Since I broke the South Downs Double record back in May this year I have been struggling to regain my health and retain my fitness. June and July were low points but into August things started to turn around and with health returning I’ve been gradually rebuilding the hard earned fitness that has slowly, but steadily, slipped away. Being a long distance endurance racer presents a problem when returning from illness in that it’s very difficult to work out just when would be sensible to start racing again. Riding a bike offroad for 12 hours is no small task at the best of times, often it is the very nature of the event that causes the problems in the first place, and being competitive is a whole different league.

Sometimes you just have to bite the bullet, enter an event with a view to using it as training, and hoping you have the sense to know the difference between it getting really tough, because at some point it will, and digging a great big hole that takes you back to rock bottom.

This weekend I entered the Torq in your Sleep 12 hour with that goal in mind and a deep feeling of apprehension. Having not done anything competitively since May I was starting to feel a bit like I’m letting my team and sponsors down. It’s easy to feel this, I’ve got a lot of commitment to them and a deep ingrained sense of obligation to honour those who back what I do. I have to remind myself that breaking the record was actually a pretty big accomplishment and sometimes, when you lay everything on the line to achieve such goal, there can be a real health and/or fitness cost involved. I put all the eggs in the Double record basket and some of them got broke!

Being as this was a training race I set things out fairly low key. My girlfriend came along to help support and we took the team E-Z-UP but that was pretty much it so as we rolled into camp it was great to bump into my old riding buddies, Les and Scott, and their families and know that Zoe would have some company whilst supporting me at her first mountain bike event. The pit can be a lonely place.

The course designers had done a pretty good job. There were a few places where the course was gonna get cut up and a bit messy if it continued to rain but I figured even if I broke it’d be about 70% ridable and at least passable without resorting to a stick, to remove the mud from around the tyres, for at least 90% of the course. This was good news as being a bit of an idiot (I’ll say it was just a lack of practice as I’ve not raced for a while) I’d forgotten to pack the skinny mud tyres!

The race started smooth enough. I got out near the front, watched the usual suspects disappear up the trail, resisted the MASSIVE urge to go with them and settled into a steady but quite respectable pace. My heart rate was ridiculously high; higher than it has been in any race for at least the last 4 or 5 years but my legs felt ok so I just knuckled down and bit deep. Lap one always feels bad so I ignored it, lap two was a lot better. By lap three I knew finishing was going to be a tall order. My body had moved straight into the hurt box and every part of me seemed to be having some sort of dispute with another part. Not good.

To be told at this point that I was in 8th spot was a bit of a pleasant surprise. OK, I’ll come clean, I was really, really pleased to be in the top 10 so I cracked on and thought lets just see how far I can ride without breaking myself again.

The only things I can report from laps four through to eight are that it hurt lots, I got more and more tired, it got dark, it rained, the course got more and more chewed up and with my currently reduced power output it was becoming harder and harder to clear each section. My body got closer and closer to imploding with just about every revolution of the pedals and I felt for hours like I was just hanging on by the skin of my teeth! I think if Zoe had seen me race before she’d have pulled me from the race but she didn’t know what to expect other than tales of me pushing myself real hard and go a little too far. Dave was on the mobile to her giving guidance and everything else was in the hands of the stubborn old git on the IronHorse who simply refuses to die!

By hour 8 I was up into 5th! Ridiculous, lost health, lost training, lost fitness; I’m rolling round the woods delirious and barely able to see straight, the bike hasn’t been washed whilst everyone else changes theirs every lap, I’m on 2.1 dry weather tyres in the pissing rain and pitch black with a bent saddle and a broken seat post clamp that won’t allow me to sit straight on the bike and I’m in 5th?

And with that revelation my body exploded and threw in the towel! Or at least it would have liked too but unfortunately I tell my body what to do so we continued round the woods, mind and body in the mother of all arguments, for another two and a half ours of pain and insanity before eventually riding and walking myself to a complete standstill a mere hour and twenty four minutes shy of the end of the race.

Eventually the race finished without me and I slipped down to a respectable 10th position. My lowest ever 12 hour finish but something that filled me with quite a bit of satisfaction. I’m not back to where I want to be, far from it, but I did make the right call and I did give everything I had whilst keeping my ego in check and eating a big slice of humble pie.

It’s easy to smash up the field when you’re in the form of your life; not so easy to keep going when everyone expects you to win but you know that the fitness isn’t there to do so. If this was a test then I’ll consider my ride to have passed.