Shakespeare said that there's nothing good or bad, but thinking makes it so. Like most of his ideas, he probably copied it off someone else. I mean the Buddha said something similar and he was born ages before Shakespeare, but as it's virtually impossible to come up with anything completely new these days, and as he did say it rather concisely let's not give the guy a hard time. He's had plenty of stick already this year, with people claiming he didn't even write his own plays.
I don't think Shakespeare was much of a cyclist, but if he had been and if he'd been into Sportives, he might have given the Northern Rock Cyclone a go. I've done it twice and that's enough times to know that thinking really does make things so. It was virtually the same event both times, but one time I thought it was the best thing since sliced bread, and the other time I wanted to slice my own head off with despair.
For anyone who doesn't know, it's basically a bike ride round Newcastle and the surrounding area. You can either do a Fun Ride of 30 miles, a Medium Ride of 60 or if you're really fit, a Long Ride of 100. Completely logically, they let the 100 milers set off first, then the 60s, then lastly, they let the fun riders go. They let them go last, so they don't wipe anybody out with the baguettes they're carrying in their shopping baskets. It costs £20 to enter, but for that you get a timing chip and a T-shirt and there's an arrow on every bush telling you which way to go, so there's no thinking to do, just riding. They also give you a bag of other assorted crap at the end, leaflets and stuff, and a bar of chocolate, although I could do with that at the beginning.
Anyway, when I did it in 2009, I got a lift off Graeme, got there really early, got parked at the stadium, registered early and then set off with Carol and Suzanne as soon as we were able, which was with the last of the 100 mile riders. Although I felt pretty crappy from a lack of cycling that year, it was pretty much 5 hours of being overtaken by faster riders, then when all 3 routes converged at Stamfordham 11 miles from the end, I got pumped full of pink Powerade and bananas at the feed station and then spent about 40 minutes overtaking fat blokes on mountain bikes, old ladies on shoppers, and other assorted people who were slower than me. I felt like I was some kind of Superhero as I was tearing past them all. Then I got back to the stadium and I got clapped and cheered in by a family of 3. They were actually cheering someone who was riding near me, but I didn't care. And then I drank some cider in the sun and I felt absolutely brilliant.
Here's a picture of me feeling absolutely brilliant!
So I told people how great it was, and I rounded some other people up (Ruth and Mark) and I did it again the following year. And it was bloody awful! All the things that went right one year went wrong the next.
I drove there myself instead of getting a lift, I got there quite late and had to park about 3 miles from the stadium. Then when I got to the stadium, I had to walk for miles and then queue up for ages to register, and then after all that went wrong, I started the ride and that didn't go much better.
At the start we lost Suzanne because she couldn't clip in with her posh shoes, then Mark lost his kagoul and we had to stop, then Ruth chucked her water bottle on the floor and had to wait ages for all the riders to go past before she could pick it up.
Because we'd got there so late and taken so long to register, instead of being in the way of faster people who had to spend all day overtaking us like the year before, we were in the middle of the fun riders and people doing it as a challenge for charity, and we had to spend all day swerving round them as they rode four abreast and were stopped on the grass verges having picnics and a generally lovely time.
And the feed stations had all been decimated and there were just empty bottles and banana skins everywhere and I didn't get to neck Powerade and at the end where I'd felt like Superman the year before I was now getting left for dead by the 100 milers who were steaming past me. And now I felt like I was the one with the knobbly tyres and the baguettes, and a dog in the picnic basket on the front because all the people I could have steamed past and felt superior to had all gone home ages ago.
And when I got to the finish, nobody cheered because I didn't finish at the same time as that bloke who had his family there this time, and when I handed my timing chip in they gave me a bag of rubbish and in it was a white T-shirt that was miles too big. And that just emphasised how upside down the whole experience was because last year they gave me a black T-shirt that was too small, with a neck so tight that it made my eyes bulge. And the white one's so loose I could stick tent poles up it and sleep under it.
So is it a good event? Of course it is. It's a brilliant ride, but if anything it's a victim of its own success. It's so massively popular that millions of people all turn up at once, and if you get there quite late there's only distant parking and the skins of bananas.
And when you go for the first time, with someone who think it's great and who does all the organising, you are free to enjoy it, because it wasn't your idea, but when you've recommended it to people, and then things go wrong, you feel responsible for their enjoyment as well as your own.
Also, in the year between doing it one time and the next, I'd done a lot of Audaxes, which are very small-scale and cheap, and if you're always a last minute Charlie like me, it's not such a big deal if you get there late. Although, having said that, if you're late enough to miss the start and if you haven't got a clue where you're going, they can end up being just as disastrous. Especially if you're me.
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