A glacial epoch back or so, I expounded my new found theory of cyclonomics, at which point – work being pretty much done – I smugly awaited multiple nominations for economics awards, Nobel prizes and global lecture tour invites to wow the world with this unheralded insight into why riding bikes was both fantastic and fiscally stimulating.

As even the most delusional – even those barely tethered to reality – would quickly ascertain, any letterbox widening on my part was somewhat premature. For me it’s been a one man credit card crusade to prove a theory that has so far delivered not much more than ‘bloody hell that’s a shit load of stuff I appear to own now‘.

Take the Goshawk 50 for example* where any treasonable thought of Gym membership was usurped by freezing my cods off on a weekly basis to ensure a result somewhere at the respectable side of mediocrity Saved myself thirty quid a month for at least two months before spending the balance and quite a bit more to actually participate in the event.

£20 to enter of which a chunk is donated to charity feels like a fair swap. That lot ^^^^ up there less so. Best described as analogous to a hated visit to the dentist. After pondering it for a while, you sort of feel you should, but you rather wish you weren’t. And then you get to pay a huge chunk of money for the privilege of having a shit time. I’ve always assumed this is how posh status-concious people feel about the private school system.

So what we have here are purchases that represent nothing but survival. Some items shall be eaten, some will be drunk, some shall protect important squashy bits from collision trauma, and the remainder may partially protect ones derrière from a Welsh enema.

Let’s start there; on leaving the Chilterns and their 10 month mud cycle, I swore that never again would any proper money purchase another mudguard. Gopping horrible aesthetically reprehensible objects best left to those with map boards and a wardrobe full of Ron Hill. Really, just BTFU,**, splash out on some splash resistant shorts and embrace the dirty protest served from your back tyre. Then I considered the enduring misery of a 50k pebble dashed arse, and a quick about face suggested twenty quid was an excellent investment. Sadly that budget wouldn’t stretch to my first choice, which was obviously a Navy Frigate.

This Welsh forest is trumpeted by the organiser as “all-weather.” I assume because that’s what it receives on a daily basis with a very clear emphasis on rain. Dispatching even David Attenborough to this latitude, he’d be bloody lucky to find any plant or creature which needed even a glimmer of sunlight to survive. And, as anyone whose ridden a bike off road in any kind of wetness, we can all agree on the almost limitless traction provided by wet roots. Right up until the point where we find ourselves somewhat embarrassed half way up a tree.

What else; well you the more keenly athletic of you may have spotted a collection of expensive placebo cynically marketed to our roadie brethren. My consistent if not always successful response to this nonsense around fuelling and hydration was to simply drink beer with bits in it. But always looking for a cheeky edge, I had my time trialling mate write me a plan on exactly how to prepare, what to eat, when to scoff it and how much to stuff in.

Absolutely nothing in there about a nice sit down mid ride with a cheese butty washed down with a cold lager. Worse still was his advice which suggested I’d need to find space in my bulging pack to bury my ego. Apparently any attempt to keep up with the fast/quite fast/a bit slow/one legged people on pogo sticks would torpedo my shark like assault through the pack some 10k from home.

Just the two little problems with that approach; 10k from home the real Al will be tucked up in the pub with a recovery pint and a bag of nuts, having decided that 25k of that winter madness constituted more than enough. And secondly the idea you’ve even sufficient energy to get in the way of any proper athletes when only single metric digits are between you and sweet, sweet non bikery lying down computes not at all.

Still the way he tells it, it sounds a bit like cheating so on that premise alone I’m up for it. And it validates going very slowly indeed, which opens up the possibility of taking a DFL position before hiding behind a tree then sauntering back to the start and turning the car heater on.

The rest of that package is mostly for the Alps trip some two weeks distant where body armour, van shuttles, big bikes and almost no pedalling at all shall take the place of pretending you can still vaguely hack it amongst your cross country peers. Ying, Yang and lying face down in the mud with bark abrasions are what make up this mountain bikers’ life. Could be worse, could be facing the same but worth next month with the HONC.

Oh. Shit.

* I’d very much like to take it and place it somewhere in the seasonal cycle where hypothermia is less than a 90{45ac9c3234d371044e23e276755ef3a4dde8f1068375defba7d385ca3cd4deb2} possibility.

** Bottom The Fuck Up.

Or wagon wheels as this new niche/the emerging standard/the ONLY wheel size you need – delete as per your standing in the internet-blowhard wheelsize jihad. All of my bikes seem to have a difficult birth, and – unsurprisingly as Random’Al was left in charge of collating all the bits – this one was no different.

However some things were exactly the same. Firstly my protestations that a busy man has many better things to do than build bicycles, even if that means occasionally riding them. Result being a desperate husbanding of likely looking parts being carefully thrown into a box before being presented to a wary bike mechanic with a breezy ‘all there Nic, everything you need, absolutely no issues whatsoever, really can’t see a problem. Pick up at lunchtime?’

Things didn’t go smoothly from there. Although almost fifteen minutes passed before a bemused Nic telebonged me with a polite enquiry on how exactly he was to transfer the donor headset from a bike of entirely different dimensions. The ugly stick, in a last act of defiance, disgorged bearings and the like with it being built to a set of measurements clearly translated from English to Chinese by a man with only a vague understanding of both languages, and a specialism in camel selling.

I left Nic to serially problem solve the many other issues my desperately time poor assemblage of possibly useful bits and pieces had left him with, to motor across the county with strict instructions to return only with a part best thought of as unobtanium. Amazingly, skills honed on long winter nights* presented me impatiently at a counter manned by a nice man called Dave who opened about a thousand boxes before an Alan Partridge ‘AH HAH‘ signalled success.

Back in the car, and back to Ross for a second time having taken in the lovely environs of Hereford’s world famous Saturday Traffic Disaster, I presented Nic with my find in the manner of Darwin – recently de-beagled – stunning the scientific world with a slightly bonkers theory on why Church Building may not be a wise investment. He took this opportunity to regale me with certain ‘issues‘ my motley part collection had caused during what should be a simple build.

At times like this, I find it best to nod apologetically and wander off to Lunch before to avoid being roped in to any actual work. Returning an hour later, a bike shaped object was more than taking shape even if my choice of BFFT** demanded a micrometer to measure the gap between front mech and rubber nobble. Still with trail conditions being essentially dusty right now, what can possibly go wrong? Failing that, I’m firing up the dremmel and customising Shimano’s finest.

On my THIRD trip to the bike shop, I reflected on an approach which selected parts by colour and shinyness probably needed some work. The bits I’d left out I now shamefully handed over, and the bits that were wrong we silently replaced. But at the end of this painful process – well for Nic, I’d basically spent the day with Jess making jokes and eating cake – the result is something really quite pleasing. Even if it appears to be missing 50mm of fork travel that’s clearly been lost in the wheels.

A quick spin down the road confirms it has the ride characteristics of ‘a bike‘. There’s definitely something odd going on with gyroscopic effect which makes me wonder if I should have fitted a speaking tube ‘ENGINE ROOM, ALL AHEAD FLANK‘ – that kind of thing. But what’s done is done, even with the rider that the remains of the ugly stick nestle malevolently in the rafters above my head in case the clothes of this new emperor are entirely fictitious.

Tomorrow I’ll go ride it. It’ll be an experience similar to lying face down in a muddy puddle for four hours, so empirical data to support the big wheeled apologists is likely to be lacking. On the upside, it’ll be riding a bike in the sunshine with my friends, with beer to finish. That’s significantly more important than what you are riding.

Lance was right about something. It’s not about the bike. Of course it isn’t. It’s about the beer. Bloke was clearly an idiot 😉

* that’s surfing the Internet for bike bits. In case there was any doubt.

** Big Fat Fuggin Tyre. I’d rather be slower uphill than upside down in a tree. Grip over Weight every time. Probably a life statement right there!

I missed a trick here. Soundcheck Wednesday – wuntu/wuntu/wuntu passed a couple of days ago while I was busy immersing myself in a version of reality that pays the bills but falls well short for a purpose of existence. But testing I have been, mainly of myself, occasionally of the patience of friends and rarely of my bike.

Tenerife is many things; grockalery and horrid at the beach, architecturally inconsistent in the mountains, friendly everywhere, often on fire and living off a geological event so cataclysmic that no amount of biped evolution can even begin to mask it. Basically it’s a volcano with some nice beaches. Dominated by a classic caldera’d Mount Tide at over 3000m, this is a little island with big ideas. Even our hotel in the foothills of the big boy were at a height that’d have most Ben Nevis Ramblers sated at what is considered a proper summit.

First off, let’s get something straight in a world of turns, I absolutely fucking loved it. For many reasons; let’s start with spending five days in the mountains with like minded people and toasting each day with ice cold beers and tales as tall as the peaks. Secondly reconciliation between how staggeringly capable mountain bikes are and how little I push their limits was finally understood in mere seconds when I got to understand what fast feels like. That was a privilege. I’ll miss it but now I know it’s not my world.

While we’re gloating about how fantastic riding dusty trails in shirt sleeves was when – say – compared to trudging through ankle deep sleep in England’s winter darkness, then consider the happy fact we threw the bikes down the thick end of 10,000 metres of descending while climbing less than tenth of that. God, I love shuttling. I feel like a fraud but if that’s what fakery is like then send me a package of it for Christmas.

Finally – aside from an ankle still weeping evil cactus thorns* – my battered body remained largely unbroken unlike my friend Martin who attempted to perform open heart surgery through a simple practical demonstration of potential energy in an environment of endless spikey rocks. So let’s talk about that. I am at an age when improving is metaphorical for managing decline in a beery delusion. Every ride is akin to a visit to bottlers anonymous “Hi I’m Alex and it’s been 100 days since I took any risks whatsoever. I have so many excuses, how long do you have?”

This is classic unsighted riding on trails designed by geology to either hurt you now or kill you later. There’s exposure in a ‘fuck me, that’s vertical and bottomless’, there’s technical in a ‘fuck me again, that’s not a line, that’s something beyond heroic and out the otherside‘, there’s steepness best ridden with an arse on the rear tyre and a hand on the insurance certificate. Four days of this and it seemed better to throw my shorts away rather than explain the state they were in.

Three days were on the limit of my ‘good day, ace bike, don’t make me look like a gutless twat’ skills. One day way beyond that in a horror of a 100 switchbacks apexed by broken rocks where momentum saved you, but speed absolutely kills. Or hitting a rock pool at 30kph having just lobbed oneself off a three foot drop and death-gripping the bars because braking will be a confirmed disaster whereas hanging on might introduce a question mark.

Every second is a decision. There is absolutely no respite. Don’t believe for a minute that downhill boys hang on and hope. Mentally dropping 2000+ metres in 25k frazzles your brain to the point where sleep is interrupted by muscle memory. Physically your shoulders are in spasm, thighs contract, calves ache. It’s room 101 forever but in a good way. It’s if it ends now then it ends but Christ what a way to go.

And that’s an important point; let the bikes run and they are everything the marketing people tell you. Two or three times I felt so far outside of my comfort zone it’d be a plane journey back, but the bike was serene, gliding over lethal rock gardens with confidence that I absolutely didn’t feel. Watching a couple of other ride like this all the time filled me briefly with envy until the realisation dawned that it’s only when you feel the fear and do it anyway do you get a dopamine hit so high it cannot be legal.

The last day – reunited with my wingman who was back on the bike only because donkey killing painkillers are available over the counter here – ranks somewhere in my top 5 rides ever. Every switchback we’d ridden, every pumice chute we’d surfed down, every rock garden we’d conquered were merely qualifiers for 30k of mountain biking bliss. The exposed carry over a water pipeline opened up a barely discernible singletrack which I’d happily ride every day until I die. Mainly because it flattered learned skills without attempting murder every ten yards or so.

Then a plunge down a semi-vertical ridge line. Then a moab like slickrock section, then a jagged rocky mess which claimed the lung of a previous rider. Then super drifty dirt corners against a massive drop, then a dirt bike laid trail of bermed loveliness, then..then..then.. it ended eventually because geography will catch up with you even after a monster shuttling. But it finished with me wondering if there was any more fun to be had with your clothes on.

There’s something important here. For a good part of the riding I was properly scared, feeling too nesh, too old, to clumsy, to much missing the point of riding stuff right on the edge of your ability. Seeing Martin hurt himself and stiffly declare he was missing the next day had me wondering if we were to fucking past it to waste everyone’s time pissing about and being rubbish. Watching 30 year olds go bonkers with nary a care about the shape their face might be should it go wrong raised my angst we were writing cheques our bodies couldn’t cash.

There is some of that. But there is also something else. While we’d have a couple of beers and call it a day because ‘we didn’t want to be ruined for riding tomorrow‘ we did pretty damn well for a couple of old blokes. I didn’t feel old. I just felt alive. I came back a better rider. I created a bond with my new bike that’ll take us to all sorts of interesting places. I stopped worrying and started feeling.

We left at seventy degrees and landed at zero. We packed the bikes with dust and unpacked them to mud and ice. We can forget two hour descents and relearn the wheezy raspiness of winter climbing. We can go and ride stuff that used to be scary but now has the terror factor of a small pimple. We can – and here’s the thing – carry on for a bit longer yet.

Let me at it.

If you’d like to see more, try here. It doesn’t even get close to painting the pictures in my mind.

* I hit one of these trail sentry bastards as about 25kph. On examining the damage the only rationale conclusion was an unwitting participation in a hedgehog darts contest. Except for some extremely scary purple blood that had me going a bit until it was gently pointed out I’d eviscerated a prickly pair on my unplanned romp through the undergrowth.

I haven’t written much lately but, to quote from that famous* Stratford Upon Avon postcard, neither has Shakespeare. The difference is that he’s dead and I’ve just wanted to kill people. Harvesting 700 people from three dilapidated buildings and re-homing them in a shiny new one shouldn’t be this hard.

This assertion is based primarily on having it done quite a few times before. With more people. And less time. And considerably more complexity. The difference being this client has a level of dysfunction which upgrades any project to more of a quest.

All of which has resulted in many, many late nights, a few stand up arguments, a few more sitting down with my head in my hands, the very real prospect of me removing myself, bat and ball on the not unreasonable grounds of possible prison time for extreme violence metered out to the unworthy.

As ever my coping strategy combines alcohol is medicinal quantities and multiple trips to the mental refuge of mountain biking. When it finally stopped raining, the trails responded with a late summer bounty of slop-free hardness and occasional dust.

Most of my riding is prefixed by a mad dash from the office navigating the horror of the Hagley road and three separate set of roadworks** chasing a fast setting sun. And I cannot enjoy the hard packed dirt until my poor riding buddies have suffered the collateral damage of my gapless verbal machine gunning synopsis of another shitty day.

Then it’s been good. I’m not sure if it’s confidence ridden in from many rides this last six weeks or some kind of ˜don’t make me go back there‘ death wish, but my edge has been well and truly ragged. I’ve dragged front wheels slides back from certain disaster, survived endless cased jumped and bar-kissed almost every tree in the Forest. Both my bikes have been brilliant, which is obviously why I need a new one.

That project has stalled with a booked demo bumped by another Saturday in the office. Instead Random has gone from one bike she loved to two she’s not quite sure about. This after moving on her much cherished Islabike, which has taken her from a towpath rider to a full on MTB’r in a fast growing 18 months.

She’s too big for it now, visually demonstrated when she threw a leg over her sister’s lovely if languishing Spesh Myka. However Logic being a hostage to delusion in our household, I received instruction that Abi might suddenly regain the riding bug and that Herefordshire might suddenly become flat*** enough for her to enjoy a family ride.

Seizing on this as an opportunity for more bike buying, a quick scan of pre-loved bargains brought forth a bike with a dodgy providence and dubious history. Originally trumpeted as being custom built for the manufacturers wife, we subsequently discovered that not only was this a massive porkie, but also the frame wasn’t even the same model as advertised.

Not a problem for me as it’s clearly a thing of hand crafted beauty. Possibly a problem for weight-weenie Random who has her sister’s hatred of hills pointing up. My response was “ inevitably “ to throw money at the problem; lightening the frame by hanging boutique bits on the outside and replacing the weighty coil shock with an air equivalent in the middle.

And adding pink of course. Lots of pink to a frame probably designed for being hucked off massive drops. It’s essentially an elephant in drag, but looks bloody fabulous and shall be pedalled into the local woods on Saturday assuming Mr Fuck Up doesn’t visit the project meaning another weekend lost to the insanity of others.

I did manage to find time to take a few photos in between bouts of beating my head against a shiny new desk. Here are a few examples:

Martin on the Worcester Beacon at Sunset

Nig in the Quantocks

Andy in the Malverns

Right I’m going back in. Four more weeks and we’re done. Or maybe earlier I’ve burned the building down to show my displeasure of all things stupid.

* Not really

** I can only assume there is some kind of ˜big data’ thing going on which pinpoints my regular routes and inserts 5 miles of roadworks in the middle of it.. No way it can be coincidental.

*** It appears to be my fault that we live in such a hilly county.

This was team-mate Martin’s analysis of how easy next years race would be as compared to the 24 hours of circular insanity we’d just participated in. I couldn’t help but point out that a) I had absolutely no intention of testing that theory and b) a ‘walk in the park’ well described my time out on the course.

Eastnor is many things. Spectacularly beautiful nestled as it is under the stunning Malvern Hills. Ideally set up for large scale events. Sufficiently lumpy to create interesting mountain bike courses*. All of these things and more. What it isn’t is particularly weatherproof, especially on the end of the wettest spring since Noah was a lad. The estate doesn’t allow for built trails, leaving the course to be cut through wood and shrubbery all joined by stony tracks.

So with rain comes mud as water floods off the hills creating a thousand rivers funnelling into freshly felled singletrack. 700+ riders out on the course for the full twenty four hours will deepen ruts in the middle and extend the mud out to the trail margins. That mud will either turn your bike into a static 40lb brown behemoth or you into something from a low budget swamp monster flick.

Mayhem being a bit muddy isn’t a new thing. But 2012 will be a high water mark for as much dread and horror mixing rain and dirt can bring. Some people love that kind of challenge. Team Mate Sean is one of those nutters who relishes challenging himself in yet more terminally stupid ways. His event bike sported a set of race tyres, bugger all frame clearance, a rear brake some ten years old and steering geometry even more venerable that that.

He was our fastest rider, the one who had the best accident, the muddiest after a spectacularly grim final lap, the most innovative in terms of bike washing and personal hygiene** and the man most likely to declare himself ‘fit and ready‘ to get back into the rain and shit, the damp and slip, the pain and suffering. And all the time he’d be smiling, grinning, absolutely loving it.

I’m not like that. Wish I was. But my attitude can be pretty much summed up by the ethic that while I accept working hard pays off in the long run, cheating works right now. Give me a challenge to hurdle and I’ll run round the outside clutching a book of excuses. Pit me against difficulty when there’s an easier option and find me slacking off, beer in hand honing displacement techniques.

Don’t like racing. Don’t like being crap at racing. Don’t like tents. Don’t like rain. Don’t like carrying my bike. Not bustingly keen on sliding head first into trees. Can find other more interesting things to do than ruining a hundred quids worth of drivetrain in single digit kilometres. And mud, especially that endless five foot river of slime and slop? Christ no, I’ve clearly been reincarnated from a Californian.

My laps (yes there was more than one, no not that many more) had a number of highlights. T-boning some poor rider who fell in front of me some five minutes in was the first; an accident which would have been more amusing had I not performed involuntary keyhole surgery with a brake lever as I exited stage front. The mud quickly closed over my bleeding knee but failed to offer any anaesthetic qualities. I am unique in my ability to ride while limping, which is as close to anything famous about the rest of the laps.

I found myself laughing a lot tho. Because there were many brave riders working harder than I and none of them were crying, so I settled for a happy grimace. I laughed at pro riders falling over and struggling to get back up. I laughed at how bloody accomplished these same riders were carrying speed through sections I was hobby-horsing through – testicles on the top tube and feet quicksanding into bottomless gloop. I laughed at and with everyone else being mostly sideways almost all of the time.

I even managed a grin when I was overtaken by someone who was walking. While I was still riding. That’s classy Al I thought, can’t even beat a bloke who is carrying his bike, if you were a racehorse they’d just shoot you now. Something I’d have gladly accepted – nay begged for – come the climb out of the campsite for the 2nd half of the lap. I know this area very well, yet never realised there were four obelisks on the top of that hill. Either than or we attacked them in some kind of bastard pincer movement.

Quite slowly it has to be said, except for a triple-arrowed ‘DANGER‘ marked rocky descent which us Malvern-boys eat for breakfast*** where great satisfaction was had blasting past those on the mincing line. However such was the uncontrolled speed of Team Antler (long story, now I can’t pass any of my team without making the sign of the horns. It’s not something a 44 year old man should be doing apparently) riders that the normal instruction of ‘passing on your right or on your left‘ was not really appropriate.

Which is why I’m fairly sure, in the entire history of mountain bike racing, any poor bugger has had to content with “ON YOUR BEHIND” before a wild eyed man barely clinging to the bucking ugly-stick bounced flashed by jauntily punching him in the ribs with the handlebars. He overtook me on one of the endless climbs between then and post lap beer therapy. It was him all right, I could feel the hate.

The rest of it was fairly bloody miserable. There’s all this bullshit that ‘you take your own weather with you in your mind‘ positive thinking, but my counter-argument is the ACTUAL weather is waiting for you on arrival. It’s hard to get excited about a 16k lap which takes nearly two hours, the reason for which is simply that walking in knee deep mud takes a while.

If it was just me, it’d have been just me going home. Assuming I turned up in the first place. But my team was simply too brilliant to let down even by a man rarely troubled by any feelings of guilt. Sean – we’ve established – team nutter, relentlessly positive supported ably by his wife Kay who makes the BEST BREAKFAST IN HEREFORDSHIRE, and can be relied on to locate the ‘you know long metally thing with a spike on the end‘ during periods of desperate pre-lap maintenance.

Martin is impossible to faze. I think it’s spending his working life with sheep that allows him to suffer sleep deprivation, seas of mud and broken machinery with unfailing humour. While, like me, he didn’t enjoy much of the lap, the good bits were more than good enough to make up for the trudgery (new word, OED informed!) of the other 90{45ac9c3234d371044e23e276755ef3a4dde8f1068375defba7d385ca3cd4deb2}. Sean’s Lad – Kieron – was impervious to dampness and difficulty tackling the course in a pair of tractionless trainers, while attacking the descents with the immortality of youth.

And with various friends popping in to point and laugh, it made for a brilliant atmosphere that was reflected across most of the teams. We were parked up next to Team Sumo who – with their glitterball and 80s back catalogue – cheered us during the exceptionally trying periods, as did their incessant “JUMP JUMP JUMP” chant as riders passed their hastily assembled ramp.

Me? I was essentially bipolar; going from adrenaline fuelled machismo to chin-in-hands depression hating everything that was hard. Until I gave myself a talking too, got my arse out of bed at 4am and went back out there not because I wanted to, but because everyone else was doing so without complaint. And you know what? It wasn’t quite as fucking awful as I expected. There’s probably a lesson to be learned there.

So in summary- Fucking Dreadful. Slightly less summarised – as I slithered out of a car park full of wrecked bikes, marooned cars and endless – and I MEAN ENDLESS – mud, I found myself somewhere between happy and relieved. Happy that it was over, relieved I didn’t really let anyone down. Happy that I’d been a part of something that will soon pass into legend, relieved it wasn’t because I’d smacked myself in the head with a tree. Happy to see so many riders of all abilities just bloody well get on with it, relieved I had a team of friends who made sure I did the same.

Oh yeah and this. Somehow – and I place 100{45ac9c3234d371044e23e276755ef3a4dde8f1068375defba7d385ca3cd4deb2} of the blame on my team mates here – we ended up 40th in our Category. From a pool of 180. That’s so inadequately slack I’m quite upset about it. Something I might have to put right next year.

If I wasn’t retired.

H’mm.

* Some of you would argue that the Mountain Mayhem course is not interesting. I would then direct you to the Marin Rough Ride and rest my case.

** By throwing the bike into the lake and diving in after it. I love Sean, he’s my kind of bonkers.

*** Sometimes through the simple approach of smashing into it face first.