Cut Gate By Cross Bike

Tell you what, if someone had told me, say two years ago, that I'd one day ride a cross bike over Cut Gate I'd have been extremely dubious. As in disbelieving. Incredulous. And both amused and horrified.

Which made last Sunday's 50-mile Very Stoopid Loop outing with a bunch of Three Peak Cyclocross 'we are training for' peeps a bit of a sanity test.

But actually it was fine. Okay, I crashed dramatically twice, both oddly enough trying to muscle the thing up slightly rocky climbs, okay, one big rock step, one rubbly thing, but mostly it turned out to be fine.

Part of that is that after a dry summer when it's been regularly ridden, the line on Cut Gate is nicely swept of babyheads and defined and part of it is that I'm running 700x38 Bontrager CX0 tyres tubeless converted on the Soma.

So it's sort of a monster cross or a gravel road cruiser. Or maybe just a cross bike with big tyres on, eh?

I kind of like it. You can hit rocky things hard and while it won't exactly float over them, nor will it slam the rubber against the rims and pinch flat on every vaguely rocky descent. I could run lower pressures, I think, but I also know that it's quite possible to pinch full UST tyres - thank you Ragley Blue Pig for that lesson - and that a 700x38 is only something around 1.5" - it is limited.

Anyway, it was amusing. Funny even, apart from the bit when I rolled down the steep bank of ferns and the bike decided to pursue me in a vengeful sort of way. It reminded me forcibly of riding rigid mountain bikes 20 or so years ago with a bit of all-over body fatigue. And the company was good. It also made me glad I'm not doing the Three Peaks.

So now all I have to do is convince my brain that it's okay to do Dusk Till Dawn as a fun pair without being sharp or trained or particularly motivated.

And now I'm going to eat porridge and go road riding. On my home patch. For fun.

Alpine Roadie...

Back from a brilliant 11 days in the Alps riding, mostly, up big alpine cols. What is there to say? Long steady climbs. Considerate motorists. Ridiculous full replica kit-wearing peacocks. Galibier. Croix de Feux. Alp d'Huez. Cutting hairpins uphill. And down. Birthday hotels. Wine. Croissants. Not together. French beef. Sunshine. Laughter. Tired legs. Ace company. Shazza. Mog. And a sort of half-formed plan to do the Marmotte next year. Yes together.

Top of the Col du Glandon. Relatively steep. Relatively fast. Bonkers scenic. Mogtastic descent. I love the turbine howl of Exalith in the morning.

Less scenery, more road. Love the col mentality that says it's fine to stop your car in the middle of the road at the summit of any col while you stand there taking photos. Looking at the view. Looking gormless. Must be the altitude. Gasp.

The view down the valley. That's the middle bit of the Glandon snaking away in the middle distance. Funny thing. Imagine Holme Moss plonked down in the middle of that lot, it'd barely register. Looking forward to seeing the Tour de Yarkshire peleton steaming up that next year. I can't imagine it'll take long.

And why is it that you always leave in summer and return in autumn. How does that work? 

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.

Stravanfreude...

Invented a new word, viz, 'Stravanfreude' - derived from the German, Schadenfreude it essentially means to take vicarious pleasure from the misfortune of those using Strava. Prime examples are a delight in someone surrendering their pointless KoM or QoM. People who tweet excessively about Strava segments, which is misfortune in itself. And a general amusement at the tight-lipped, humourless determination of Stravanauts as they hurtle around with pointless focus. I quite like the word.

Competitiveness

It's official - I'm not really competitive. Which will amuse a significant proportion of my friends. And various of my bikes. And anyone I've played Monopoly with over the years. I know this how?

I know this courtesy of work team-building games which saw groups of adult journalists, sales-people and high-ranking administrators tear-arsing around central London looking for places to buy obscure fruit and spices, a thing with feathers on that's not alive and a sports car - look, evidence.

The stakes were high - a bottle of champagne and a day's extra holiday. But honestly. The functional skeleton of stuff like this sticks out in a starving wildebeest stylee, you will learn to work together. You will develop strategies. You will get to know your colleagues in different environments. You will hang around Harrods Food Hall trying to buy exactly £1.01-worth of chirimoya and get a receipt.

Somewhere in the middle of that I realised I had a choice. I could choose to enjoy the ambience of central London, G8 riot police and all, to marvel at the new strangeness of streets I used to race down eight hours a day on a courier motorcycles more than 20 years ago and chat to the nice people I'd been arbitrarily teamed with. Or I could throw myself into the game and pretend that all this was important.

I chose rationality. I have no doubt that the folk who won the the thing and are, even now, drinking bubbly for breakfast had no such qualms.

Ironically of course, I also choose to similarly pointlessly race mountain bikes, but here's the thing, it's a better game altogether. But of course it's still a game.

And occasionally I choose to climb up big mountains in distant places. Which is a game too, but a game with proper consequences, which maybe means it's not a game at all. Or a game with very high stakes. Or 'deep play'.

Because if you decide you're not playing any more halfway up an Andean south face, you can't just stop, buy an ice cream and kickback on a park bench, because, aside from the logistical issues - carrying the bench up, sourcing ice cream and so on, you will almost certainly die.

So ironically, what I took from our urban treasure hunt wasn't so different from what I'd take from a walk in the mountains. Entertaining company and chat. Some welcome exercise with the animal feel of muscles working and feet rolling over ground. And most of all a sense of wonder at my surroundings, the sights, the smells, the noticing of small details and the people watching. We had to navigate too - hurrah for GPS.

And that competitiveness is a choice even when it's shoved ostensibly in your face. But hey, well still managed to bag a photo in a brand new sports car - result...

Not About The Bike - Whitton Content

Mog got upgraded. The original Planet X carbon fork had sort of started to disintegrate, probably mostly a cosmetic thing, but slightly unsettling nevertheless, you know, carbon eczema, and not a good look either. Cue ENVE.

And then there are the wheels, spangly, mean-looking Ksyrium SLRs with stealth-fighter matt Exalith braking surfaces. And to top it all off, clock the goldy-looking chain. And although you can't see it, a huge, Whitton-friendly 12-27 cassette, oh yes, those two teeth make a difference.

Unfortunately the rider didn't get similarly uprated. And somehow having a bike that's clearly somewhat better than you are is a little, well, unsettling. But hey who's judging? Me, obviously. 

But on the plus side, the bike rides, well, beautifully in fact. Fast, composed, with a snake-like hiss of speed on smooth rides and the balanced poise of a predatory cat on rougher stuff. And while it might be all in the mind, on fast descents, it's 'right' in a way it didn't quite seem to be before.

Which all in all, made it a good call for this year's Whitton.

I last - and first - did the Fred in 2009 on a weekend I remember now mostly for all sorts of other reasons. It was the first time I'd ever ridden over 100 miles on the road and I was pretty wary of the thing - the distance, the climbing, the other riders, despite being decently fit if inexperienced on the road. 

It was, erm, 'interesting'. I found I could climb steeps faster than most people - thank you Peak District - was crap on the flat - ditto - and utterly useless at riding in groups. Fortunately my proper roadie mate, FP Dave, saved my butt on the latter count. And it was properly epic in feel. 

Four years later, I've done a lot more road riding, have - I think - better base fitness and don't find the prospect of 100 miles plus over big Lakeland passes anything like as intimidating. What I wasn't reckoning with was freezing rain and winds and a slow puncture which had been going since gawd knows when until I finally realised somewhere below the Hardknott.

I do vaguely remember hitting something like a big hole somewhere in the first part of the ride - as does the cuffed Exalith rim - and suspect the tyre was losing air slowly from then on in. Me and Wiggo eh, like peas in a pod.

There was the bit at the second food stop where people were shivering pathetically like wet dogs where I'd happily have thrown in the towel if there was an easy option to get home, but there wasn't. A proper eat, drink, eat some more and MTFU moment.

And from then on, bar that frustratingly slow tube change, it was fine. Aced Hardknott thanks to my massive cassette, cruised up Wrynose then rolled gently home. Felt like I should have been broken, but oddly could have gone on. That's good, I think.

I found that  I could still climb steeps faster than most people - thank you Peak District - was still crap on the flat - ditto - and still utterly useless at riding in groups, not a problem as there were very few groups anyway, and those that existed exuded a sort of vibe of random danger. My descending's better though. 

Overall it felt flat. Nasty and unpleasant and unsociable on the whole. The best bit was before and after. Thank you to my support team, how about reversing the roles for next year? Always fancied being a super domestique... maybe without the 'super'. Soup? 

I dunno. Sometimes things just are. How did I become this person who thinks of a 112-mile epic thing as just another long road ride? I blame the bike.

Looking For Blur...

Frame and jacket colour match? Tick. Rider and bike match? Tick. Dry, dusty trails with good company? Tick.