Two weeks...

Two weeks - mostly - off the bike. Resting. Feeding ducks. Dosing myself with weird supplements to make it feel as if I'm doing something about it. Just broken by my own stupidity, which is arguably better than being broken by someone else's stupidity, but has the flipside of removing any possible get out clauses.

Bikes sulking and stropping in the bike cave. Bike shoes skulking unseen. Chain lube getting dusty.

Mornings watching RHR dropping daily, frustratingly, slowly, like a stone through treacle - 50-ish - 48, 47, 46, 44, 43, 43, 42, 41. Which is almost normal.

So this evening, the Pace got dragged out, lubed up, lit up, pumped up and loved. Local shop ride, old people, new people and familiar trails, grippy in that slightly damp grit way. Up Chunal, cruising, then onto the Shooting Cabin backwards. Clean across the bridge, then swing right and wide, cruise the first step then through the scrabbly loose stuff, gently through the ruts then wide, left and soft-pedally up the loose climb.

And yeah, to cut to the nub of it, better. Or at least close to it. Just lovely to be back on a bike, the speed, the movement, watching the sun slowly sinking. All the familiar sensations I've missed - the chattering speed of loose, rocky descents; burning legs on friendly climbs; a half creditable attempt on the Middle Moor steps - I'll nail it one day and soon - and a fuss-free clean of the bottom of William Clough.

And the kick is back - fierce and bright and sharp. I can't stop smiling.

Bits of people...

I bought Cycling Plus out of curiosity, it doesn't have any emotional ditches hidden inside and well, I was curious. And it was kind of okay. I read Rob Penn's article about building his ultimate bike, the one that's also a BBC television programme and a book, the one where he goes around the world speccing out the parts he reckons are the best then building them onto a Rourke frame.

It made me think. Not that it would be so amazing to travel around cherry-picking parts from Campag and Chris King and obscure Italian componentry brands, but that it would be infinitely better to build a bike made from parts created by people you love. It's a good idea in theory I guess, but problematic in that you'd have to pragmatically build a series of relationships with people who made every part of a bike - saddles, bars, frames, wheels, spokes... It's a big ask. And to be honest, somewhat unrealistic.

But it made me think about other stuff. About things and love and the reverberations of stuff that sits in your house, in your life. Things that other people left behind. Books, pictures, music, the funny Ecuadorian thing on top of the VCR, the bar tape on my road bike, the strange selection of penguins that pop up all over the house, the little pot the garlic sits in, the plant on top of the bookshelf, the comedy fridge magnet, the Chrismas pudding tea pot and the odd French coffee mug with the hare on the side. And the tea-pot, the little one.

They're all little bits of people. Little triggers for memories. Freeze frame segments of points in life. And I guess somewhere out in the world, little bits of me are floating in other people's lives.

Tree...

A few days of taking things easy and wishing the sky were bluer. I see a grey sky and I want to paint it blue? Doesn't really have the same ring to it does it. Oh well, black it is then.

Bad ideas...

Trying to do two 24-hour races in two weeks, one solo, one as a pair. A very bad move on both counts. Besides, I hate the way racing gets in the way of riding bikes - tapering, recovery, tapering and in this case, the bit where tapering and recovery become the same bloody thing. Arse.

So I'm sitting here with tired legs - running was a bad idea too - pondering why, when going slowly is logically a good idea, I don't really want to go slowly at all. It doesn't work. I don't work.

So instead, I'm sitting here contemplating another bad idea involving chocolate sponge things with Belgian chocolate melting middle things and cream and ice cream and a very good idea involving a mountain bike and a flight to Kathmandu. Or maybe Morocco.

And other recent good ideas included lying in the sunshine at Ladybower yesterday in the sun and watching unidentifiable great big propellor-driven aeroplanes flying overhead. Changing Mogg's bar tape for some rather fetching blue Techno Spugna french blue stuff - it says it's navy, but it ain't unless it's the French navy. And finding a way of converting spangly new road wheels into 2010 Revelations to replace the trashed Pikes on the 405.

Ah well. Swiss Alps. Yes please.

One black finger...

I broke a spoke in my rear Kysrium last week. No obvious reason, just getting out of the saddle at the bottom of a rise and, ping, metallic rattle, gone. And because of the spacing and the tension on Kysriums, it was enough to bend the rim far enough out of shape that it rubbed the chain stays on both sides. So thanks to International Rescue, Glossop Chapter for bailing me out and saving my cleats and chain stays.

And then, when I got home, I realised the chain was broken too - one inner plate snapped. And of course, because I like to make my life difficult, it's an 11-speed Campag chain. So there I was, one rare spoke and one rare chain to the bad and one sulking Planskey X or Lysnklet Ti Pro Road Mog scowling in the corner.

Cue endless calls and searches and eventually spokes ordered by the three from Pedalon - thanks Kie for telling me how to date the wheel, first digits of the bar code on the rim sticker if you're wondering - along with the stop-gap installation of a ten-speed quick link, which does work, even if technically it didn't ought to.

Chain ordered, spoke ordered. Brand new Bontrager Race X-Lite transmogrified wheel installed and dis-installed because, well, it just looked wrong. Pimpy as feck with white spokes and red alloy nipples, but just not right with stealth grey titanium, though it would look great with pimped out black and red and white swoopy carbon I guess. Anyone want to buy a mismatched wheel-set of uncertain provenance?

Big props to Pedalon for delivering next day after a 3pm order, but shock horror, the spokes are black, but hey. So in it goes, some gentle tweaking on the wheel jig and now I have a rear silver Ksyrium SL with one black spoke. And you know what, I really like it. There's something human and real and endearing about imperfection in the middle of something as improbably perfect and round as a wheel.

And it's one raised black finger to roadie fascist, black and white thinking, life tyrants. Besides, it was hard enough finding a black spoke, I simply can't be arsed with finding a silver one...

24/12, the condensed version...

I learned some stuff last year, notably that cycling is just a game. In real life, other things matter more and while riding bikes is great and kept me more or less together for the last 12 months, it is 'just' riding bikes. Life and death and people and love - friends and partners and family - all trump bikes when the chips are down.

Blimey - pre-race mode and almost organised....

But in a race, that shouldn't matter, that's the point of it, isn't it? Suspension of normal rules. So why after nine-and-a-half hours and nine-and-a-half laps of a 24-hour solo at 24/12 am I very rationally debating the pros and cons of jacking it all in? The thought process goes a bit like this:

Me: 'This is shite, the course is getting desperately wet and slippy and dangerous and some knobber has already knocked me off once and made a big dent in my shin.'

Me 2: 'Man up, it's about finishing and doing, not having 'fun'.'

Me: 'Yeah, yeah, I know that, but if you're not enjoying the riding what's the point? What's the point of riding at all?'

Me 2: 'Because you're going really well, feeling strong, eating and drinking well and if you bail now, you'll regret it later, you know you will.'

Me: 'But I'll also be trashed for SITS in two weeks time and let my mate down whereas if I stop now, I'll be more or less recovered by then and - shhhh... - it might be dry there. And I could ride faster, I hate riding slowly, hate it...'

Me 2: 'You knew that when you sent the entry off ffs, you idiot. Look, just keep turning the pedals and we'll talk again later.'

Me: 'But riding bikes is just a game. And right now, this isn't fun. Isn't enjoyment what this is all about?'

Me 2: 'Pathetic cop-out. But if you're happy with your decision then what the hell. Just don't whine about it later.'

Me: 'Deal. '

And I'm quite happy to have stopped. I'm not really a natural endurance rider - fast twitch sprint athlete me - and somewhere, I think, my internal rev limiter clocks in at around 12 hours, I loved the 12-hour solo I did a year ago. Maybe it's just mental and maybe in drier conditions I'd have seen things differently, but then 24-hour racing is as much about dealing with the conditions as it is about riding fast, dry, sinuous singletrack. So there you go.

So I went to bed and did some pitting for my friend Julie and was chuffed to bits for her when she not only completed her first ever 24-hour solo but came a solid third as well - thanks Rory for reminding me that helping a mate do well counts every bit as much as your own stuff.

And the best bits of it all were catching up with friends I've not seen for a while - hello Rob for one - and Pitch who had a cracking, gutsy ride and everyone else and some sterling chats out on the course, for some reason mostly with women soloists - why is it that lasses seem happy to chat while blokes, even slow ones, seem fixated on burying themselves deep in some personal pain cave.

Anyway, powder mostly dry for pairs at SITS, ten hours of fun, slippy riding under the belt, limited nausea, one ace sausage and bacon sarnie and too much driving. Now about that big pile of kit in the front room...

I thought I was someone else. Someone bad.

Thank god for bikes. And friends. And ridiculous inquisitive lambs on perfect Peak summer days.