It’s good to do something different in the winter. A change is as good as a rest, as they say. Unless the ‘change’ is about as restful as running 256 miles in a month, that is.

It sounded like a good idea until I thought about it properly, but that was before I thought about what December’s running challenge actually entails.

On the 1^st of December I’ll run 1 mile. On the 2^nd I’ll run 2 miles. This will continue until I run 16 miles on the 16^th December, when the mileage will decrease each day (so 15 miles on the 17^th), ending with 1 mile on New Year’s Eve.

The two middle weeks look quite tough and I’ve never been out for a run on Christmas Day (that one’s a 7 miler).

To put things further into context, 256 miles is over 30 miles further than my total running distance in 2015. It’s my poor toenails I feel sorry for.

It was my mate Alan’s idea. Alan works for the M3 Project – a local charity that provides vital housing support for young people in the area and along with Dave Haygarth and Dean Pointer we’ll be raising funds and awareness for them.

Salient points:

• Under 25s now represent half the people in homeless accommodation.
• Young people are now the group most likely to be living in poverty
• Recent figures from 2015 indicate that on any ONE night in the UK, 35,000 young people are in homeless accommodation and that is without the hidden homeless…
• Hidden homelessness involves young people sleeping rough or sofa surfing, most of whom will not be in touch with services or receiving support around their homelessness. This figure is estimated by Centrepoint to be nearly 10 times higher than the ‘known’ homeless levels, at just under 300,000 on any ONE night in the UK.

Please think about how you can help, be that sharing, funding, or whatever.

I’ll be posting updates on here, on Strava and the usual social media channels as December plods on, plus there will be news appearing on the M3 website. There will be no escape from me begging for donations. You can donate here

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#december256

“You ok mate?”, another rider goes past, perhaps he recognises me. Perhaps he’s seen me before, stopped at the side of the trail either eating something or trying to coax my rear tyre into holding air by pumping it up and calling it “a f**kin’ tw*t”. I wasn’t swearing at it in a frantic, Oh My God I’m Losing Valuable Seconds sort of a way though, like I did at the World Champs race last year.
I don’t know why I was swearing at it, but then I often swear at misbehaving inanimate objects.

I’d been feeling increasingly ambivalent about this race, the UK 24 hour champs, for a few weeks. As far back as Revolve24 I’d been thinking that it would be a good idea to sit this one out but couldn’t put my finger on why. I’d assumed it was because I was riding around in a circle 167 times.  As is often the case though, I carried on (reluctantly) preparing for the race, the delicate training/work/family balancing act becoming more and more tricky.
Even during the long drive to Fort William, I still had doubts and was questioning my reasons for taking part. It felt like there were several tails all wagging the same dog.

It’ll be reet

“It’ll be ok once the race gets started” I thought.

At first everything was ok. I’d been super-organised in the past week and Deb and I had a plan. We’d chatted it through on the way here and all being well and apart from necessary bike swaps, I should be able to race pretty much without stopping.
The plan was working for a couple of hours. I rode from 6th place up into 2nd without too much drama and felt fine – I was sure that I could keep this going for the next 22 hours….

22 hours. Jesus wept. This shit again.

It sort of hit me right then.

After thirty or so 24 hour solos, now I’m getting overawed by the length of the thing. Shouldn’t I have done all of this 25 races ago?

The Relentless course was as amazing as ever, my Santa Cruz bikes are amazing and so is my support. But I honestly didn’t care enough about the outcome of the race to actually ‘race’. I tried to focus, but instead I ended up talking myself out of it. Not because I was feeling weak or soft, just because I thought I could spend my time doing something more interesting.

Perhaps it was also significant that my youngest daughter’s birthday was on Sunday too, so as far as ‘talking myself out of it’ was concerned, there was plenty to get stuck into.

I bailed out of the race at 9 hours, deciding that if I was going to pull out I’d need to do it before the point where I’d need an extended recovery period. It’s ok breaking yourself if you’ve finished a race but a bit pointless otherwise.

I felt a wave of relief wash over me. I expected that to change into feelings of failure and regret after an hour or so, but that didn’t happen and it still hasn’t done. I just felt relief. I also felt guilty that I’d dragged my family 350 miles north for a bike race that I’d just abandoned. I’ll listen to my instincts next time. A lesson learned.
Instead of racing, packing up and going home, we rode the cable car, went out for breakfast and had some fun.

Bike racing will still be there when I decide to return to it, but Eleanor will only have one 9th birthday.

Now, where are my running shoes….?

It’s less than a week now until the start of yet another 24 hour solo championship. This time it’s the UK championship, ‘a race within a race’, held at the same time as Relentless 24 up in Fort William.

It’s a race I’ve a lot of affection for and I’ve done well there several times in the past. There’s a good list of toughnuts on the starting list so it’ll be another fast and furious job and we’ll see how things pan out.

While I’m looking forward to the race, I’ll be glad when it’s over, if I’m being perfectly honest.

Maybe it’s my sparkling wit or my choice of aftershave, but aside from one or two occasions I think I’ve ridden on my own for 10 to 20 hours per week since I got back from Sri Lanka in the spring. Nobody’s fault, but it’s not much fun after a few months. Time for a break, ride bikes for a laugh, go for a run, go to the pub.

The race is the easy part.

The real highlight of the past few weeks though was the Coed Y Brenin Enduro event – it really was brilliant, that.

It was a good job it wasn’t a race – lining up at the start line of a bike race or event is getting earlier or I’m wandering down there from the car later, but when I got my act together and wandered down to the start line there must have been 500 or so people already there, ready for the off.

Someone next to me at the start told me that there was a small gate about 1k from the start, which as you can imagine would be a terrible bottleneck with so many other riders in the queue, so my ‘relaxed’ start soon became a flat-out charge up the hill for a kilometre until I reached the aforementioned gate. I think I was about 30 men back at this point rather than a few hundred so didn’t have to queue but probably looked like a bit of a div while I raced uphill, out of the saddle at the start of a non-competitive event.

All finishers received a mug and a bottle of beer too, which was the icing on a Proper Day Out. It was so good that I rode a second lap after I crossed the finish line. Got to make the most of it after I crawled out of bed at 4am to drive to Wales.

When you see racing cars going around a track on the telly, you don’t look at it and think “oh look that track is quite hilly” – you might look at it and register the fact that there are fast bends, slow bends and straight bits but the illusions created by TV cameras and the speed of cars or motorbikes means that gradients probably don’t make much of an impression. Perhaps it’s just me.

I went to Brands Hatch knowing there are a couple of uphill bits but when we arrived a couple of hours before the start of Revolve 24 – a 24 hour road bike race on the circuit – I saw people actually climbing up a steep hill. Brands Hatch, in spite of what the TV cameras suggest, is far from flat. About 65 metres of uphill per lap, in fact.

It’s all fine, I thought. Every 24 hour MTB race I’ve done in the past has been hilly. What was different here though was that a lap was only 2.4 miles long, rather than the 8 or 9 miles of a typical 24 hour mountain bike course. Add to that the higher average speeds of racing on tarmac and you’re looking at each lap taking a few minutes, rather than almost an hour.

The circuit starts with a fast downhill bit, immediately followed by Druids – which is a steep (properly steep) hill, then there’s another fast down with a sharp left-hander, named after the legendary Graham Hill. A short flattish bit into the wind is followed by another steep climb then it’s up and down for a mile-and-a-bit, then a nice fast quarter mile past the start finish then it’s back to Druids. Or ‘Bloody Druids’ as it was known. It seems easy at first because none of the climbs are particularly long, but a few dozen laps later and it’s a completely different story.

Time to get dizzy and time to start learning my 65 times table.

Debbie got my pit sorted out in one of the pit lane garages and I lined up for the start. The plan was to ride 10 laps and then pit – change a bottle, have a moan and carry on. With a +/- 2 laps variance Deb held up a little sign when it was time to come in at the end of the next lap.

Two hours in and I’d been lapped already – my mind playing tricks with me as ‘a lap down’ sounds like a lot but in reality it was 7 minutes.

10 more laps. It was raining now, quite hard and the track was getting exciting. Several sections of the normally grippy (a little too grippy really) tarmac were incredibly slippery, especially the fast downhill entry into the Graham Hill bend.

A 3pm start meant that I was soon riding with lights – I’d somehow forgot all my lights but luckily the race was sponsored by my amazing lighting sponsor – Exposure – who obviously took the piss a bit but sorted me out with some lights.

10 more laps.

Pit. Moan. Bottle.

10 more laps.

Pit. Moan. Bottle.

10 more laps.

Pit. Moan. Bottle.

10 more laps.

Pit Moan. Bottle.

10 more laps.

Pit. Moan. Bottle.

10 more laps.

Pit. Moan. Bottle.

10 more laps.

Pit. Moan. Bottle.

10 more laps.

Pit Moan. Bottle.

I quickly lost count of how many laps I’d done but Deb was able to give me an accurate picture of where I was in the race. The riders who started off quickly several hours ago had long since had to have a sit down and I was at the front. Physically I was aching a bit but fine – the hardest part of this race was becoming the mental aspect and it was difficult at times to keep concentrating. I was pulling out laps, though. Here we go.

The track was now in complete darkness but the skies had cleared and the moon was shining.

10 more laps.

Pit. Moan. Bottle.

10 more laps.

Pit. Moan. Bottle.

10 more laps.

Pit. Moan. Bottle.

10 more laps.

Pit Moan. Bottle.

Pot Noodle. Moan.

Sunrise. The wind that had earlier spoilt one of the only flat parts of the course had by now settled down and the track started to dry out. By now I was starting to hate this track and I was starting to use the small chainring to try to increase my cadence and manage the pain.

10 more laps.

Pit. Moan. Bottle.

10 more laps.

Pit. Moan. Bottle.

10 more laps.

Pit. Moan. Bottle.

10 more laps.

Pit Moan. Bottle.

How many more laps do I need to do? Twenty? Ok. That’s sort of TWO in real money.

10 more laps.

Pit. Moan. Bottle.

10 more laps.

Pit. Moan. Bottle.

Just a couple more and I can stop. I’d maintained my 8 lap advantage so I lurked around the start of the finish straight until someone found the chequered flag and rode across the line, 167 laps in the bag.

It was certainly an unusual experience for me, I’m used to riding lots of laps in races, but normally 20-something 8 or 9 mile laps at a 10mph average, not 167 eight minute laps at 20mph.

There was something really cool about the race though – the sheer mileage covered (406 miles), the fact that you can sit in someone’s wheel and go fast enough for there to be an actual drafting effect, the prestige of racing around such a well-known circuit and mainly because it’s the first 24 hour race I’ve done where it rained and I wasn’t absolutely caked in mud.

Thanks to everyone who organised the event, to Deb for pretty much steering me through to the end of the race, Tom and Mark at Exposure for their unwavering support as usual and to Phil at Scott UK for loaning me the fast, comfortable and just BRILLIANT Foil 20 (you’re not having it back).

Next weekend I’m racing solo in the Revolve24 race – riding my road bike around and around and around Brand’s Hatch race circuit for an entire day.

Apparently I’m fundraising for Mission Motorsport along with the USE/Exposure Lights gang, however nobody told me that was the case until just now!
Anyway, heads will no doubt roll.