I had the afternoon off on Friday to get one last big ride in before tapering for the Strathpuffer. I had one of my usual routes planned – ride from here through Oldham, Stalybridge, Hayfield, etc…climb as many hills as possible and keep the whole thing interesting by including sections of bridleway.

Heading down through Oldham on a main road towards Ashton I approach a junction where a car on either side waits to pull out. I make eye contact with both drivers, as usual. Or at least I thought I had. The driver on the right hasn’t seen me so just when I’m almost level with his car, he pulls out.

He’s intending to go straight across from the right into the minor road on the left so he accelerates. He drives into me, hitting the front of my bike and my right leg. I’m thrown onto the bonnet of the car on the left and from there I land on the road on my head.

Next thing I know I’m sat on the road next to this car, the driver gets out tell me to ‘stay down’ and starts to shout at the other guy (the idiot who has just caused the accident). Two women who have also witnessed what just happened run over to help and start to call an ambulance. I remove my helmet and it’s obvious that its done it’s job – it’s cracked in about 6 places, the outer shell is ripped to shreds by the impact on the tarmac. If I’d not been wearing it I’d have probably been dead.

The bike looked pretty bad- I can see the front wheel is the same shape as a Pringle and I know that the carbon fork will probably be damaged. Looks like the rear mech has been torn off too (the bike arrived home yesterday after Phil collected it and apart from the front wheel, fork and bars, it looks like its survived reasonably well).

All witnesses and the guy who hit me are still on the scene.

I’m sat in the road, worried about my legs. The pain is getting really bad now – I can feel a lump the size of a snooker ball on my left ankle and my right lower leg….well, it feels like it’s been hit by a moving car. Ambulance arrives, the paramedic tells me that he reckons I’ve broken my leg. I almost start crying. Actually, I think I started crying. I can’t stand up. I’m carried into the ambulance.

I call Deb and she meets me at the hospital.

Once at the hospital (which took a while as the ambulance driver got lost) I was put in a wheelchair and waited at A&E. I was given ‘priority status’ as I’d landed on my head and I was really impressed with how fast I got ‘seen to’. After some poking and prodding, some lights shone into my eyes and a few painkillers I was taken for X Rays. I’m still completely gutted that my leg could be broken. A broken leg would wipe out everything for a year…

A policeman arrives and asks me some questions about the incident, tells me that he will ‘be in touch’ with the driver and mentions that he’s a keen mountain biker and that he owns a Ragley hardtail. Small world.

A couple of hours pass until a consultant pops in and tells me that my ankle bone is chipped but apart from the fact that I’m badly bashed up, my leg isn’t broken. I almost cry again.

Eventually we arrive home and the reality of what happened earlier starts to sink in, so I pour a large brandy.

I’ve been told that recovery could take several weeks, so I’m going to rest and make sure that I’m back to normal and back on the bike as quickly as possible. Sadly this won’t be in time for the Strathpuffer this weekend….which I’m absolutely gutted about.

I’m leaning into a perfectly-shaped bend, a very brief tickle of the rear brake and a weight shift and I’m flying round, kicking up a small cloud of dust from my semi-slick rear tyre as I power along the next straight, clicking the chain down the cassette, accelerating…picking off other riders one by one….full-pelt towards the next bend…

In my world, cyclocross is nothing like this.

Time to think about this a bit more. The season’s over, so I’ve got the best part of a year to get things right and stop losing so much time on stupid, fixable things….

1. Get some really narrow tyres that won’t clog with so much mud in a wet race that the sodding rear wheel stops turning and I’ve got to stop 2 or 3 times a lap to scoop half-pound balls of mud and twigs off the stays whilst others ride on past.

2. Finally work out how the hell to heroically leap back onto the bike after a run-up or anything else that involves a dismount. There’s a ‘sensible circuit’ in my brain that forbids me to do this, even if I wanted to. Maybe I need hypnosis. And a few hours with Mr Haygarth or Mr Dorrington.

3. Crash less. I’m currently sat here with my right ankle twice the size it should be and it’s really bloody painful following a stupid slip-slide CRUMP down to the ground earlier today, my entire weight concentrated on the small part of my ankle that happened to land on a one-inch wooden stake in the ground, drawing blood and making me feel sick for the last 15 minutes of the race. I always crash and go down HARD in cross races. Like I’m bloody inept or something. Needs practice.

4. Do more cyclocross races. I’ve done a poxy 2 this season. I do a bit of specific training for the 3 Peaks then mong around every weekend wondering if I can make it to the start line of some hour-long race in a local park. More often than not, the long training ride wins instead.

What else? I’m not having ‘get fitter and faster’ because that’s far too nebulous and to be honest, if I sorted out the stuff above I’d probably do a lot, lot better at this. I’m always trying to get fitter and faster and for the most part, I’m doing ok on that score. I’m definitely not getting much better at cyclocross though. And I need to, because I want to start to love it.

See you next season then eh?

(pics with kind permission of Jon Wyatt)

This time last year I was droning on about how great 2009 had been and how much I was looking forward to taking things up a notch or two in 2010. I could, if I wanted, drone on again with a long and drawn-out account of 2010, but I won’t. What I will say though is that 2010 was definitely a ‘progressive’ year in my little world of riding bikes. Compared with 2009 I rode more, I raced more, I got some great results and I learned a few lessons.

In the interests of keeping it brief, the highlights for me were podiums at the Strathpuffer, Mountain Mayhem and Relentless 24. A win at the Gisburn 12 hour race. The continued support from Ragley and the addition of sponsorship from JMC IT, 2Pure and Squirt Lubes. The brilliance that were both of the 2010 Hit the North events. The Daft Rides, even the ones that didn’t go completely to plan (mainly because of snow) and also the ones that did go well – such as the record-breaking  Trans Cambrian Way ride.

Despite a frustrating period during SITS, the Kielder100 and Dusk til Dawn and a late mechanical annoyance at the 3 Peaks, the year started and ended well and things seem to have gone full circle – I’m putting in some good training now for the Strathpuffer which is only a few days away and the riding/racing schedule for 2011 is just as, if not more busy than 2010.

Another year of progression will do for me (oh and I’m 40 this year too).

Happy New Year!

Wow. Christmas. That came around really quickly and with it, a load of snow, ice and utterly mental low temperatures that have made riding hard, doubly HARD. I’ve been training as well as I can but nowhere near as much as I feel I should have been – I’m fighting a cold right now and the last couple of weeks have been hectic (completely outside the world of cycling) to say the least.

Despite all the distractions the Strathpuffer isn’t far away now and this time I’m racing in the pairs with Phil.

…which means that somehow I need to be quite fast…pairs racing means no hiding place, just flat out followed by rest/getting cold followed by flat out followed by rest….I’m sure I will be fast, but fast enough?

The Christmas holiday does give me some opportunities for rides bigger than my recent routine of short loops on the singlespeed and turbo training sessions so I’ll be giving myself a proper kicking in the next couple of weeks to squeeze a bit more ‘hard as nails-ness’ out of myself, then I’ll have a wee break (that’s Scottish, that is) before the massive journey north for that crazy, massive race up there.

All worries of race fitness are going to be ignored from now on. We are where we are and I’ll remember that killing myself at the ‘Puffer won’t do me any favours if I am to take things up a notch (or two) at next summer’s big endurance races. We’ll race hard, we’ll have a laugh and we’ll encourage Dave and Budge, both racing solo.

And don’t forget, you can add to Budge’s superb sponsorship total for Help For Heroes by clicking here (he has raised rather a lot of money). They more you give, the harder he will pedal.

I’ve been happily munching Clif products now for a year or thereabouts, so probably about time I wrote something about them. I’m often asked by others about what I eat during races (I think because I’m lucky in that I rarely get sick) so in case you were wondering what keeps me going, read on….

In the past few years I’ve probably tried most energy products, mainly for keeping me going in endurance races but also for training and recovery.

If I’m honest, most of them taste alike. Unfortunately this means that most energy products taste nice at first but after a few hours they start to taste like your tenth bag of gummy sweets in a row – if you’re lucky you can put up with it and maybe reduce the amount of sticky goo in your mouth by drinking fresh water or a cup of tea…but if you’re unlucky you’ll be spending some time stopped and vomiting at the side of the trail, road or course.

Due to the generosity of the guys at 2Pure, the UK distributor of Clif bars and Shot Bloks, I’ve pretty much always got some of them with me on long training rides or I’ve got a stack of them in my pit at 24 hour races. I don’t just like them because someone gives them to me though, I like them because they taste nice and carry on tasting nice when it matters – I’d been using them for a while before I decided to approach 2Pure and I did that because CLIF BARS TASTE LIKE CAKES.

That’s right. Cakes. Peanut butter cakes. Chocolate chip cakes. Raisin cakes. MMMM. Yum.

Also tasting like cakes are Clif Builder’s Bars – high-protein recovery bars that will help you rebuild after a big training ride/run/whatever. As for the taste – just try a mint choc one and make your own mind up. They never last long 😉

Shot Bloks are ace  – not only to they remind me of jelly babies but I can eat them whilst riding without them squirting all over my face like gels do. Oh, and the orange flavour ones have got caffeine in them which I like too 😉

Best of all though is the Clif Shot carb/electrolyte drink. Not only does it contain enough carbohydrate to keep the engine running but there are electrolytes in there too. This has resulted in me not getting cramp at all each time I’ve used this stuff in a race. My mate Phil had a nasty bout of cramp at the Gisburn 12 hour race last year, I gave him a couple of bottles of my Shot drink and I’m not joking here, his cramp went away. He went on to finish 4^th in that race.

More info on all the products here and if you want to try anything just ask me or Dave at a race 😉