Another Firkin Year!

Another Firkin Challenge is looming; it's a hundred mile ride through the Yorkshire Dales to raise money for disadvantaged children through the Wooden Spoon charity and this will be my third. It can be gruelling and the weather in previous years has not been kind - it has in fact pissed down.  I feel less well prepared this year and I'm another year older and more decrepit.  2014 is of course the year Tour de France comes to Yorkshire and to reflect that, this year's Firkin will follow much of the route to be tackled by the likes of Wiggins, Froome, Voigt et al; more hills have been added and as far as I can see the riders in my team are all faster, fitter and younger than me so why I agreed to do it I don't know. So - if you do have a shilling or two that you can spare, don't buy a lottery ticket, don't bung it on a knackered old nag, don't pour it down your gullet at the pub…….give it to the kiddies. Here

Beautiful Film

Mobile Phones

It seems that over fifty percent of the people reading this regularly or sometimes talk or text on their mobile phone whilst driving. Is this you?   IS THIS YOU?  It is not just your life you are putting at risk but mine too and that of my friends and your friends. I have many times seen what metal can do to a human body and I can assure you you wouldn't like it. I have cut them out of their cars as they screamed and sometimes they were silent.

 Never do it again.

Defeat

I don't know where defeat comes from but I do know that is doesn't appear at the moment you stop peddling, or indeed in the moments leading up to it. It is born hours or perhaps even days before and it is sly and elusive - it doesn't come with a shout and a jeer but rather with a mutter, a whisper - a soft goading voice barely audible for the noise of dreams and of living. By the time the group met for a ride this morning I was already uncomfortably aware and resentful that I wouldn't be able to make it; I'd rehearsed endless failure during the night; visualising other riders riding away from me, feeling the weight of leaden legs and bursting lungs  and worst of all, staring up the near vertical hills that I knew I couldn't climb; all this, long before the first birds had chorused the day. Where did it come from this spoiler and how did it gain such credence? I suppose I may never know but I would like to be able to deal with it or at least control and minimise its effects. I set off on a ride today with a body that could do what was asked and a mind that refused to ask, so I ended up cutting short a ride that I badly needed and 'bottling out'.

This thing has happened many times before to varying degrees, most notably on a climb out of Askrigg on the 'Firkin Challenge', it's an easy climb, and it is short but inexplicably my head has said NO twice now and it has become a bete noir. I guess everyone suffers from this phenomenon at times? FUCK IT!

Where to now?

Le Tour Yorkshire

Preparations for Le Tour are in full swing: we (The Club) met the other night for drinks and then on to the cathedral to hear Graeme Obree talk with passion about his life and career. Ripon of course, is woefully ignorant of the size and scope of what is bearing down upon them and the council's response to Le Tour so far has been to conceal a very small yellow bike on the 1st floor balcony of a very large town hall:

I have managed to work with them to at least get the bike on the outside of the balcony where it can be seen, but even that was an uphill struggle, with constant mutterings about planning permission and health and safety.  

Back at the gallery our response is a little less muted:

Back on the bike

Back on the bike again after a long, looong winter break and I'm dragging my arse round the Yorkshire countryside at a snail's pace……a snail with gout…….and a Port hangover.  Friends are kind, of course: 'Wait for Steady', but there is the ever present and uncomfortable feeling that the pack might turn at any moment and savage the weakest link.

 I've been out three or four times now including a stiff forty miles or so round the Litton area with 'Fat Lad At The Back' and some cycling journo's, and the first of this year's 'club' rides - thirty miles at just over 20mph where I skulked in the middle of the peloton and never took the front.

Today is the Easter holidays and we're off to Devon for a few days, so I'm shoving the bike in the back of the car so as not to fall even further behind in my training.

Here's me last year looking fit, if a little camp.

London 100

Well I made it round the London 100 course 5:45:01 - not a particularly good time, nor particularly bad either; I think I spent a good deal of time dawdling along looking at the scenery. Then of course there was the comic moment when I scattered a bundle of twenty pound notes over the Surrey countryside as I hurtled downhill in the midst of a charging peloton…..It took a good twenty minutes of frantic running and dodging to collect them up and regain the saddle.

It was, I have to say, a brilliant experience and the chance to ride on closed roads, a rare one: particularly this year as I didn't get in! London looked magnificent and the crowds were huge and very supportive (apart from the woman who leapt out in front of us shrieking 'GO HOME' and 'GET OFF OUR ROADS'…….made us laugh anyway.

The Glittering Prizes

I entered a competition on twitter where you had to send in a photo of yourself in London 100 kit. I had one on my desktop, sent it in and I've won a water bottle signed by the World & Olympic cycling champion, Laura Trott; but what on earth do I do with it? If I so much as breathe near it the signature comes off so I can't use it, and yet a signed, plastic water bottle on a shelf?

6 Days To London

Six days to the Prudential London - Surrey 100 and there are all kinds of conflicting weather reports for the day. As I type, the sky is bruised and thunder is rolling round the countryside looking for somewhere to relieve itself, so I'm hoping for an improvement. Every time I do a big ride the weather turns belligerent and it would make a nice change to gather a suntan.

Firkin Challenge 2013

TDF 2014

I painted the window of one of Ripon's boarded up shops and it garnered the attention of the press and our Tory MP, Julian Smith:

Claire, Neil, Rob, Julian Smith MP, Stuart, Al, Self

London 100

Preparing to set out on a training ride for the London, Surrey 100 with Alastair Little. 2 weeks to go.

Old Favourites

I spend a good deal of time trundling around the countryside searching out new and interesting routes to ride, sometimes neglecting the old favourites and forgetting why they are old favourites - it's easy to be seduced by the tougher, hilly routes and forget the benefits and beauty of a fast, flat-ish ride through the countryside to the east of home.  So after a break of several months I decided to do the 'Boroughbridge Route'. The first mile or so gets you out of Ripon and there is a flat straight of half a mile in length where you can judge the wind direction and decide (if you haven't done so already from the direction of the cathedral flag) whether it will be easy on the outward or homeward journey.

Once over the bypass the road heads out through Littlethorpe and immediately into quintessentially English countryside: small, hedged meadows, knots of woodland, grazing cattle & sheep and a chicken curious to find out what's on the other side causes a moment's swerving excitement. Today is one of the first really warm days of summer and the scents of the hedgerow, (covered now in Campion, Violets and Cow-parsley) rise to meet me, along with a significant hatch of flies - perhaps I should have gone fishing! Once onto the Knaresborough road I pass the farm with the sleepy red bull and gently rise out of the valley. The landscape opens like a book and as I approach the highest point on the ride panoramic views open eastward to the Hambleton hills and the White Horse.

By Bishop Monkton the legs have usually warmed up and it's time to turn on the gas; there's a bit of mild showing off as I zip past a busy pub garden and sweep through the village on the drops. Passing the old dairy farm, the lane is covered in cow shit…….Green and skiddy in the wet, rumble-strip hard today. And then the road turns Ypres - potholes the size of craters gape and maw and threaten to bounce bottles from cages or twang spokes like a piano at the breaker's yard but I'm wise to it and slalom through the battlefield, cross the little stream at Holbeck wood and rise into the sunshine and now I'm into time trial country.

The road from here to Roecliffe is smooth, flat and sinuous and my world narrows to existentialist self awareness: cadence, breathing, my own shadow and the sound of the bike. I watch my thighs hammering down on the pedals and the road flies past beneath me in a blur. Heart rate 165 (yep - I'm getting old), speed 26.4 mph, distance 8 mls (half way); it's beginning to hurt; keep pumping, ignore the pain, ignore the wind, concentrate. At Roecliffe I ease off, take the sharp left hander at the Crown Inn and once more the road gets tetchy and in the tree-dappled sunlight it's hard to avoid the holes. Up a couple of hills - they're not even hills dammit -  they're rises, but they are enough to chop my speed to about 16 mph and my average is being chomped away at.

Under the A1 and in to Boroughbridge and the driver in front thinks she can't get through a gap big enough for a gypsy wedding; there's no way past, my track standing is track lying down so I unclip and wait for Godot.

Back on it, over the Ure, avoid a 4x4 roundabout massacre (it's impossible to ride through Boroughbridge without at least one attempt on your life) and left through Langthorpe where the council have helpfully spray painted the potholes in order to make them more attractive when you fall down them - urban graffiti comes to the sticks.  Back under the A1 and up the god-awful little hillock to the skylark fields and the comforting smell of pigs. Full gas again to Skelton where an elderly couple in straw hats and deck chairs give me a cheery wave and I  hammer on. Another exciting moment of gravel on a tight right-hander and on to the Main road. Clear, out of the saddle and build speed down the hill and the glorious left hander onto Hewick Bridge. The river glints and shimmers in the sunshine - perhaps I should have gone fishing - and as I approach the race course, a cue of traffic stretches ahead of me (evening meeting) so I pull over and take a reading from my computer - Ave heart rate 157, Ave speed 20.1 mph - that's ok. the final mile is leisurely but the road is busy. The ominous sound of squealing air brakes assails me from behind and I'm engulfed in the shadow of a monster truck; when the road clears he pulls out to the other side of the road to overtake and I wave, he stays out until I see him in his mirror, I wave him in and he blasts his horns in salute………a cheering finish to a good ride.