“It was a bright cold day in April and the clocks were
striking thirteen”
The opening line from 1984, if you’ve not read it yet, go
and get an education on the dangers of a lack of effective democracy; and then
go and read Brave New World by Aldous Huxley and WE by Yevgeniy Zamyatin. Three different takes on the same idea.
Anyway, I digress.
Last Saturday, 6th April I’d entered another audax in support
of the organiser who I routinely meet on other events in the locale and was
organising for the first time. Why not,
I thought, typical 100km audaxes are about £7 wherever they are, I’ve not done
this one before and it fits in my plan of an audax a month as part of my
recovery efforts.
So, 6th April 2019 dawned not dissimilarly to
1984, bright-ish, cold-ish, but with an improving forecast, so I threw caution
to the wind and opted for the MTB shorts with the separate padded liner, longer
socks, and a merino baselayer under a SS jersey. Not being entirely full of carefree abandon,
I took arm- and knee-warmers and a light waterproof/windproof, all just in
case.
As usual, the Saturday morning trains were useless beyond
Cambridge or heading east into the wilds of Suffolk, so it was a case of chuck
it all in the car on Friday night, substantial breakfast Saturday morning
(involving eggs, avocados, fresh Swedish rye bread from that week’s trip –
yum!) and then head off to Bury Ste Edmunds and down to HQ at Long
Melford. Long Melford is a pretty little
town/large village in Suffolk that I’ve ridden through many times without
paying it much attention other than as a navigation point on the journey. It
seems to have quite a bit to offer as a tourist destination with a couple of
large country house estates and National Trust places plus cafes etc.
As per pretty much every audax I’ve done, the HQ folks were
bouncy and full of friendliness, apologising for the weather while pressing
cups of coffee and fresh toast or biscuits into your hands as they scurried
around getting ready to set off the earlier 160km riders. Now, at this point in my recovery 160km is in
the far distance as an objective for the summer with the Ride of the Falling
Rain on Islay. I was set for the
relatively trivial distance of 106km for the day.
The Keen Lads - Setting off for the 160km
The Calm After the Storm
By the time we were ready to set off, nothing had improved
at all in weather terms, so I donned the waterproof as my knees are fairly
robust and my top half would soon be toasty warm, and probably a bit overwarm
soon after starting. The start was
managed for the benefit of the photographer from the local rag, so if you spot
me at the front of the bunch, never mind, I was there for all of 15km before
getting passed by what I assume is a husband and wife pair I‘ve seen before and
seem t be consistently fast.
As with most things audax, there’s an ebb and flow on the
road, with bunches appearing, breaking up and reforming, and so I ended up as
we left Suffolk, into the spiky short, sharp hills of Essex, amongst a bunch of
about ten riders at similar speed.
Interestingly you could see a microcosm of a pro-peloton as the lighter
of us accelerated up the hills only to be reeled back in on the flats as the
bunch settled into a rythym. Donning
the waterproof had been a good idea as there was a steady drizzle, and instead
of warming up, the temperature seemed stuck around 5-6C, just about the lower
limit of shorts-wearing, but as predicted pretty hot and sweaty on top.
Do I Look Like I'm Having Fun Yet?
The first info control was rearing it’s ugly head at 35km,
pretty simple you’d think “what’s the colour of the co-op sign in the
village?”. Let’s just say there seems to
be a degree of audaxer colour blindness, with options ranging from black to
green to blue, or did they mean the lettering, which was gold? A lesson in effective info controls
perhaps? Maybe something like “what’s
the name of the church opposite the co-op?” would be less ambiguous?
Black, Blue, Green, You Decide - Note Absence of Recumbent
This is where the bunch broke up for me, as I stopped for a
quick pastry and blood glucose test, no worries there. Normally I’d stop earlier than 35km, around
25 typically, but lately I’ve been working out how far I can go on a single
charge with a degree of confidence, and I’m finding that a bit of extra
breakfast can take me far enough for these controls around 1/3 distance with no
worries. Only saves me a couple of
minutes, but riding in a bunch a bit longer can be nice at times.
So far, so good.
Unfortunately, it was only going in one direction from there
onwards.
About 45km, my lower back started hurting, getting
progressively worse, and then the hips/pelvis joined in in sympathy for extra
fun. By about 55km, I was thinking about getting back to the HQ and calling it
a day, the feeling growing as I rode on. The day was getting no better, even
though the rain had stopped by now, but it remained overcast, grey and
cold. There was a breeze for sure, but
nothing compared to the Fens, or the winds on the Pork Pie 100km a few weeks
earlier.
Back at the HQ, with thoughts of coffee and cake, I told Ian
I was packing.
“really, but you’re making such good time” was the reply “why
not have a cup of coffee, warm up a bit and then decide”. I agreed, knowing full well that my mind was
made up. Only another 35km to go, and I knew I COULD complete, the question was
whether I SHOULD, knowing that if I did so, I’d be nursing my back for the rest
of the week. Coffee, ham sandwich and
malt loaf aided the cogitation, with a confirmatory call home and I handed in
my brevet and called it a day.
Total 65km in about 2hr 33 at an average of 25.1kmh. All good, and there will be plenty more rides
to go. I might even come back for this one next time round as it would be a
great ride under better conditions.
Looking back, it had been a busy week, which I think may
have been a contributory factor.
- Sunday – swim 1500m
- Monday travel to Sweden and run 7km on arrival
- Tuesday – none
- Wednesday – run 7km
- Thursday – morning walk, 5km while taking photographs of the lake, travel home
- Friday – none
- Saturday - Audax
Perhaps a bit too much at this stage of the recovery,
perhaps just the additional travel and being sat down, perhaps just one of
those things. In any case, I think I’d have stood a better chance of completion
on a recumbent, so I’ve started taking steps to repair it even without the
police decision and the lawyers chasing the insurance of the drive that hit
me. I just need to get it done.
