I am a bit over racing weight at the moment. In fact, until his drug habit was revealed, I was feeling like the MTB Ricky Hatton. It’s the luxury of only doing one big race a year – I can lay off for a while and do other stuff.
But I’m back on the training now. Unfortunately, my cranks weren’t ready for it:
That’s not really what you want to happen on a solo night ride, but I wasn’t hurt when they broke so I managed to get plenty more practise with the one-leg drills riding home.
Way back in 2000, I was sitting on a train out of central Birmingham. I saw a free newspaper and, flicking through, I saw an advert: “Ride from London to Paris for the NDCS“.
Back then, I was did no sport. I was crazy about music, my friends were all crazy about music, and I even played in a band. When I read that advert, I wished that I could do something like that ride. I had recently finished my degree and was trying to take a positive attitude to life. It was the commitment to positivity that made me question my immediate reaction: Why wish I could do it? Why couldn’t I do it?
Soon after, I had signed up to do the ride and bought what I thought was a nice bike. I couldn’t understand why the shop had tried to convince me to buy the lighter one. The lighter one was a bit cheaper, but it didn’t have a suspension fork and the steering felt too fast. The shop said it was better, but I wanted stability and that suspension looked cool.
So it was a mountain bike-shaped-object that I propped up against the wall of the lab. And it was the same bike-shaped-object that prompted a fellow student to invite me mountain biking.
We went to Coed-Y-Brenin. Packing the bike into the car, I deflated my tyres to get them past the brake blocks. When we got there, I thought my friend looked ridiculous in his purple cycling jacket and tights. I thought that there couldn’t be that big a difference between his suspension fork and mine. They looked pretty similar. I thought that the Race Face sticker on his bike was pretty funny… What a stupid name.
It was raining, but we set off into with me dressed in heavy cotton clothes. I could not believe how tough this was. My head span and the stupid gears wouldn’t change, especially when I was pedalling hard and really needed them. I wanted to take short cuts, but my friend wasn’t having it. We’d driven for hours to get here.
When the impossible climbing was over, we turned to riding along terrifyingly thin trails. Everything was pointy rocks, and built up so that I felt like I’d stumbled into Kickstart. It wasn’t so bad – if I kept looking right down at my tyre, I could make sure it was on-line but stuff kept surprising me as I hit it. Then, at the end of the narrow bit, the track dropped down vertically to a gravel road. I just hit the brakes hard. “You can’t ride that on a bike”, I said. When my friend rode it and it looked much less vertical, but I pushed down to be on the safe side.
The rain just kept coming, and my clothes were heavy with it. My trousers kept catching on the saddle. Somehow, though, this was the most fun I’d had in years.
More downhill narrow stuff, and there was a serious guy behind me. He started shouting abuse at me and I wanted to get out of the way, but I was braking as hard as I could manage and just hanging on. I wished I wasn’t holding him up.
We let a load of people past before my friend and I made our way down to the end of the trail. It ended with a confusing maze of roots. Every one looked slippery, but my perspective had changed since we set out. People could ride bikes on this stuff. So I tried.
And I failed. The pointy bar-ends caught me on the inside of my thigh as I crashed over them. I was OK-ish. It hurt to walk, and I needed a cup of tea, but I would be OK.
Before London to Paris came around, I had dumped the bike-shaped-object and laid down £500 on a Specialized. Again, it felt like it had twitchy handling, but I realised that it was a good thing. It was precision, and soon it was natural.
I kept riding off-road and trying to learn about this sport. Crashing on every ride, making friends to ride with, and generally having a fine old time. I couldn’t believe how fast my mind had to work on the bike, and how much technique there was to all this.
So, I rode out of London as a “mountain biker”. I arrived in Paris with another new idea of what bikes could do and how they could bring people together.
10 years later, and just last weekend I travelled from London to Paris again. This time working as a guide with a fair bit of cycling experience behind me. And I had the privilege to see people exceeding their expectations and extending their boundaries. I had the pleasure of Northern France and their farmer’s hay-sculpture.
It’s good to look back and seen how transforming cycling has been for me. To remember how many things seem natural now, but were alien then. I’m lucky to have the chance to share people’s discovery of cycling. I just try to share the enthusiasm without all the crap we think is necessary. And it’s great.
Weirdly, I’ll soon be going back to Birmingham for the kind of music that drove my life back then. Swan, Godflesh, and Napalm Death all together at the Supersonic Festival. Moving forward, but not forgetting where I came from (until beer intervenes).
It’s that in-between time now where I don’t have any big adventures sufficiently close to have to be training. Usually, this means a bit more time away from bikes and spending what biking time I have playing about – trying to improve technique and just have fun. Essentially, falling off a lot.
Weirdly, it hasn’t been like that this time. A combination of Emily being away, and me working from home has resulted in all-day-eating and my mind being stuck in a very small rut. The answer? Keeping up with somewhat big miles until Emily is back 🙂
Technique-wise, I have been looking at my pedalling, though. I’ve always suspected it wasn’t good but I finally took Adam’s suggestion and tried some 1-legged time on the turbo-trainer. It was even worse than I’d imagined. With one leg against the resistance of the machine, I could feel how little of the time I was actually driving the pedal. I jerked and clanked against the cleats. My left leg was way weaker than my right. I felt like a cheap puppet being operated by a drunk.
And that’s how I pedal… terribly.
It’s easy to take for granted that there is no technique to the pedalling part of mountain biking. With all the corners and the mud and the stuff to jump over. The only comparison I can make is to swimming. I can spot a poor swimmer, even if they’re moving quicker than average, by their lack of economy. You can see lots of unnecessary movement and splashing rather than efficient forward motion. So swimmers go and do drills. In the last couple of years, I’ve even done some of these drills. And suddenly it challenged the individual parts of my stroke, bringing improvements when I put things back together.
I don’t expect such a dramatic change from pedalling drills, but the thought of “free speed” is mighty appealing. Maybe I don’t just have to mash up and down on those pedals like a dumb singlespeeder. Turbo training, riding without a camelbak, tubeless tyres. What next road bikes, gears, and leg shaving? No!
2700 miles. Canada to Mexico. Alone.
That’s the strapline for the Ride The Divide film. It’s easy to focus on the first part of that statement, but the gravity of the final word is not apparent until you go there.
Alone.
No-one to support you, no-one to love, no-one to share with. At times on the Divide, there’s only dust and wind. And there’s no help in screaming at the wind… I tried that and it neither f**ked off or turned around. The land can extend to all horizons with no features giving you either beautiful solitude or mind-eating vastness.
For a long time during the race, it wasn’t a burden to be alone. It was a change from normal life and allowed me to have a Singular (subtle branding!) purpose. I could get on with just riding and being. But the burden crept up on me. By the final miles of the Divide, I decided to ride it out and get to Antelope Wells. Largely so that I could arrive that night and sooner be with people again.
While I was riding, I would sometimes imagine being at home, or out to dinner. Sharing the day and the night; some food and some drink. It would be so great to really live in a moment and not in the continuum of the race. I wanted the ease of the understanding and the bright thoughts of others.
And I wanted to ride with others. I wanted to chase and race for no reason. Face the bad weather with humour, face the dry and fast trails with anticipation. To have someone laugh at me when I fell off. Have someone to goad through the corners if they backed off.
But in the first couple of weeks of being back, the “alone” has continued to pile up. In riding I’ve missed people with good excuses (training for national champs) and bad excuses (feeling a bit tired) but it meant that even after being home for two weeks I hadn’t shared a single ride.
So my return to the UK was plodding round the same old places. Not fast, not training. Just feeling like a ghost who didn’t know any better.
Thank goodness Sam asked me to race for Singular: a weekend of bikes, beer, and hanging out? Yes, please.
We had a team of 5 for the 24 hour race at Bontrager 24/12 and it was fantastic to meet the guys. It wasn’t a group ride, but it was something just as good. There is some common thread connecting those of us who race solo endurance events and it was a fun change for us to work together. They spurred me on harder than I have raced in a long time. To the point of riding that fine line between success and disaster, to the point of effort that I can only just sustain crank up towards the finish so that I collapse straight after crossing the line.
Part of the reason I want to do things like the Tour Divide is because they do make you appreciate what you’ve got. I appreciated that I was able to be there, in those beautiful places and travelling huge distances. But more than that, I appreciated what is here at home. It looks like I won’t be writing a blow-by-blow account of riding the Divide, but bits and pieces like this will probably escape along the way…
Well, the Tour Divide is over for me in 2010. It was an outstanding experience. From meeting other riders in Banff, to the varied environments of the trail, to the many people in businesses along the trail who encouraged me despite the smell and the voracious appetite, it was great. I’m going to try to tie some thoughts together more coherently over the next few days, but first some answers to questions people asked on here or elsewhere while I was riding:
What the heck happened in the first few days?
As a few people guessed, I forgot how to set up the SPOT in tracking mode. My brain was pretty addled, and they’re not super accurate in some situations anyway so the track the SPOT showed didn’t really reflect where I had gone.
My rear tyre, a Kenda Small Block 8 tore away from the bead about 15 miles out from Elkford. It had been a very tight fit on Stans 355 rims (tyre levers required to fit it) and just went bang on a flat gravel trail. I bodged it with gaffer tape and toothpaste tube to get to Elkford but when I got there I was told there was no bike shop. In the words of the woman at a campsite, “We have to go out of town to buy underwear”. As it turned out, there is some bike servicing there from Shem at Elkford Bikes. He didn’t have any 29er tyres, though (he will for next time!) so I had to stop early for the night and he gave me a ride to Fernie in the morning. I managed to get a Maxxis Crossmark which fitted much better and I was back on the road from Elkford by 12.00pm.
It was frustrating sitting in Fernie, waiting for the bike shop to open but it was great to meet Shem and being at the back gave me a chance to meet lots of other riders and I made my way up the TD.
Why didn’t I call in much?
To begin with, I just wanted to get going and get into the race. After that, I was finding it difficult even when I wanted to. Thinking about what to say on a call-in was something that passed the time on some boring sections, but then it would be ages before I could manage to call and I would forget everything. I think it’s one of the difficulties of not being American when you’re doing this. I don’t automatically know where to look for phones and I didn’t have a US mobile phone to call in from.
I know that the call-ins add to the race, but I just found it hard to do!
The bike and the recovery drink
I took about 2.5kg of recovery drink with me because I’ve found it makes a big difference in training. It was good to hear from Matthew Lee in Banff that you can’t really train for the Divide, but the first week adapts your body to the demands of the trail. That had been my thought with the recovery drink, and that’s why I carried it. It was also handy to be able to sup a few hundred calories straight away to keep the stomach-beast at bay before going on to find real food. I was using chocolate orange Torq Recovery, which usually seems quite thick but just seemed like a normal drink on the Divide 🙂 I did ask them for freebies and they said no, but you can’t deny, it’s good stuff!
The bike was an absolute joy. The Singular Swift is a well finished, lightweight, lovely handling steel frame. The EBB performed perfectly, I tightened the chain once during the race (and it was getting a bit slack again by the end). Tyres aside, that was all of the maintenance I did. To be on the safe side, I got Orange Peel Bikes in Steamboat to replace the drivetrain and I absolutely needed a new rear tyre by then. The full spec was:
Tyres aside (again!), there’s nothing I’d really change from that. Money-no-object, I could shave off a few grams with lighter cranks, pedals, and brakes. Tyres-wise, I’d start with Crossmarks or maybe Nanoraptors. The Vulpine is too much of an XC race tyre and didn’t have enough grip for the odd bit of steep dusty/gravelly climb on a SS. The Small Block 8, clearly let me down badly but maybe I was just unlucky.
That’s it for now… Thanks for all the encouragement!
Aidan has just called and he has finished!
He sounds pretty good and has just had a massive cooked breakfast plus huge pancakes with whipped cream!
Now he is going to get some rest before catching a bus to LA where he is going to spend his remaining time with his buddies.
What an amazing job 2796 miles in 19 days 14 hours and 12 minutes!
Apparently New Mexico was a tough part to ride through, lots of straight, flat featureless miles.
Anyway I am thrilled that he is done and I can’t wait to see him next week.
Maybe the next update will be Aidan as I have to shoot to work now!
Well Done Aidan you are a super star! xxx
I am so excited that Aidan is nearly at the finish! I have butterflies flapping wildly around in my stomach.
He stopped last night 48.76 miles from Silver City (his last check point!)It looks as though he is still there but I reckon we will see signs of movement in half an hour or so.
Once he has reached Silver City he then has the last 133 miles to go!!!! Wahoo that is less than what he has been clocking up each day! The prediction chart thinks that he will make it in on the 20th day and 5 hours. The single speed record is 19 days and 16 mins and so Aidan may just miss that but who cares!
I think we can all say that he has done such an amazing job out there, To be in 4th place and only a tad behind the single speed record for your first time at this Epic journey is pretty darn impressive.
I am wondering whether he is going to keep his head down and try to do the whole 181.76 miles in a day, I wouldn’t put it past him as I suppose he doesn’t have to save himself for any more days of riding! We will just have to wait and see. Personally I think he will get in somewhere in the 19 day mark.
For anyone who hasn’t seen Aidan as a film star take a look at this link:
I had to chuckle as I have written Aidan some letters that he can open along the way, for the letter at the finish there is something else inside the envelope that will be of use to him after one of the comments made by him on the video. I will not put the answer yet as I am aware that Aidan has had internet access and so I’d hate to ruin the surprise but I will reveal all tomo when he finishes!
Anyway let us all think of Aidan give him some shouts of encouragement and see him to the finish line!!!
GO ON Aidan you can do it!!!!
Ok so i’ve just listened to people calling in. Aidan is saying that he is going to up the pace now and push into the night a bit more.
Eric who is in 3rd place called into say that he is going to slow the pace as he is going to burn out if he continues at the pace that he has been doing.
Aidan is exactly 1 day behind him, can he push into the the night and catch him……. I reckon so. This week could prove rather exciting.
GO on Aidan you can do it!
Hi All
Firstly Aidan is fine and doing well. He is in 4th position and heading towards Salida.
I felt that I should update the blog as Aidan has been riding alongside Dave Blumenthal for a good part of the race. Yesterday however Aidan went on ahead. I am so relieved that he did as Dave had a head on collision with a car/truck and sadly died today in hospital. It is one of those times that life seems circumstantial and I thank God that Aidan was not caught up in the accident.
I can’t imagine what Dave’s family must be going through, but my thoughts as i’m sure yours and many others are with his wife and daughter.
I never met Dave but it seems so surreal but it also highlights what a major event this is and how all the racers are taking a level of risk to fulfil their dreams.
May everyone remain safe for the remainder of this event and I hope that this terrible news spurs the racers on in Daves memory rather than wearing them down.
Aidan is on track to finish next Wednesday, I’ll be glad when he’s at the end. If you would like to see some pictures of Aidan and other riders use this link:
http://www.mountainflyer.com/news.cfm?itemid=397
For those who chase dreams xxx
Hello!
Well, how exciting is this race?! I could barely get enough signal on my phone whilst I was away camping at the weekend to follow Aidan, but when I could I was so happy to see him still eating up the miles. Now I have regular access again, it is truly amazing to see him moving up to 6th/7th place. Damn he’s doing well! The first half is over and he is about to leave Wyoming and enter Colorado then hopefully it is all downhill from there into New Mexico!
I haven’t heard from him since last week and so it was great to hear his voice on the online call in that the racers ring to say that all is ok. He was very upbeat and still had a good sense of humour as he asked if it was the tour divide complaint line as he would like to make a complaint………. The race is way too long!!!!! He also commented that everyone is really nice to ride with, the scenery is amazing and he also said thanks to all of those who have sent him texts of encouragement!
I bet he makes it to Steamboat Springs by the time I wake up in the morning.
I have to admit that I have been doing a small tour divide of my own, in fact tour of Richmond borough! I am trying to get fit for this coast to coast that I have roped Aidan into doing with me in Scotland this September, he will find the 47 mile bike ride and other stuff through the highlands a piece of cake. So as to not make him have to walk pushing his bike beside me as I cycle at my fastest I have been going on 20 mile bike rides and they are killing me! There is one hill in Richmond Park that is frankly quite rude and results in bad language and puffing! I already had a lot of respect for all these crazy riders that are happy to go 130-140 miles a day, day in, day out but now I have the utmost respect for them although I think it is still highly insane!
So carry on pedalling Aidan, it is getting to the point now where I really can’t wait to see him, if I could stretch my arm all that way, I would and give him a gentle push so that I could speak to him sooner when he finishes.
Hopefully this time next week I can report back that he has finished or is on his last day!
For those in the UK, enjoy this wonderful sunshine!
Adios Emily