Aftermath...

I am authentically trashed. My body aches. My feet are oddly tingly. My sleep patterns are devastated. The house is a chaotic jumble of half-sorted kit and bikes. It is awesome.

Did Bontrager 24/12 solo - the 24-hour one - at the weekend and it was brilliant, not least because I actually finished.

What a cracking event as ever, the best 24-hour course bar none with a cracking mix of singletrack, climbing-track and scenic-track. The best people, I don't know why, but 24/12 folk just seem more chilled, friendly, enthusiastic and all-round happier than other 24-hour race people and an organisation that somehow blends a a laid-back casual vibe with seamless efficiency.

After last year's throwing up in the mud at 2a.m debacle, I just wanted to finish and enjoy the ride. Started steady, resisted my brain's unfortunate pull to chase other riders, sticks, sunshine etc, and mostly just kept eating, drinking and rolling.

Fittingly, for an event which is all about the people and the vibe, it was bookended between lovely first and final laps of mellow chatting with a couple of solo women - I put it down to my approachable, grand-dad like vibe - and in between it was a mix of banter, pedalling and hurtling down the techier bits.

The lightened-up Blur 4x helped with the latter too from midnight onwards. Top fun.

Mostly though it was oddly uneventful. The difficult bit, to be honest, was the fuelling. It worked, but from about dawn onwards, all I could stomach was rice pudding. I need to do some serious work on that. And at the end I felt strangely fine. Not particularly broken. Or achey or dead.

Ate food. Slept. Woke up feeling I could have gone harder, which I could have done. And could have spent far less time stopped. But hey, there's always next time to put that one right.

It feels like a hundred years since 2009 when I did the 12-hour solo there and a different world and a different me. Funny how sometimes the worst times end up being for the best.

And pedal. In your sleep.

Yawny...

Bontrager 24/12 solo 24 at the weekend. It's Wednesday now and I'm almost awake again. The right forearm I trashed at 10 at Kirroughtree, that came back to haunt me in the wee small hours of the morning and again on a final three bonus laps, feels almost normal.

My legs are still sore and heavy. And I'm on holiday. Home-brewed latte in the sunshine. Ian Banks' latest novel half read on the patio table and a pile of unread tomes to follow. A scruffy house waiting patiently to be spruced up and then the world's a slimy sea-shelled thing - Scotland, southern Spain, eastern Europe, you name it.

It's nice to stop moving. Physically and metaphorically. The weekend was ace. The best 24-hour course I've ever ridden by a country mile. A brain-frying mix of slippery roots and fast singletrack, moorland rockeries with scenic ponies tagged on and a great, mellow atmosphere.

Definitely going back next year with a fully-functioning body - touch wood - for another go.

But right now it's kind of nice chilling out on life's hard shoulder.

Motivation.

Woot moggy! We're going racing....

I'm training again properly, have been for the past couple of months - well, properly for me, real racers and that can look away now. In the middle of that funny thing when your body starts doing things that you didn't think it could and the brutal high intensity intervals start to make sense. And that feeds the motivation for the next ones.

I have a bit of a grudge match with a solo at 24/12. Last year's was a mess. Head a bit wonky from memories of the year before's 12-hour solo and the crap around it, thanks for that. Leg a bit wonky after someone knocked me off on a benign arena track catching the end of my bar on a pointless overtake - 'Oh, was I a bit close?' What do you think, muppet... - and then, when I should have just dug in and got on with it, the realisation that no way, back in the real world, was I going to be able to race pairs at SITS two weeks later and, in the process, would badly let my mate Dave down badly.

Which was obvious. And if I weren't so stupid and hadn't been so blase, I'd never have put myself in that position. But the end result was that I bailed on the basis that I'd live to fight another day at SITS. Which I did, but not very well because I'd already done 11 racing hours and my back self destructed at three in the morning.

But anyway - none of that this time. Just 24 solo at 24/12. One aim - to finish the thing and enjoy riding it, because oddly, despite being a not very endurance athlete - all fast-twitch muscle and sprintiness, me - I really like soloing. It feels like good value for money. The pace is relatively mellow. And you get to watch the course unfolding like a good book, shifting and changing and wearing.

And you get to know the course, the smoothest, most economical lines, the bits where you can relax and flow for free speed and...

So there it is.

But first I get to race 10 Under Kirroughtree with a mate at the weekend as a pair. A final blurry speed fest, hopefuly, by Ragley but with fat, fast tyres, to get that out of my system. Then a bit of a taper. A long drive and go.

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.

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...