The Sunday Riders

update to podium

2007-10-13T19:48:19+02:00

Third overall once again.

This time two third places in the series too.

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Podium!!!!!

2006-01-26T00:43:34+01:00

I finally made the podium. 3rd place vet overall in the Marin Thetford winter enduro.

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Hydration

2005-11-07T15:52:27+01:00

mmm...does being properly hydrated save me more time in a 4 hour enduro than I lose stopping for a pee?

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Strange territories

2005-11-04T22:42:37+01:00

I find myself in a strange land, a land not far away, a land ahead, a land over the horizon where there be dragons of jutting jaw in masks of grim determination. A land not home! It’s nice here, but, I can come back whenever I want to……..can’t I?

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Chasing the podium

2005-11-04T22:40:23+01:00

The Cape Epic, The Transalp Challenge, 1 week training in Mallorca, 3 rounds of the Merida 100k, 9000 km of bike riding so far this year. And, I’m fit!! Am I happy with that? Yay! I’m pleased that I’m stronger and faster. I now find that I’m riding in a strange territory, near the front of races and with people who look fit and, with whom, I feel I shouldn’t be rubbing shoulders. People who once didn’t exist in my world of racing are now only minutes in front of me, many are behind me.

And it is here, in this enclave lies the itch! A monkey on my back, holding tight and whispering in my ear “ It’s not enough, you need more, more, MORE! Suddenly, I see myself standing on a, no the podium, arms aloft.

I’m chasing the podium now, no-one else exists…….Come to me my precioussssss……..

Parkaboy.

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Thetford enduro round 1

2005-11-03T23:25:14+01:00

Shorts, short sleeves, red faces, dehydration and sunburn!! Well no sunburn, but it was sooo hot and sooo not like October. Round one of the Thetford enduro got off to a flying start with 250 competitors sweating their way around the 'other side' of the road. Bone dry singletrack, packed down berms, sandy bits and a ......climb!!! the short 10.2km course made for some fast exciting racing. probably the toughest course I've ever ridden at Thetford, me and almost everyone else complained of back pain, neck pain, sore feet. Legs not so bad but everything else smashed to a pulp.

I took 4th in the vets, so far this year a podium has eluded me. 8th,6th and 5th in the Meridas, I have my podium shirt packed and ready for later in the year parkaboy

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The Trans Alp Challenge 2005

2005-08-01T12:18:09+02:00

Never again:The first time was the last time, this time was the first time I’d forgotten about the last time.

I swore I would never do this again. I always do: but never have I made such a vow with such fervour. After the last time I raced this race, I was still limping weeks later waiting for toenails to re-grow, still struggling to sit down on my bruised and battered ischial tuberosities. I even wrote it down, for the avoidance of doubt: Never again, never ever again.

Yet here I am again five years older, scrambling up the summer remains of a glacier as steep as a staircase, bike across my shoulders carefully stamping my feet into the holes in the snow left by the hundred or so hunched figures in front of me: rider 229’s foot leaves the hole as mine slips in and, as my foot leaves another from behind replaces it. I dare not look up, as I know this weary caterpillar stretches several kilometres ahead. I know that with the steep icy bone threatening descent to come that I’m still on the easy bit.

This is the annual ordeal known as the Transalp Challenge: one of the crueller manifestations the sport of endurance mountain biking

Most of us are just recreational riders,weekend warriors, cafe racers or just Sunday riders. Many of us,(like me) are long past our peak; but the elite riders bear comparison to the best road riders in the world. There is barely, however a fulltime athlete amonst us. This is sport as it used to be, fitted in around day jobs.

There is great camaraderie in our world and very little known of us outside it. Most Britons have never heard of the sport.Those who have generally find the idea baffling. How, they wonder can rational people expose themselves to so much struggle and risk? Answer: because it's fun. Launching yourself of the side of a mountain on a lightweight piece of carbon or aluminium down steep rocky slopes is neither easy nor sensible. But,when you get it right the payback is phenomenol.

Eight days and 50 hours of riding/carrying/walking time and we cross the line in Jesolo on the coast of italy. Who's won? We don't, know we don't care. We've all won, we've beaten it. Our proof? A green euro flouro t-shirt that has finisher written across the front.

To take part go here: http://transalp.upsolutmv.com/en/

My photos: http://raymond189.fotopic.net/c629939.html

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