The other thing I conveniently forget about being an “old git” is that I just cant recover instantaneously anymore. Kirroughtree took far more out of me than I had ever anticipated and for a good few days after, all I really wanted to do was sleep. Not that I took much notice of what my body was trying to tell me, so instead of resting-up, a Turbo session on Wednesday, mountain bike ride on Thursday and a 70 mile road ride on the Saturday, did little to help the tendonitis developing in my left knee.
The Tour of the Black Mountains is a 120 mile road Sportive starting-out from Abergavenny and does a big loop of the Black Mountains and Brecon Beacons via Hay on Wye, Brecon and Merthyr Tydfil. Featuring the Gospel Pass, the Fan Nedd Pass and Cwm Claisfer, its not for the faint-of-heart with about 11500 feet ascent that could be fairly described in the main as brutal. Click this for map & Garmin data
This was the last big effort before Sleepless in the Saddle and after my result at Kirroughtree, I thought that I should be able to sneak a Gold Medal time of under 7 hours or at worst 7.15 for a Silver. That meant I needed to improve on last years time by more than 1hr 10mins!
After a week of early starts and long drives the last thing I wanted to do on a Saturday morning was to be in the car at 5am… but that’s the trade-off for being able to have a night in your own bed I guess. It was the first proper day of the school holidays and even at that ungodly hour the M5 was busy with overstuffed cars, packed to the gunnels with everything including the kitchen sink and bored young faces gazing blankly out of the back windows… “are we nearly there yet?”…
Sholto (excellent Gaelic name!) was parked next to me and we got chatting as each of us faffed about with various clothing combinations, trying to decide just how warm or cold it was going to be and whether it was likely to rain, the looming blackness over my shoulder finally persuaded me to take a waterproof shell if only for a bit of added ballast.
Not Sholto(!), but one of those intriguing sites you sometimes see (at least he's out there!)...
8:30am and Sholto and I set off together, a sensible mid-pack start, swapping experiences of last year’s event. Our pace was quite similar and it was good to take the start reasonably easy, working our way steadily through packs of riders climbing gently for the 14 mile run to the bottom of The Gospel Pass where the real action starts with a 2 mile hard climb that gets steeper the further up you go. The descent to Hay-on-Wye was fast and sometimes narrow that needed a bit of care, suddenly there was a man in the middle of the road frantically waving his arms, just round the bend another rider had met a car coming the other way and it hadn’t worked-out well. There were a few others helping the guy out and as none of us has a mobile signal we made sure everyone had the right numbers and with little else that we could add, Sholto and I left a rather sorry looking chap sitting at the side of the road holding his shoulder in the way that usually spells Broken Collar Bone.
At some point on the rolling countryside to Brecon, Sholto disappeared off my back wheel, by now I was head-down chasing that Gold Medal time, that hold-up coming down from the Gospel Pass hadn’t helped.
It started getting hilly again as we skirted the Brecon Beacons, but the next big assault came at 70 miles, The Fann Nedd Pass. Whilst its relatively short at just over a mile, its an utter brute of a climb with two hairpin bends and gradient close to 20%. Even with my compact chainset, I couldn’t sit down it was full-on out-of-the-saddle all the way to the top. I remembered this one well from last year… it murdered me! No stopping at the top this time, just click-down a few gears and keep going.
At about the 90 mile point I began to realise that beating 7 hours was getting tight and it would really boil-down to how fast the descent from the final climb was and if I managed to get hook onto a group that would work together.
Having been out on my own now for the best part of 50 miles, you kind of forget that your out there with a few hundred others… it was quite a wake-up when the Rapha Condor team (and a few of the Endura Team), in a pack of about 12 cruised effortlessly past all chatting and laughing… this was an opportunity that couldn’t be missed and I managed to jump into the middle of the pack, suddenly we’re effortlessly cruising along at 24mph.
Now I know this, is what these boys do, day-in-day-out, but it was interesting to see just how comfortable they were riding at such close quarters, helmets hung on handlebars, no hands, taking off gilets, eating, chatting and all done mid-pack no issues… meanwhile I’m concentrating quite hard, didn’t want to be the one who brought down the Pro-Peloton!
It was of course all going far too well, half an hour in the peloton, feeling great, the motorcycle outriders clearing the junctions for us, then we hit the slopes of the Cwm Claisfer, the final major climb of the day, 1300ft of ascent over 4 miles. I thought I was doing ok on the initial slopes but then the Peloton, gradually at first, started to ease away, chatting and laughing, making it look easy!
With that my hopes of a Gold medal time had vanished, but I was still on schedule for a Silver as long as I could keep my average speed up. 10 miles to go, and I misread the signs at a roundabout and headed-off the wrong way, it was a good mile before I realised. I was livid… I could just about squeak a Silver now if it was all flat or downhill. Then 4 miles from the finish, I looked up to see the “Sting-in-the-tail” another 300ft of steep winding ascent, I knew the time had gone now but was still mad enough to brutalise myself on this last hill.
The final descent was excellent, dropping virtually 1400ft at speeds hitting 48mph, finally crossing the finish line in 7hrs 27mins and good enough for 7th (of 63) in the Veterans and 27th (of 140) overall, not too bad a result after all I guess and big improvement from the 36th and 62nd place of last year and 43 minutes quicker.
So, I’m now on final approach to Sleepless, last Saturday didn’t do my knee injury much good at all, I’ve been looking after it this week and haven’t ridden since Saturday, plenty ice, ibuprofen and massage. I am going out tonight for a gentle ride with the Thursday night crew, and with the 3rd round of the Midlands XC on Sunday, lets hope it holds up!!!
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