STW Photo Pootle...

Snuck out with a motley collection of STW Seb Rogers wannabes in the Peak. Sharpened me elbows. Donned shades. Tried hard to look pro. Failed miserably. Anyway... here are a few slices of the chaos behind the scenes...

I have never seen so many flash-guns in my life. Apparently I accidentally rode into one as well on the Shooting Cabin. I mean, ooops, you just don't expect to find a slave flash sat on the line. Or maybe just off it... ahem.

Yes, that man is lying in the middle of the track with bikes on either side of his ears. Most pro mtb photographers have specially narrow ears for this reason, I've heard.

Wow, it was like a Leicester Square premiere up there... snappers all over the place with flash-guns flashing frantically.

And finally, Sheldon shows what fat bikes actually are good for. Get well soon mate.

Happy Mud Days...

Funny. I think I've physiologically adapted to mud riding to the point where dry 24-hour races just confuse my body. First lap at SITS in the hot and dry felt awful in an 'on the verge of viral doom' sort of way. Cue lots of debate over how few laps were needed and when to do them...

And then it rained for around 30 seconds, hard. The course turned into a familiar quagmire. And suddenly everything felt okay. On with the 1.8 Nobby Nics, a small dose of MTFU, a bit of gentle team efficiency and onwards into muddy familiarity washed in cool drizzle and a dusting - mudding - of Schadenfreude.

Awesome people watching. In no particular order: people who jet wash their bikes into perfect cleanliness between laps, when they must know that in five minutes they'll be back to muddy behemothness; people who fly into a massive strop at the first sign of mud because it was oh so unexpected; people who stand on the exit of lethally slippery corners pulling clumps of mud out of the bike seemingly oblivious to their own vulnerability; serious people who check out your numberplate just in case you're in the same class as them; and people, yep, just people.

Had an unexpectedly great time with nice people, 50% of them unexpected people at that. Big thanks to Rick and Steevo who stepped in at the last-ish moment and just got on with riding and being good company and tapping out the laps in somewhat trying conditions. No dummy-spitting, no complaining, even when Steve lost his rear mech in the small hours of the morning and Rick's meticulously prepped and cleaned bike got mud on it.

It was good fun. And interesting. Somehow, thanks to a combination of soloing and my old Dave Smith training programme - thanks Dave - 24-hour team races feel oddly luxurious; 1. Go as fast as you can. 2. Stop. 3. Eat, change clothes, eat more, chat, banter, drink coffee with mates, eat more, doze. 4. Hang around in changeover chatting with Ros, for some reason Ros always appeared to be there at the same time as me. 5. Go as fast as you can. 6. Repeat until noon on Sunday.

Easily pleased you see. And you can even sleep during the night.

But I think that's enough 24-hour racing. Next year something new, something different, something shiny and bright and fierce and mellow.

Hmmm...

I've not been doing well at blogging. Mostly because 24/12 ushered in a period of ferocious busyness. Or at least that's how it felt to me. Too many things in too quick a succession with the added joy of cumulative sleep deprivation.

And now I want to feel rested and well and cheerful and ride my bike, the Ragley one, on wooded, sun-dappled trails. And I don't and I'm not. But there you go. That's not enough sleep for you.

As for 24/12 - in last coin in the pay phone mode: horrible conditions, river almost burst banks, soloing, eleventh-ish at 1am. Started throwing up. Probably ate something. Gutted. Emptied. Probably something on my bottle in the middle of a mud fest. But there were good things too and positivity and humour and a very, very fast journey home on the Sunday afternoon.

And that's it really. Sort of. Except that it isn't...

Tapering.

Mayhem's done and dusted in mud. Bontrager 24/12 is looming at the weekend. Solo. And I'm tapering. I bloody hate tapering, but given that Mayhem fried my legs by dint of mud and singlespeed and an odd, grinning happiness that I don't know where it came from, but I'm glad that it did. Given all that, it's probably just as well.

And oddly, for once, I don't feel frantic and jumpy and hair-trigger, sparky-eyed desperate. For once I just feel sort of mellow and calm. Which is a first really.

I even dragged the race bike out of whatever dark recess it hides in between races and did unto it that which is not unlike maintenance. Changed the front wheel bearings that died at 24/12 last year. Checked the brake pads: check. Changed the tyres to something more suitable than the stupidly iffy front, grey Michelin and balding rear Racing Ralph. Stuck an inverted lay-back Thomson post on it so it looks even uglier than before - Maverick you know, beauty in function and function in ugliness - checked all the linkage bearings for slop. And put it away again.

I still hate tapering though. I'd rather be riding. Always.

A Truman Show Moment in the Midst of Mayhem

Mountain Mayhem that is. A properly ridiculous quagmire of a course. Four men, a teenage boy and a one-year-old baby. Mud, lots and lots of mud. And a rigid, ti, singlespeed 69er with mud tyres.

Somewhere in the middle of it, I wandered off left and I came to the end of Mayhem. Beyond the mud and the vans and the tents and the drawn-faced mud-splattered riders with their battered bikes and bodies. Beyond all that was a ten-foot deer fence with a matching gate complete with ladder stile.

On the other side of the gate was a green, improbably dry-looking field full of happy-looking sheep basking in rays of golden sunshine. And for a moment I wanted to just climb over the stile and keep walking without looking back.

A proper Truman Show moment.

But instead of embracing freedom, I looked out over sanity for five minutes or so, then climbed back down, wandered back to base and knocked out another lap.

It's not a bad thing to be reminded that riding bikes, racing bikes, isn't real. Is a luxury. A game. That you do have a choice.

But at the end of it all I was proud of us. Of me. No-one folded or complained or griped or panicked. We just kept riding and grinning and rolling through the whole ridiculous, surreal thing - 8th in vets, 13th in Sport Men, which wasn't too shabby. But actually the numbers don't matter, the people do.

A Small Ball Of Grrrr....

I love my Ragley Ti, it's mad in a totally uncivilised way. It wants to go - up, down, round, straight off things, straight over stuff, it wants to go fast.

Normally that's fine. Normally that's the best thing in the world. But after four weeks of kicking myself senseless in a structured way, on a long, steady, chatty,  autumnal - June is the new autumn you know - Peak District semi-epic, it simply isn't.

Try to ride it steady and restrained and mellow and it sulks and grumps like a hung-over dad woken on a Sunday morning by bright-eyed kiddies who want to go play in the park before breakfast.

It grumbles.

It hates meandering along the sort of rocky trails it normally skims over in a blaze of shiny aggression. It blunders up short climbs it'd normally dismiss with a blur of pedals and a high-pitched whir of sun-lit, ecstatic, take-off ebullience.

It sulks.

It still looks after you. Even when you're slow and tired, that slack head angle makes steep downs a breeze. And every so often it hints at smooth, blurry, speed.

But mostly it just sulks.

Said sorry to it. Washed the grit off its shiny titanium tubes. Gave it a virtual hug and put it back in the bike cave where it undoubtedly spent the night grumbling to the other bikes: 'He wasn't trying, the useless git. Just sat there waiting for me to do the work. I need a new rider, a proper one...'

Until next time, when normal service will be resumed. Sorry Rags...

Where do I send the invoice?

Let's see: around 16 sessions @ £xx per session, starting in the bleak mid-winter and finishing in the bleak mid-summer. Letters, maps, mindfulness and something not unlike sunshine. Tears. And rediscovered music. A hard, glittery ball of crystalline anger that doesn't seem to be there any more. It rolled, unnoticed one day, under a virtual fridge.

Who do I invoice?

You?

Six months ago I would have, really I would. But not now. The magical mystery tour of dark, broken confusion and shifting truths, things that were or were not or might have been in singular or duplicate and all of your different personalities seem like something from another life.

In truth I'm even a little grateful now. I dodged a huge bullet and, I hope, actually learned something for once. I hope I'm a better person as a result.

I never thought I'd say thank you, but thank you. And yes, I know you'll never read this.

Celebrated by buying new race shoes. Appropriately muted ones.