You get to know who your mates are when you hit the wall, don’t you?
Having not been riding for thebest part of 2 months due to large amounts of work from a new job and moving house at the same time, I got a text from Postie on Saturday evening and thought ‘hey, what the hell’, and found myself outside his house in Penn at 0815 on Sunday morning. It happened to be about -1C at the time as well, and it didnt warm significantly through the ride.
I was on the OnOne again, but made one change, having switched the bars to Mary Bars. These are weird btw, and I’ll reserve judgement tol Ive ridden a few more rides. They felt ‘twitchy’ but I think its mainly because the angle is son much different to flat bars, when you turn tightly the angle your hands end up at is completely different that on flat bars you’d be jack knifing the front wheel so its sort of weird to get used to.
I knew it was going to be a tough ride having been off the bike for so long. What I wasnt counting on was not being able to find my camelbak amongst the clutter in my new home, so venturing out with just a water bottle I just figured I might have to borrow a puncture repair kit. As it was, I started off ok, if a little slow, but after about 10 miles I started getting really tired, slowing down consdiderably and hitting the wall completely shortly after that.
When I say hit the wall I don’t just mean I felt tired, I mean I really and truly exhausted just about ALL my energy reserves and had to struggle just to stay on the bike, let alone move it forward. Unfortunately we still had about 6 miles to go so I struggled on, getting more and more tired, using the singlespeed ‘lost traction’ excuse earlier and earlier on every climb until eventuall it felt hard going DOWNhill, let alone up. It seemed there WAS no flat, just up, steeper up, and bastard hard up.
Now the guys all knew I was getting tired – there was no hiding it, and they were awesome about it. While I was whinging and moaning and apologising, they were encouraging and forgiving, willing me and helping me to keep going when all I really wanted to do was get off the bike, crawl under a bush, curl up in a ball and cry. Yes I really was that knackered! I have no real excuse other than not being on the bike enough (or at all), but the lack of camelbak with its associated energy giving goodies that are always tucked away inside became a real hindrance and a matter for much cursing.
At one point the slow factor became too much and I actually lost the group. I’m not sure thats ever happened before, but the lack of camelbak also meant I’d left my phone in the car so I had no choice but to wait at the last decent junction and hope that I was noticed AWOL sooner rather than later. Sure enough, a few minutes later Steve came trolling back and located me, duely cycling back encouraging me to keep going. (I think I might have sworn at this point – sorry Steve). It WAS appreciated, and even though when I finally got back to the car and saw the temperature had yet to rise above 0.5C, even though I could barely stand up and had to fight with the bike to get it in and shut the boot, even though all I could think of was getting to the nearest garage to get SOMETHING to eat, I was also thinking how lucky I am to have mates like these.
and then Postie came out with a Mars Bar…… I swear I nearly cried.
Cheers fellas
