Another Hit the North organised, agonised over, sweated for and then executed with the kind of style and grace of a pig falling out of a moving train…nobody seems to notice though. Apparently as far as ‘my guests’, all 200 or so of them are concerned, it’s become something rather quite special over the last 3 years.

Seemingly universal approval from everyone – from the riders there for a laugh and a social to the guys who eventually get to stand on the podium (ok, 2 pallets and the spare wheel out of the van) to the helpers and spectators – there’s definitely something about this event that keeps making people feel good.

So I’ll keep doing it until everyone gets bored of it.

I’m not going to go on into loads of detail about it here, I’ll instead take the lazy route and pull together some of the riders’ accounts as and when they’re posted. My account would be weighed down with talk of insurance levies, traffic cones and barrier tape anyway – but I will say that there’s proof sometimes that if you work hard at something (and trust me, this was bloody hard work) it often ends up being very good indeed. A right bobby-dazzler, in fact.

Oh, and THANKS to everyone who helped out before, during and after. I love you all.

Blogs, comments, photos and a video all here (I’ll keep updating this list as and when people publish things so keep checking back)…

Alan Dorrington

Paul Errington

Dave Haygarth

Dave Powell

Ray

Amy

Cookson Cycles blog

Helmet cam video

Wayne’s pics

Sportsunday pics 1

Sportsunday pics 2

STW forum thread

John Climber’s photos

John’s vid

Ed Rollason’s photos

Paul Riding’s photos

Somebody’s wife’s photos

Andy Spencer’s photos

As many people know, I’ve been working on the next Hit the North race for the last few months. It’s only a few weeks away now and it’s nearly full. If you’re reading this and you want to be part of it, you need to sign up fast.

It’s going to be fantastic, like it always is. 2 hours of racing (or 2 hours of not racing if you prefer), trade stands including a Ragley demo fleet, awesome catering (with the legendary Viking Porridge), a rather large brass band and loads more. What’s not to like to 14 quid?

All the details, entry form, current entry list and other stuff here

Note: after this blog post I promise that I will stop making references to my recent road accident. I expect everyone’s getting a bit bored of me droning on about it by now (I’m certainly bored of it). Anyway…

One of the positive side-effects of getting injured is that you can’t do anything but rest. Well, you can, but if you did you’d not get better very quickly, it hurts and you’d get told off by your wife/doctor/mum. The couple of weeks of rest, comprising a week of doing absolutely no physical activity at all and generally feeling sorry for myself followed by a week of more of that but with a couple of short, easy offroad rides has ended with me attempting a longer ride on the road bike.

I expected to have to cut this ride short to be honest. I thought that I would start to get horrifying flashbacks to the accident or the increased demand on my body would just be far too uncomfortable, but apart from a few nervous approaches to road junctions where cars were waiting to make their move, I felt utterly fantastic.

I even rode the same route that I was riding two weeks ago when I got bounced. I even stopped to take a photo at the scene.

Part of this feeling was because of the joy of being out on the bike again (once I was out of the urban chaos and in the hills that is). I literally felt lucky to be alive. The main source of my ‘fantastic’ feeling though was the obvious effect 2 weeks of putting my feet up has had on me physically. I felt easily as good as I did in the summer and I’ve realised just how short of a good rest I was. The worries about suddenly and inexplicably being slower than I was, the concern that I was in some way ‘losing it’ evaporated in a single 4 hours of riding a bike – the realisation that I’ve never really rested properly after any kind of trauma – be that a big race or a hard training week. Sure, I’ve got some work to do to regain some fitness but I’ve suddenly looked at how I’ve been training in the past and more importantly, how I’ve been NOT training.

Finally, thanks to a short-sighted motorist, I’ve been reminded how to rest.

I’ve been riding my bike again.

I was going to keep this quiet for a bit, just in case I had some kind of horrible setback and discovered that my legs are more damaged than I thought and then suffering the inevitable told-you-so’s, but it seems like my 11 days of doing absolutely nothing, resting, not leaving the house, missing the Strathpuffer (grrr) etc have paid off nicely. I’m not quite ‘there’, but I soon will be.

Apart from a bit of knee and shoulder pain, that will no doubt be some stubborn bruising and the fact that my ankle (the one with the chipped bone) is still rather swollen (ok, I’m still quite bashed in), I’m really pleased with my rate of recovery. After all, It wasn’t that long ago that I was lying on the road, holding my legs in agony with a smashed helmet, after which I was being told that I could expect ‘6 weeks’ of rest to recover.

Yesterday I rode to work and back. Felt ok-ish. Not too worried about a couple of aches and pains. So I went for a ride last night – it was a full moon and while I’m not a werewolf there’s something really special about riding bikes off-road, sometimes quite literally by the light of the moon. Last night wasn’t quite like that, it was really foggy, but it was still pretty cool.

I rode only for an hour or so but was able to climb ok, a couple of hard efforts were despatched without any stabbing pains anywhere. Ached a bit when I got home, but had some protein and put my feet up and rested my shoulder.

Rode to work again this morning, rode hard for a few minutes, I felt good.

I’m going to keep the short rides going for the rest of this week, keep them less than 3 hours,  and then pick up where I left off at the weekend.

I’m back.

The postman brought me some goodies today. The brilliant, clever and no doubt very attractive guys at Ragley have sent me a TD:1 frame – it’s like the prototype I’ve been racing on for a while, but a production one with even fancier-shaped tubes. I really can’t wait to get this built up. I’m going to use the red sticker kit on this one, as I’ve got some red parts lined up for it and besides, the other one’s blue 😉

I’m going to have to make sure I’m doubly awesome by the spring to get the most out of it.

To help with that, they’ve also sent me a new Cragg Vale ‘winter training’ frame – a lovely, light road frame (complete with a matching fork) that’s got clearance for slightly wider tyres and full-length mudguards. Just the ticket for clocking up hundreds of winter miles in the usual weather conditions…

A really neat feature are the stickers. They’re made from that Scotchlite material that you’d normally see in road signs and cones. At night they reflect light really brightly – and I’m doing a really big chunk of my training in the dark evenings or mornings so for me, this is a great idea. I’ve not had chance to put all the stickers on the frame yet, but there are enough to see how super-shiny they are at night…

Watch this space for more pics once I’ve built both bikes up.