It’s been an up and down year for UK 24 hour racing. Well, for 24 hour races I’ve been a part of anyway. Going waaay back to January, the Strathpuffer was as ace as ever – unseasonably warm conditions (we’re talking relatively warm here) and I did okish. I dropped out of the race for a few hours with an injured back but then pulled my shit together and rode a few more laps to take the singlespeed win, something like 4^th overall, on a brand new Scandal that Brant personally delivered a few days before. Won a voucher and bought some bib longs with it.

Enjoyed watching Phil win.

The UK 12 Hour Champs wasn’t a bad race – it rained a bit but the Newcastleton course was excellent, I had the opportunity to catch up with friendly faces galore but I was full of snot and as a result my performance was pretty crap. Enjoyed watching Dave win the 12 hour European title in dramatic fashion.

The 24 Hour World champs in Italy was probably my best-prepared, well-paced and efficiently-executed performance of any 24 hour race I’d taken part in so far. Despite being completely outclassed by the winner, I’d ridden to second place in a race that comprised some of the best endurance cyclists in the world and even if I never achieve anything as good as that again, somehow that’s fine by me.

Watching Phil and Dave also finish in the top ten in the same race gave us all something to celebrate after months of preparation. We WILL race the Worlds again.

Mountain Mayhem was caught in the middle of the 2012 summer that never began – the mud was the worst in living memory. What should quite rightly be the pinnacle of UK 24 Hour racing was reduced to a comedy slither or grind around a destroyed course for the few that carried on; often the only respite from the spirit-sapping ‘non-race’ was to drop out completely. I had fun – my race saved by Brant offering me a lifeline of a hilarious and surprisingly effective stunt ride aboard a prototype fat bike….

Sleepless in the Saddle suffered the same fate as Mayhem. As soon as it rained most people with any previous experience of that course dropped out. Dave and I (racing in the pairs) dropped out, went home and went for a road ride.

The summer and the 24 hour racing ‘season’ ends this weekend with Relentless 24 in Fort William, Scotland. The race I won last year that gave me the entry to the World’s in Italy and one of the friendliest events with one of the best courses in the country.

The weather forecast, for once, looks like it’s going to be ok, or at least ok-ish. The Fort William “Witches Trail” course is rock-solid anyway and remained completely rideable last year despite it raining constantly throughout the race. I feel ok – perhaps not quite as lean and conditioned as I was when I raced the Worlds back in May but I’ll get round ok and I’m certainly well-motivated.

Dave’s also racing solo and Budge is in the pairs with Andy so as well as our support crew – Debbie and Angela – we’ll have a good laugh, race hard and we’ll erase some memories of the grimy old summer of 2012…..

photo: Privateer

Outwardly, it’s very rare that I look like I’m enjoying myself in a bike race. The mixture of effort, suffering and concentration doesn’t leave much room for smiling and chuckles and at times I suppose I look like a bulldog chewing a wasp. I don’t care though, it’s not as though I’m trying to be attractive or photogenic, I’m just trying to get things over and done with as quickly as possible without buggering everything up, getting beaten by loads of people or hurling myself into the ground (and then getting beaten by loads of people).

The howling winds, heavy rain, waterlogged conditions and general grim-ness of the 50^th 3 Peaks Cyclocross brought out some of my finest-ever expressions of dark suffering. Of the five 3 Peaks races I’ve taken part in, this was by far the hardest and according to organiser John Rawnsley was the ‘worst conditions for 30 years’. It was pretty bad. Despite appearances though, I loved each and every grimy, wet and painful second of it….

The day started with me being dropped off in nearby Austwick so that I could meander along the road to the start, get signed on and lined up while Deb headed off in the opposite direction in the car with my spare bike to wait at Cold Cotes, the end of the first peak, Ingleborough.

I was riding an On-One Dirty Disco this year, much lighter and more capable than the bikes I‘ve used in the past in this race but I had the reassurance of my Planet X ‘cross bike available at the foot of each of the three descents in case something went wrong…

My meander to the start became a bit of a mad sprint as the thirty minutes or so I had to ride two miles was eaten up by fiddling with my suddenly-problematic front mech at the side of the road.

Drama behind me I said hellos and howdos to friends I only ever see at bike races and lined up. Plonking myself nearer to the front than I normally do (after some advice a few months ago from a wise man) I waited for the race to start. It wasn’t raining yet. I got ready for a good start.

I had an atrocious start. My usual self-preservation instincts kicking in again I backed off to avoid a crash while others charged forward and lost about a hundred places in about 4 seconds. I spent the remainder of the ridiculously-fast ‘neutral start’ fighting my way back up the field, the amount of space I was enjoying was increasing bit by bit with every rider I overtook. I caught up with Phil, who’d managed to stay reasonably near the front, about a hundred metres from the first offroad section that effectively signals the start of the gruelling ascent of Simon Fell.

It was wet. There was a massive lake in the middle of the farmers field that wasn’t there last year. The rider in front of me rode into what looked like a puddle, saw the water reach his saddle and promptly fell off. I don’t think he was too appreciative of my giggling.

I felt sorry for the riders way back who would encounter worse conditions under wheel (and foot) than this once it’d been churned up.

asleep? singing a song?

photo: Sportsunday

Once the muddy slog was over with, the climb up the fell began – just as insanely steep as I remembered it but with the added bonus of being wet and slippery too. My toe studs were digging into the wet hillside but I was worried about those ahead of me falling down onto my head. Ok, I always worry about that. But this time I was even more worried.

Anyway, I was glad to reach the top. The top, where it’s really exposed and WINDY.

The Wind! It was howling up there and for the first time the conditions went from ‘bloody hell’ to ‘God help us’. Pushing the bike along, remounting when possible, the line of riders reached the stile and carried on towards the summit. I noticed how quickly I was able to get over the stile as a direct result of getting closer to the front on the road and not having to queue….

This was utterly magnificent. After what seemed like a whole summer of drizzle, miserable skies and repeated races that turned into mud-fests, I felt like I was finally alive, willing the elements to do their worst.

The descent of Ingleborough, as usual, was incident-free. Some comedy high-speed crashes had to be avoided but nothing too bad. Everyone was looking forward to the tailwind in store along the road to Whernside. That was a big one and a nice turbo-boost along the road….but it was assistance that everyone was enjoying so I made sure I was still putting out a proper effort and was glad I’d fitted a 50 tooth big ring.

Then the cramp arrived. I think I might have been pushing a bigger gear than I should have on the Ingleborough plateau and one of my calves was rebelling. I downed half of my electrolye drink. It did nothing and the spasms kept coming. This was a bit early in a race for this kind of nonsense but I stretched it as best I could and gingerly rode to Whernside, every surge of power being rewarded with another muscular grumble.

The climb of Whernside is my favourite part of the 3 Peaks and is the reason I was so keen to get closer to the sharp end of the race this time. Back where I normally find myself, the narrow stone steps are often crowded and in wet conditions the opportunities to overtake by going ‘off-piste’ are severely limited. This time though, the place seemed almost empty. With luxurious amount of room and the fact that I wasn’t cramping while on my feet, I trotted up the hill and took a few places in the process. It started to rain. I was exposed to the wind again, but it was mostly behind me and I was enjoying it again.

Reached the summit in pretty good shape and started to ride down the other side….

photo: Ed Rollason 

No messing about dismounting, I rode the stone steps near the top as usual and was clearing the large drainage channels without any problem at all. until I crashed, that is. For some reason I was fazed by one of the larger gaps in the stonework and braked. I realised my mistake about one second later as I pulled myself out of the deep and water-filled bog, my knee smashing into the stone slab my front wheel had just slipped on. That was painful. Properly painful. I felt sick. I stopped for a minute or two, waiting for the pain to subside. It didn’t. I started to run down the steps but that just made the pain worse – my ‘trump card’ of being able to run well was, for the time being at least, in tatters. I remounted the bike and tried to put the crash behind me and rode down as much as I could.

Thankfully, I made it to Ribblehead without losing too much time despite the excitement of the previous few minutes and also the comedy knee-deep raging torrent of water (where once there was a little water splash). More cheering crowds, including Debbie waiting with the spare bike in case I needed it. Back on the road. The return of the cramp. Into a headwind now and starting to feel pretty bashed up (because I was pretty bashed up). My knee was still more painful than it should have been for a crash that happened twenty minutes ago but I got my head down, chucked my Clif Double Shot gel down my neck (never leave home without a Turbo gel, folks) and battled the wind.

The comedy soon returned as the ‘puddle’ near the start of the offroad climb of Pen Y Ghent submerged all those who rode through it. It was ages before I saw the race leaders pass me on their way from the summit to the finish so I assumed that meant I was doing ok and chipped away at the hill.

The final few hundred metres to the checkpoint at the summit was ridiculously windy. I stretched out my arm with the electronic chip around my wrist and finally started my final ascent. The ordeal not quite over. The first part of the PYG descent involved riding with the company of a pretty powerful cross-wind so I grimaced and ran quite a lot until I reached the paved, but still steep, lower part of the hill. My  brake pads were pretty worn by now but the bike was, as it had been all day, eating downhills for breakfast.

photo: Cycling Weekly

I tailed another rider all the way down, he was really shifting and was happy to shout at spectators and walkers on the path all the way down to buy himself room – he upset a few people I think but it was getting us down and to the road in double-quick time. We worked together on the road to the finish as he was pretty exhausted and my cramp had now spread to my left thigh. This had to end and end right now….

Thankfully it did. My finish time of 4 hours and 3 minutes was exactly the same time I achieved last year (when it was much nicer weather) and I crossed the line in 54^th place. Grinning. In pain. I’d been through the mill, in fact I felt like I’d punched a hole in it and rode out of the other side.

There’s no other race that I’ll ever do where I’d be happy with 54^th, but the 3 Peaks is different. In fact, the improvement over last year’s race has got me thinking…what if I actually, properly trained for the 3 Peaks?

Next year, I’ll be praying for rain and high winds….

Staring out of the train window on an early-morning journey to Glasgow, trying to ignore the various weirdos and club-goers in various states of undress on their way back home from a big night in Manchester, I was reminded of epic rides of the past few years. I was myself slightly lacking in sleep after the previous evening’s awards ceremony (I won one!), but I was thinking about the next couple of days and the part I was going to play. I was fully-clothed. The sun was shining. I was ready.

As the railway winds its way north, it’s flanked on either side by Cumbrian Fells on the left and the Dales on the right. I thought about the times me and Dave had tackled a monster of a route that included most of the hills that I could see. Both times we’ve attempted it, we’ve covered vast distances and climbed dozens of hills while we followed a line on a map that craftily links together several ‘classic’ Lakeland and Dales rides into a single and rather daunting figure of eight, bisected by the M6 and the train track I’m currently travelling on.

We’ve recounted the adventures and amazed (and bored to death, probably) anyone that has been slightly willing to listen. The ‘daft rides’ have had more than their fair share of incident – torn tyres, four-hour unplanned detours and desperate descents of Cross Fell to reach the car before we were plunged into total darkness have all been unwelcome additions to already tough days out, but we’ve dealt with them, carried on and laughed about them days and weeks later in the pub. If you’re prepared to push the widely-accepted limits of ‘going out for a bike ride’ then you’d better be ready for the expected outcome and lots of other stuff to change while you’re out. It’ll still be ace, it certainly won’t be a waste of time, it’ll just be that the way things happen and the eventual outcomes might be different from how you imagined.

Alternatively you could get lucky and that luck, in addition to your planning, fitness and skill, will make everything you’d planned to do just happen like clockwork.

Phil’s been planning, improving his fitness and honing his skills for months for his own epic ride. In a lot of respects, it’s more ‘out there’ in terms of a challenge than many others you could think of. The West Highland Way is a long-distance trail that links Scotland’s largest city to the foot of its largest mountain. Phil’s aim was to ride from Glasgow, the start of ‘The Way’ along  its 96 mile length to Fort William. He would then turn around and ride back again. The West Highland Way Double has been attempted a few times, completed successfully by a couple of riders (the current record being 38 hours) but beaten many. This is a challenge of 192 miles and around 22000 feet of ascent. It’s what you might call ‘hairy-chested’ or just plain ‘massive’.

I was one half of Phil’s two-man support crew, which involved not much more than driving around in the van and stopping at various check points along the route to check Phil was ok and to be there for him if anything went wrong. The WHW passes through a good number of villages so apart from staying up all night, the task from a non-rider’s point of view isn’t too difficult. Be in the right place at the right time, check he’s ok and then move on to the next rendezvous.

Despite me taking up countless of my friends (including Phil’s) and family’s weekends with them supporting me in 24 hour races, I’ve never really done any kind of pit support for anyone else before so this was going to be an eye-opener – a chance to repay a couple of favours to Phil for the times he’s stayed up all night during big races I’ve been in and at the end of the day, what are mates for eh?

I’m not going to go into loads of detail about what I know about the route and I definitely can’t tell you much about how, inwardly, Phil coped with the challenge – he’ll want to do that himself anyway – but what I can say is that he was making this look very easy. I was worried that he was going too fast, dipping too far into his bank account of endurance and would suffer for that earlier than he would have wanted, but throughout the weekend I didn’t really see any sign of proper weakness or despair. Appearances were telling me that mentally, he was completely focussed and unfazed by the enormity of the task ahead and neither Rod nor I had any need to even offer words of comfort or encouragement. We did anyway, because that’s just what human beings do, and again, that’s what mates are for… but the occasional ‘GO ON LAD!’ or a ‘GET ON WITH IT!’ could hardly be classed as a pep-talk.

I even had a bike with me, to be used in case Phil really needed to be dragged down a hillside or in case he needed the insurance policy of another rider for a tricky section in the dark, but in reality the bike was only used by me to ride a while ahead of Phil and wait in a bush with a camera, film some video footage of him as he rode past and then put the bike back in the van.

Well after the halfway point, all the expected outcomes were still in place and he was ahead of schedule. Phil’s planning, fitness and skill were making it all just happen like clockwork.

And that’s how it remained – checkpoints came and went, mile after mile of the incredibly hilly, rocky and often unrideable trail passed beneath his wheels, me and Rod started to get bored of the routine ‘you ok?’. ‘yeah, feelin’ good’. ‘oh. Ok. Sod off then’. ‘Right. See you in a bit.’ conversations with Phil at every checkpoint so we started to eat all of our food, moan about the weather and discuss motorbikes and long distance running. We’d never met before this weekend but luckily we’ve got plenty in common.

Eventually the sun came up, the routine continued and we started to make projections about Phil’s completion time. While it was never in doubt in Phil’s mind, for an observer the early stages of a challenge like this have a certain fragility and while the whole thing can end abruptly at any point, as you get into the final few hours and the task ahead is a comparatively small one things start to become more certain. Phil was looking at knocking a massive 9 hours off the previous record. His physical state, while he’s looked better, certainly gave no cause for concern.

A couple more checkpoints, more dull conversations that we tried to liven up with loud farting and name-calling. Me and Rod went to a café for a cooked breakfast while Phil tackled the treacherous Loch Lomond section of the route. It was dangerous and we were dead worried about him riding/scrambling over the boulders, outcrops and precipitous narrow sections of trail for the second time in a day, but we had scrambled eggs, bacon, coffee and haggis in a warm cafe. Phil who?

The final checkpoint. Just 7 miles to go. The lad was flying. We ran back to the van and made it to the end of the WHW a few minutes before Phil reached the end of his ride, back where he started, in 28 hours and 59 minutes. JOB. DONE.

Oh, and in case you were wondering what my award (the 2012 winner of the Prestwich Special Recognition for Sport Award, me) looks like…..

For obvious reasons (Hit the North, mainly), I’m a big fan of anyone who sticks their neck out and organises an event – whether that’s a bike race, a sportive, a fell race or a coffee morning; in fact anything that puts something back into a sport or our society in general to make the world a better place deserves a bloody big round of applause or a big kiss.

Emma Osenton, a Kinesis-Morvelo rider and big fan of riding her bike up and down big steep hills up the road in Hebden Bridge is doing just that. Sticking her neck out and her reputation on the line and organising something new and exciting. The Mills Hills Sportive may sound like another sportive (and it is), but the unique selling point here is the third option. And pies.

Common with most sportives, there’s a long option and a short(er) option but here there’s also a cyclocross option. That’s right, a completely separate route for people who like a bit of rough with their smooth.

All three options will include a mix of steep climbs, gritty northern grimness and amazing views. The cyclocross route will no doubt have some cobbles. And maybe a muddy moorland sheep track or two. Whichever route you choose to ride, you’ll earn yourself a free pie.

Entry costs next to nowt. It’s on the 14^th October 2012. Enter here. Do it.

How hard can a 12.5 mile, race-effort, relatively flat bike ride be? Erm…quite vomit-inducing hard actually. I was in a triathlon last weekend. I wasn’t doing the whole thing (fast swimming? Are you having a laugh?), I was one third of a relay team in the North West Triathlon, based in a nice park in Northwich.

Another Jason, a strong swimmer from work would be up first, then I’d take over and ride my easy-sounding 20k of flat road then Debbie would do the 5k run.

Joining us was a couple of dozen other folk from JMC of various levels of experience who were either taking part in other relay teams or would be tackling the whole triathlon on their own.

Stood in the transition area, bike waiting in a rack, I watched various almost-naked swimmers running to their team-mates until Other Jason arrived having just hammered out a 7:29 swim.

OK, 12 and a bit miles…pedal to the metal. I’ve no idea how to pace a 12.5 mile flat road ride so I got it a little bit wrong. At the 7.5 mile point I started to feel a bit dizzy. Backed off for a couple of minutes and eventually settled into what I consider a time trail pace and arrived at the second transition area and handed over to Deb, who promptly put in a brilliant run and claimed 3^rd place for Team Fantastic 🙂

The sun came out, the barbeque was lit and a burger, a laugh and a beer capped a brilliant day out with some ace people, all of which put in some serious effort.

I did the decent thing and rode the long way home (at a more civilised pace).