing passed a little bit too quickly, leaving just a few minutes to use the loo.

There weren’t many loos and a lot of people queuing to use them. Ooops.

Eventually, I’m back in my tent, feverishly pulling on bib shorts and jersey while simultaneously applying chamois cream and I made it to the start line with literally 3 seconds before the start of the chaotic run to the bikes, left at the side of the gravel track.

The course was almost all purpose-built, hardpacked, swoopy MTB trail and was mostly very narrow. I spent the whole race politely asking people if I could get past just before nearly riding into a bush while riding past. After a couple of laps I started to get the hang of it, let a few psi out of my front tyre and started to have fun. I even jumped a few times. Go me.

photo: Rich Lewton

One of the highpoints of the race was a lump of home-made flapjack left on my table by Ant, complete with a written note to tell me how I was doing. Up until this point, about 3 or 4 hours in, I had no idea if I was first, last or somewhere in between so I was forcing myself to push hard the whole time. Which wasn’t the plan.

Anyway, the flapjack was bloody lovely – just slightly over-done but not burnt. Perfect 🙂

6 or 7 hours later and I think I started to fade a bit. In fact, the earlier fast pace after what’s been a big couple of weeks on the bike definitely caused me to fade a bit and eventually a very fast Andy Cockburn went past and carried on riding off into the distance to win the 8 hour race overall. I managed to hang on for the last half hour or so after that and I can’t complain about winning the vet’s category after riding 15 laps of what turned out to be a very punishing course – especially as I won beer, a cup and a pretzel.

So….all is set for Relentless 24 next weekend – my fourth last 24 hour race of the year.

Someone told me it’s been snowing in the Highlands…