Go 'Til You Stop

The human body is an amazing thing. The capacity of the mind and body to work together just long enough to get through any given task will never cease to amaze me. The mind tells the body what it needs to do and how long for, gives it the strength to keep going, it even accounts for sleep (or sometimes lack of), factors in the temporary break in physical activity but keeps the body aware it hasn't finished just yet. The consequences of these types of events are never pretty though - often pushing yourself up to or beyond your physical limits.

Such an incident happened at the weekend. I was working on the second round of the British Mountain Bike Series up in Dalby Forest, Yorkshire. It was also a World Cup test event which added a slight bit of extra pressure to get everything spot on. I'd ridden the course first thing Thursday morning to get my bearings in the forest. To say it's the most technical cross-country course of the series is an understatement! Challenging and fun though and I was looking forward to actually racing on Sunday. Another practice ride on Friday on Olive the dekerf had me confident that I could clear all of the sections without a second thought.

The mistake I made though was not actually riding the course on my Ducati race bike that only turned up on Saturday morning. This was a grave error on my part and half way around the first lap on Sunday morning I hit the ground hard on a rooty drop-off section. After a long sit down I limped around to finish the lap, various body parts throbbing, and retreated to the back of my tent in pain. The ever insightful Martyn Salt approached and deduced very quickly from my abrupt single syllable answers to his concerned questions that I was far from alright but all I wanted was to be left alone to sob in peace and privacy.

A while later I reappeared in the arena with very few signs of the race ending dismount - just a graze or two on my legs. The large bruise on my hip, the graze on my backside, my throbbing right thigh and a pain in my ribs were invisible to the world. A limp gave it away slightly, as did the winces of pain every time I laughed or coughed. Still, there was work to be done for the rest of the event and I planned to just keep moving. Once I stopped, that would be it. And the anticipation of the morning after pain was motivation enough to get as much done on the day of the crash as possible.

Copious amounts of red wine helped me sleep on Sunday night. And here's the twist; Monday morning, although being the morning after, wasn't the end of the task. The plan had always been to stay on Monday and finish up. So I woke up a little stiffer than usual with some soreness in my neck, but actually rather surprised at the lack pain and ease of movement. Perhaps the crash hadn't been as bad as first imagined? Monday came and went and all the extra movement and walking hadn't made much of an impact on my aching bones. The task had finished, I had made it through, and made it home.

Tuesday is where it went wrong. Very, very wrong. My mind had finally told my body it could stop, relax and do what it needed to do to get back to normal. The excruciating pain I felt trying to get out of bed set the tone for the day - with every laugh, cough, sneeze and deep breath causing a sharp, almost unbearable pain in my rib. Even taking it easy didn't help as any core movement - getting off the sofa, bending down, standing up - causes a similar pain. I'm thinking cracked rib or muscle damage. Either way, there's no point going to hospital and there's nothing I can do except take it easy for a while. (And try not to laugh, cough, sneeze, breath too deeply or move.)

11 Bloody Days

11 eventful days. One evening I'm in London trying not to get drunk at what was the official closing down of ITV transmission at the London Studios. It was also the day I got served my redundancy which means I'll officially finish on the 17th of April. Thank God! Finally! I could feel the weight physically lifting from my shoulders and the stress draining from my body. It was fantastic.

Early the following morning I was on a train to Carlisle for a few days pottering about on soon-to-be mountain bike courses in the north. Kielder 100 is coming along nicely. The new Wild Boar 24 course has huge potential and then it was over to Whinlatter to help out at the Whinlatter MTB Challenge. This is where things took an unexpected turn for the worse. I had an accident involving a large, 25kg+ speaker crashing down onto the back of my head. Thinking there must be a bump forming I removed my hat and put my hand to the back of my head. It came back red. That's when the others noticed the blood running down the back of my neck. I've never had a serious head injury before and I have to say there's nothing more unnerving than seeing blood dripping from your own head - it's just not natural and all your instincts seem to be telling you to panic because there's something very wrong. Still, the week of rest probably did me some good.

Then it was off to Sherwood for the first round of the British Mountain Bike Race Series working with Martyn Salt for the first time. (He plays squash ya know.) I raced in the Masters category. I was rubbish. Maybe riding my bike over the winter would have helped. Hindsight is a wonderful thing. Full race report coming soon on the race page.

So, 11 days, hundreds of miles, 4 forests, 3 hotels, 2 mtb events and one very large scar on the back of my head. At least life isn't dull. And the Summer is shaping up rather nicely now I finally have my redundancy.

Not in the Saddle, Just Sleepless

And so Endura Sleepless in the Saddle is wrapped up for another year and it also marks the end of my trail crew duties for 2008. Sadly it also marks the end of an era for our regular and most experienced endurance Commissaire, Anton Florek.

Anton has been working with Pat Adams from the very start of 24 hour racing so knows more about the sport than most people. He's been fantastic to work with over the years and everybody has learnt a lot from him, especially me. It's an absolute pleasure to work with somebody who is so passionate and insightful about your sport without the slightest hint of arrogance. He'll be missed by all of us.

Obviously with this being Anton's last event, it was going to be the most eventful. The weekend threw everything at us! The weather was atrocious, again, and there were other totally random hiccups occurring. (I won't go into some of them here, they're those secret little problems that most people at these events don't know about, mainly because the organisers don't want people to know about them, so I'm not going broadcast it here.) But it basically meant the trail crew spent the whole of Saturday running from one problem to the next.

The main problem was the rain. It started raining Saturday morning, it rained for most of the morning. The course turned to wet slop and riders were coming back a consistent shade of brown but still riding their mud spattered bike. Then it stopped raining and the course started to dry out. This turned it into a 7 mile death march slog that many were comparing to conditions of the Somme. I don't blame them. I saw the bikes as they crossed the timing mats: I saw the now 4 inch wide muddy tyres that weren't turning; I saw the dangling rear mechs and a lack of chains; I saw blocks of mud where chainrings should be; I saw the tears of riders who had just slipped, trudged and battled their way around the treacle filled course dragging their broken, heavy, mud covered bikes. It didn't look fun. In fact, it was bloody miserable.

Just as the course started to dry out enough to be rideable, it rained again. More hassles and problems to sort. Some 'course grooming' as we call it to try and re-route some of the more problematic areas. It had been a tough day for all of us, it was getting dark and we weren't even a third of the way through. It was going to be a long weekend. The rain stopped, the mud got stickier. It rained again, the ruts got deeper. (Repeat this pattern throughout the night.)

Still, no matter how bad things got, some people seemed to be enjoying themselves. Some people actually found it all really good fun and very amusing, a real test of endurance. Each to their own I suppose...

I managed to get a couple of hours interupted sleep around 2am but was still answering the calls of the Marshalls from my tent. Sunday was a lot quieter and just involved the usual finish duties and tear down at the end. It had been a very hard weekend - Friday had been very hard work doing the course preparation, Saturday was out to prove Murphy's Law and by Sunday I'd really had enough. The things you do for the love of mountain biking...

End of an Era

Another weekend passed working at a Pro-Velo Support mountain bike event - Enduro 6. I've been working with Pat for 9 years now, well, 9 years this Mayhem anyway. It was a chance meeting at Sandwell one June when I turned up for a drink with Chipps at the hotel, the rest as they say is history.

Back then I worked with Ivo, Chipps, Paul McConnon and Ken Ward. A couple of years later a tall, broody Scotsman joined - Chris Duncan. We shared some interesting times as well: the corn field fire, the crazy knife wielding schizo and the SWAT helicopter are just a few of the things we dealt with at mountain bike races!

By the time the event moved to Eastnor only Chipps and Chris were left and we picked up a few more people - Quad Ben and Ickle Paul Davis. This was the infamous Pro-Velo Trail Crew and we were working at more events throughout the year.

There's an odd relationship formed in this kind of family. We only saw each other for one week and two weekends a year and not at all over winter, but the time spent together is intense, especially for the 36 hours over a 24 hour race! After a few years, we'd still only met 6 times, but every time we got together we all instantly clicked and it was as if we'd never been away; Even more unbelievable if you know what a motley crew we are.

Sadly, this weekend was Chris Duncan's last as a member of the Trail Crew. He's still going to be at the events but doing his normal job for Endura who are event sponsors this year, so it won't be quite the same.

I can safely say we're all going to miss working with him. He's got a wit as dry as the sahara and can take the mickey with the best of them - crucial attributes when it's 6am, you're covered in mud, soaked to the bone, it's been raining for 4 hours with no sign of it letting up and you know there's no chance of getting out of this damn field for another 12 hours!

So apart from the odd appearance from Chipps at Mountain Mayhem, there's just me left from the old Sandwell crew. I wonder how much longer I'll be around?