If I learned anything from this weekend's bike ride, it's that it's really worth putting the physical training in beforehand, particularly if your brain is wired like mine and it starts looking around for the exit at not even halfway. The benefit of training is that if your mind goes AWOL, your body might just get you through.
I had a pretty dark spell between about 5 pm on Saturday and 3 am on Sunday, when I wasn't sure I could do it, or even if I still wanted to. I was grumpy about how wet and cold I was, and how soggy my feet were and how much my eyes and neck hurt and about late we'd arrived in Arnside, and I was grumpy about how many hills there'd been between Kirkby Lonsdale and the coast. And I was grumpy about a few other things as well.
But if I was mentally shot, my legs were fine. The memory in my muscles of all the miles I'd done earlier in the year eventually got the signal through to my head around 3 am on Sunday that I was up to the task. And as soon as I got back on the bike on Sunday, it was the feeling in my legs that gave me the encouragement I needed. It may be just as well for me I don't pedal with my head.
Sometimes I think that by doing hard things, I will understand how friends of mine do even harder things, and then those things won't seem like such a big deal, but it doesn't seem to work like that. If anything, it makes them seem even more daunting.
For example, I only had to get through one dark period between 100 mile bike rides, which was on Saturday night, whereas Graeme on his Land's End to John O'Groats ride had to do that for 8 nights in a row. That's 8 opportunities to do what I nearly did which was to park the bike and catch the bus to Dark Night of the Soul Town.
And he did the ride we did this weekend in 20 hours last year, without sleep, although in fairness he did say it's easier if you don't stop, and he might have a point.
That's maybe how people do longer distance rides like the longer Audaxes. Because it's not the misery and the pain and the discomfort that kills you, it's the comfort and the being warm and dry. I nearly went to sleep in the drying room in the youth hostel on Saturday. I would probably have turned into a dry husk overnight, but I just wanted to be warm and dry, and stay that way. It's not easy putting dry feet into wet shoes again knowing that they're going to be in them for another 10 to 12 hours before you can get them off again. So, in some ways, it may be better to never take them off, until the bitter end.
Having said that, the level of discomfort involved in doing a long distance Audax just sounds like a step too far. I've heard stories of people who have aimed for a particularly comfortable bus shelter in the middle of the night somewhere so they can catch 20 minutes sleep before carrying on, and it might just be my age, but nothing about that scenario is screaming out to me 'Come and join us!'.
Yes, the thing that worries me most about doing these really long rides, is that if my mind has a habit of bailing on me and catching the broom wagon home, what happens when the legs give up too.
I guess that wherever that were to happen, that's where you'd find me.
But if I was mentally shot, my legs were fine. The memory in my muscles of all the miles I'd done earlier in the year eventually got the signal through to my head around 3 am on Sunday that I was up to the task. And as soon as I got back on the bike on Sunday, it was the feeling in my legs that gave me the encouragement I needed. It may be just as well for me I don't pedal with my head.
Sometimes I think that by doing hard things, I will understand how friends of mine do even harder things, and then those things won't seem like such a big deal, but it doesn't seem to work like that. If anything, it makes them seem even more daunting.
For example, I only had to get through one dark period between 100 mile bike rides, which was on Saturday night, whereas Graeme on his Land's End to John O'Groats ride had to do that for 8 nights in a row. That's 8 opportunities to do what I nearly did which was to park the bike and catch the bus to Dark Night of the Soul Town.
And he did the ride we did this weekend in 20 hours last year, without sleep, although in fairness he did say it's easier if you don't stop, and he might have a point.
That's maybe how people do longer distance rides like the longer Audaxes. Because it's not the misery and the pain and the discomfort that kills you, it's the comfort and the being warm and dry. I nearly went to sleep in the drying room in the youth hostel on Saturday. I would probably have turned into a dry husk overnight, but I just wanted to be warm and dry, and stay that way. It's not easy putting dry feet into wet shoes again knowing that they're going to be in them for another 10 to 12 hours before you can get them off again. So, in some ways, it may be better to never take them off, until the bitter end.
Having said that, the level of discomfort involved in doing a long distance Audax just sounds like a step too far. I've heard stories of people who have aimed for a particularly comfortable bus shelter in the middle of the night somewhere so they can catch 20 minutes sleep before carrying on, and it might just be my age, but nothing about that scenario is screaming out to me 'Come and join us!'.
Yes, the thing that worries me most about doing these really long rides, is that if my mind has a habit of bailing on me and catching the broom wagon home, what happens when the legs give up too.
I guess that wherever that were to happen, that's where you'd find me.
Amazing good writing.A pleasure to read.Well done.
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