 |
| The Tiffosi after the Etape |
‘Some days you’re the hammer… other days you’re the nail’
You may have seen reports in the press, back in September.
Announcing my retirement from Triathlons.
No? Well you’re not alone. I had expected a little more fanfare, but
this fact seems to have gone pretty much un-mentioned in the national media. I
suspect they were too busy, caught up in the post Olympic fanfare and all that.
If truth be told, I wasn’t really a fan of triathlon. I
don’t really like running and I’m a rubbish swimmer, so god alone knows what I
was thinking when I decided that I was going to take on a Half Ironman. It was
the swimming that I really hated. My coach commented that I had the wrong type
of physique- a back end like an elephant and a top half like a sparrow. Which
isn’t a good combination in life, never mind swimming. My body tended to the
vertical when in the water – which more conducive to drowning than swimming. My
natural focus on survival did not help with achieving a fast time. The other
thing I hated was putting my head under the water. Not in the swimming pool,
god no. That was fine. I quite liked immersing the old bonce in the warm
chlorinated, clean water. But the problem with Triathlons is that they insist
that they are done outside, and the problem with Triathlons on Scotland is that
they insist they are done in Scotland. If anyone here has tried to swim in a
Scottish Loch will know that they are absolutely Baltic. The deep water, the
snow melt from the hills and the fact that the Scottish summer occurs one day
in June, means the water is permanently just above zero.
Getting into the water is always miserable. Firstly there
are all the jaggy rocks that you cant see on the floor of the Loch. I used to
call it the ‘monkey walk’.
‘oooh, ahhh, oooh, oooh, oooooh, ahhh’
At the start of a triahlon if you close your eyes and listen
its almost as if you are transported into a troupe of particular vociferous
monkeys, as people gingerly wade into the loch and step on all the painful
stones.
Then the water gets up to your thighs and your testicles make
a beeline for your armpits - always particularly unpleasant. As you go deeper,
and the water gets above your chest, its like the air gets slowly squeezed out
your body, by a slowly tightening vice and it becomes difficult to breathe.
Have you ever felt the need to stick your head in a vice? Thought not. Hence my
reticence to stick the phisog into the aqua. My decision to retire did not take
a whole lot of consideration.
That’s why I’ve never taken up surfing. I love the idea of
it. I love the imagery of it. Except the imagery is always of some tanned
be-muscled athlete in a pair of board shorts. I’d like to see him try that off
the west coast of Scotland. He wouldn’t last long.
Give me a warm shark invested sea any day.
The fact that I’m luminous white and have muscles like knots
in a midges penis has nothing to do with it either.
I imagine surfing to be quite a humbling sport. You are
after all, at the mercy of powers that are far in excess of yours. You will
have to work with the waves, make the best of whatever fare nature dishes up on
any particular day. No matter how
good a surfer, you can’t ride a great wave if its flat calm. You cant do that
really cool thing where they zipp along the inside of a breaking wave if you’re
not lucky enough to be in the right place at the right time. Sure, you can
maximise your chances and make sure you make the best of the opportunities that
are presented. But ultimately you are at the mercy of the gods.
Cycle racing is like surfing, in a roundabout kinda way. In
that so much of it is chance, so much of it you can’t control. On any given day
just about anyone in the peloton could win, if they are in the right place at
the right time. If the sun is shining on them and they have the favour of the
gods, then they are in with a shout. Sure, the strongest riders will still win
the most often but over one race, its anybodies.
There is a golden rule in cycling, an indisputable fact
around which all tactics are based: The poor bugger at the front of the bunch
is working far harder than anybody else. Not just a little bit harder either.
He could be knocking his pan in whilst 7 bikes back, tucked in and out the wind
his colleague could have his pipe out and his slippers on, feet up, enjoying a
cup of tea and discussing the pressing issues of the day. The vagaries of
aerodynamics mean that if the fella on the front wants to double his speed, he
will have to cube his effort, meanwhile the chaps in the bunch will barely
notice the difference.
Getting away from the bunch is a difficult too. Basically,
you will only get away if the bunch lets you go. That means that your pace in
dictated by the pace of the bunch. Basically, what I am trying to impress, dear
reader, is that there is a lot of chance involved. Someday’s youre the hammer,
other days you’re the nail.
One of my goals of this season was a good result in the Etape
Caledonia. The Etape is a sportive run over closed roads in highland
Perthshire. It attracts a field of over 5000 riders. One of my main targets for
this year was a sub 3hr 50 time and I thought that I might be able to get into
the top hundred riders.
The race was great. Right from the get go, the sun was out
and there was barely a breath of wind. Because of the number of riders in the
race, people are set off in bunches at two minute intervals. The fastest guys
first. As a result you have no real idea what your relative position in the
race is. As a result I was concentrating on my clock rather than position. I
was in the second wave off and we made good pace. We made good time to Kinloch
Rannoch and caught a bunch of riders just before we made it to Loch Rannoch. I
had done a fair bit of pulling for the 20 miles to Kinloch Rannoch, so decided
to sit in and hide from the wind for a while. A fair sized bunch had formed
round the loch, which was blown apart by the time we got to the top of
Schehallion. I lost sight of a group of riders on the ascent but by the time we
were making our way through Glen Lyon we had formed into a group small enough
that people were willing to work together. As a result we caught another group
of riders. When the new group formed it became obvious that it was going to be
too big to work together, and the terrain too flat for any breaks form. I sat in,
content that my speed was such that I was going to easily get inside my target
time. I didn’t know where about I was in the field; too far down to merit any kamikaze
efforts, but far enough up to be confident of finishing in the top 100.
As we approached the last five miles, the pace increased and
the quality of the riding decreased. Riders, some of whom were on the limit,
started to take risks and make mistakes- never a good combination. I had in the
back of my mind the tour and didn’t feel that the reward of 50th as
opposed to 51st place merited taking any undue chances. So I
continued to sit in. By the time we were in the finishing straight guys were
busting a gut in the sprint, again I couldn’t see the value, so sauntered over
the line. My time was 3hrs 36 mins. I had smashed my target time and I was
absolutely delighted… Until I got a call from my Uncle to tell me that I had
finished in 7th place only 90seconds off a podium place. I felt
fresh as a daisy. I was gutted!
In the interests of fairness, I have to point out that that
standard of the field was pretty ordinary, however. Three days later I was
competing in a 3rd / 4th cat race in East Kilbride with a
field of only 50 riders. I finished in 15th. And I was well and
truly busted. That day I was definitely the nail.
From Pitlochry,
n
From Pitlochry,
n
No comments:
Post a Comment