#Shutuplegs

Apparently people do a few years of 10’s and then maybe a 25 or two and if there feeling REALLY brave they might have a go at a 50. It takes a special kind of idiot to jump straight in to 100 miles having never used tri bars for more than an hour before.

Hello *Waves* I am that idiot, or at least I am in the eyes of the Icnield road club.  I left out the fact that I have actually done three time trials in my life, the Welsh 12hr champs, an interclub 30 and this 100; and I’ve figured it out already – are you sitting down? Time trialling is simply an exercise in pain management, as a friend of mine put it “Its that point where the stabbing pain in your legs is no longer a pain its normal” right then, glad that’s cleared that on up…

With a push off at 06.06 on a Sunday morning it became clear that a I would have to leave the very nice, warm and (Key point this) non saddle shaped confines of my bed very early, as luck would have it my housemates were on their way back in from a night out. Suffice to say breakfast was a surreal event – a combination of alcohol and lycra not normally seen outside of certain nightclubs…  Rolling in to the event HQ it became clear that I had missed the memo that stated I needed a full aero TT bike, silly helmet and skinsuit to be considered serious. I had not only got a set of clip on extensions but had managed to borrow a pair of wheels, the rear being a carbon tri spoke; how could this fail to turn me into Wiggo?

As I have said, pain management pure and simple, when it hurts keep going and if it doesn’t hurt then your not trying hard enough. Only when you have worked through the pain and reach the ‘zen’ on the other side do you know you have reach pure testing nivarna. Or a 25mph plus average on an E1/2…

I won’t go into detail about the next 4 and a bit hours, suffice to say I know the bit of A1 between Stevenage and Cambridge very well indeed. I rolled past the finishing line for the first time and stopped, unfortunately there was another 8 miles to go – this I’ve decided is one of the flaws of not having any form of milometer, after a few seconds, well minutes of faffing I realised that having got this far it would be daft not to finish. So knowing  that I had 9 miles left it should have been a case of burying ones self but after 98 miles and a stop it really took every last little bit of effort to get the legs turning never mind sprinting – I managed to catch one of the three people who had passed me during my faff but a *lot* of time lost…

The timekeeper reckons on about 4.31 without the confusion.

That’ll do Gromit, that’ll do…

Am I going to do another one? Probably.

Am I going to become a full time tester? Probably not.
Do I want a fully fledged time trial bike? Hell Yeah…