Come in Mr Kafka your time is up - How not to do a 200k Audax

Graeme was round here yesterday, asking me what my cycling goals are for next year.

Well, I don't really have any, but I wouldn't mind completing a 200k Audax.  I did a pretend one with Ruth last October on a route I designed myself and then in April this year I had an aborted attempt at the Wiggy 200 which starts and finishes in York.  I couldn't have got it more wrong that day if I'd programmed my behaviour into an electrified cock-up generator before I set off.  And my mood was so dark most of the day I thought I was in a Kafka novel.

The day didn't get off to the best start when the alarm went off at 4.30 am.  I needed to catch the 6 am train to York to get to the start for 8 am.  Helpfully all the burglar alarms in the street had been going off all night anyway so that helped me wake up.  I usually like the early train because it's easy to get your bike on and it's quiet, but oh no, not this day. 

There was an annoying bloke sitting near me who was on his way to Manchester airport and he kept droning on about a total load of bollocks and talking in baby talk to a small child on the other end of the phone and I really wanted to take his phone and shove it down the chemical toilet at the end of the carriage.

After the completely unrelaxing train journey I then met Mr Misnomer Adam the Slowcoach at 7 am in York station and we rode to Wigginton together.  I was trying to take it easy, but as usual I struggled to keep up with him, so I was pretty knackered before I even got to Wigginton.  

For a 200k the Brevet cards are red instead of blue, and instead of the odd assortment of old blokes in beards and fun riders I've seen at the 100ks I've done, the place was heaving with lean sinewy types who looked like they'd never even seen a pork pie, and who could probably ride to Outer Mongolia on the vapour from a banana.  I felt like a Sumo wrestler who'd taken a wrong turn and turned up by accident at the start of the Tour de France,

If I wasn't having a bad enough day already, then the bloody ride started.  I had researched the route beforehand but I wasn’t all that confident on the first section so I wanted to stick with one of the bunches. I got in a group with Ann Benton.  I thought she must know where she’s going, as she’s married to the organiser. I am led to believe she’s over 70 but even so I was having trouble sticking with her. Right from the start I had a pain down the back of my right leg which was worrying me and as it got a bit hilly around Coneysthorpe I was really struggling. One time I had real trouble getting my breathing back to normal even going downhill. Twice Slowcoach had to wait for me at the top of hills and I thought we can’t go on like this. 

It’s a bloody long day if you’re waiting for somebody all the time so I asked him not to wait for me any more, as I felt crap and I might not finish anyway, so no point wasting his time too. After he went off, I stopped for some chocolate, a diclofenac and a caffeine tablet in the shade of a big building and I wondered what the bloody hell I was doing here. Then I noticed it was only twenty past 9. I’d already done 30k so I thought maybe I should just set off at my own pace and see what happens. After all I still had 12 hours of time left. 

It went ok for a bit. I managed to follow the route sheet for about 15k and then I ended up in two minds about where to go at a Byways signpost. I chose wrong and ended up on top of a hill I wasn’t supposed to go up in Great Edstone. I couldn’t face doubling back so I carried on until I reached the A170 but then I was faced with 7 miles of Bank Holiday traffic on the main road before Helmsley. After about 3 miles I’d had enough and turned off at Wombleton I think and found my way to Helmsley via Harome. 

I got to the BATA service station at 11.  I went in to get my card stamped and the bloke behind the counter said to me ‘Blimey, you’re a bit off the pace, aren’t you?’. I said ‘Yeah, I’m off home, it’s as close to there as it is back to the start'.  

With hindsight I realise a lot of the problem with me that day was psychological.  All the places I had to go on the ride: Helmsley, Stokesley, Bedale, Knaresborough, Ripon, Masham etc, I know where they all are, and I know how far apart they all are, and it just seemed like a massive obstacle to get over, to go to all those places in one day, on a bike.  And so I failed the mental challenge, even before I discovered that my legs didn't work.

I carried on to the main square in Helmsley and it was heaving. I bought a coffee and a cookie and watched lots of families trying to eat ice cream before it melted in the scorching sun.  My knees were looking pretty red so I went to the Co-op to buy some sun cream but they’d bloody sold out.  I phoned Ruth and told her I was likely to be bailing out and asked her to be on standby to give me a lift, but I decided to press on to Coxwold. 

When I got there I sat in the shade and ate some melted chocolate and considered my options. I’d missed the info control at Oswaldkirk so I wasn’t likely to be getting a medal even if I finished, so I decided I had two options: Ride towards home or ride back to York. I remembered that it’s quite a long fast descent to Easingwold from Husthwaite so I thought I’d go back to Wiggy, hand in my uncompleted Brevet Card and go home. So that’s what I did. I rode back via Huby, Sutton and Strensall and I got back to Wiggy 5 minutes before the control opened for the early finishers.  I'd forgotten my sunglasses and my eyes had all dried out from squinting by then, and the sun was blinding me so I pretty much rode the last 20k on glued together eyes.

I walked into the hall back at Wiggy and Gerry didn’t take much convincing that I hadn’t completed the whole route. In fact, including wrong turns I did 110k plus about another 12k to and from the train station before that. 

It turned out it was the hottest April day since 1949. No wonder I was overheating. You could have fried an egg on my head by the end. Ruth came to pick me up and I pretty much passed out after that.  I was woken at about 6.30pm by a text from Slowcoach telling me he’d just finished. It’s a good job he hadn’t been riding with me for long. He’d have still been out there on Easter Monday.  I felt like crap all day, both mentally and physically and I was glad to get it over with. But as Ruth pointed out, if I hadn’t attempted it, I’d have just stayed at home and picked a fight with her and said ‘I wish I’d gone on that ride!’, so at least I knew it wasn’t meant to be. 

Even now I don't really know entirely what went wrong.  Apart from being blinded by the sun, havng a hotplate for a head, going off far too fast with totally the wrong people, weighing about two stone too much, being unable to follow the route sheet and trying to cycle on legs that were full of jelly, it's a complete mystery why I did so badly.

But this kind of thing has happened to me before.  I did the Swaledale Marathon (a 24 mile walk) one year and I was absolutely crippled and blistered all to hell by the end, and I made just about every first timer's mistake there is.  And for about 3 hours I said never again, and then I spent a whole year preparing myself to go and do it right, and I did, and when I had, I felt okay about not doing it again, because I'd finished it right once.  And that's why I'd like to have another go at a 200.