I met Neil, my mate and racing partner, at the Abington Service Station. We decided coffee was the plan and headed in to grab a cup and pay for the overnight parking - Neil was appalled that every car going into the car park is photographed and recorded into the system. I wondered if we might appear on this week's Crimewatch after another criminal race performance!
The drive down to Keswick was uneventful and as we arrived in Thorntonwaite where the race was based we decided to drop our kit off at the B & B and have a drive around before an early supper.
Our B & B was slightly out of the village but with 350 other racers we figured it would be busy with other teams - worryingly they were no other cars in the car park. The house looked like something out of Bleak House or Wuthering Heights and when the door creaked open we were welcomed by someone who looked very similar to the Kathy Bates character in Misery. She limped into the damp smelling corridor and asked us to go up the stairs ahead of her. I was half expecting the shotgun to come out and our imprisonment to start - suddenly I thought back to the Service Station when video would be rolled out as the last sighting of the boys heading for the race!!
She showed us our overpriced accommodation. The room was baltic and as the temperature was dropping outside I looked at the radiators longingly hoping that Kathy was going to switch on the heating. She recommended a couple of restaurants as we flew out the door! Map in hand we drove the likely area's the race would be run - we always do this with little impact but traditions need to be maintained. You can see from the photo that the weather was pretty outstanding, 10 degrees and sun splitting the sky! Just awesome.
We had booked a local hotel and after tinkering with my bike to get the front gears working a bit better we headed for dinner. The food was pretty good polished off with rice pudding, the food of champions. Then it was back to Kathy's - the place was in darkness and as the sun at set our guest house looked even more foreboding! Neil suggested a bit of telly so we moved into the communal lounge and watched NCIS to kill a little time. No sign of Kathy so we sat listening for the creak of floorboards that might signal Kathy's presence!
So bed was early and with no internet in Bleak House, a baltic room I decided that climbing into bed for an early night was the only option. I actually slept pretty well.....
So today was an early start followed by a scalding shower. Neil's shower was too hot and didn't appear to have a cold tap so he came through and burnt himself on my shower! Breakfast was porridge, banana and eggs and Kathy came up trumps especially as it didn't seem to contain any sleep inducing stuff and we left alive and not tied to the bed!
The Open Adventure 5 series races are brilliant - 5 hours to pick up as many points as possible using mountain bike and trail running. You get a map and then when you cross the start line you get given the points for each of the dibbing stations. Having messed up last week we took more time to make sure our route was sorted. Of course we changed it immediately after starting! Fortunately our decisions we a bit better this week and our route seemed to be a good choice.
Anyway we reached the first junction and unbelievably made a mistake and went the wrong way. After that we decided not to worry and were faced with the first major climb of the day and despite the steep climb we were moving pretty quickly. We decided to carry on round the perimeter of the route and the views were stunning - once we reached the second half of the course we had another big decision to make and we made another mistake missing out on some more big value points. I think we thought the course was bigger than it was and we could easily have picked up all of the points on the bike before heading on to the run.
The bike course included some classic single track, fire tracks and single track roads and it was magical. There are times that the race goes out of the window and you just marvel in the stunning location. Today I felt lucky to be alive (especially after our visit to Kathy!) until I had my Basil Fawlty moment shouting at my bike. The chain kept on getting stuck between the back wheel and rear cog. After the 10th time I stopped the bike and having shouted at it, there were no branches to thrash it with, tweaked the rear derailleur. Eventually after a few attempted it stopped flicking over the cogs but then would not go into the biggest of the rear cogs - I felt frustrated by the bike today. The front forks were banging on the bumps (not sure why), my brakes didn't seem to bind as they normally do and I nearly wiped out Neil when he stopped at a turn and my gears were a nightmare. The front derailleur was difficult to shift with the levers very stiff and the rear gears jumped about all day - made riding any gradient a real nightmare! Need to get it sorted!
One of the key things about any endurance races is, not to put too fine a point on it, making sure that body is in harmony at the start of the race and all of the facilities have been used - if you know what I mean! Sadly my body had no harmony today and my stomach was playing tunes all day long. They weren't good tunes with the trouser trumpet leading the orchestra!! I felt pretty miserable by the run and slowed Neil down to trot.
Neil looked at me at me grimacing and kindly offered to call it a day. We could have raced up one hill and collected a few more points but Neil suggested that we revel in the scenery and enjoy the trot back to the finish. It was good of him and as a result we slipped a few spots closer to the bottom of the leader board.
If is not a word I turn to often but today there were many ifs. If we had not missed the first checkpoint, if we had gone to pick up the high points, if we had stuck top the route and picked up mark 10, if our running had been better - today we were close to doing well but mistakes are costly and once you make them hard to unpick in hilly and challenging environments. I love these sorts of races, win or lose, to me the taking part and being out in amazing countryside with fantastic views is what it's all about. It's so different from Ironman, you know the route, you know what you have to do and you know the distances. A road bike is a predictable beast that moves with you whereas a mountain bike feels like an alien that needs balance to ride and we were only on red runs today which are the moderate difficulty ones.
I think I need more mountain bike skills time to be a better rider - Neil is technically much better and has a grace about the way he moves the bike around the hill - I have the grace of an elephant on a mountain bike and find any single track massively challenging. In some respects this makes mountain bike riding more fun in that there are so many changing conditions. Tyre pressure, choice of route and speed are all elements that need careful consideration - I seem to get it wrong more than right as I usually pump my tyres too hard for the conditions but despite all of my incompetence and inability I love it!
So onwards with the training before our holiday. This week I'm planning some cross training, running and hopefully biking but that will be weather dependant!
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