Some don’ts to do
Misadventures on two wheels
I want to be honest. I haven’t always been the cyclist that I am now. I did my first Sportive in 2005 in South Africa but then there was quite a gap before taking up cycling again. I fell out with cycling when I moved to Devon. Mainly because it was hilly and I’d been used to riding in London. I didn’t really appreciate that there weren’t any real hills there until I moved away. Before that, I’d lived in Lincolnshire for a bit. That’s well known for being quite flat too.
I got back into cycling around 2014 and did a few Sportives then. I picked some challenging ones too. I did the Dragon Ride (the 155km version), the Dartmoor Classic (110km) and a couple of years later I took trips to the Tour de France (2016) and Giro d’Italia (2018) and climbed Mont Ventoux (when I say climbed, it was more hike-a-bike for the last bit from Chalet Reynard due to the wind) and the Stelvio Pass. My only training for these was riding my bike. With no real understanding of physiology, energy systems, fuelling or progressive overload I still made it. But there were tears and it was very hard! I’ll tell you about some of those rides at some point – but I’ll just give you a taster of what has been and gone!
Luck and a bit of stupidity in Africa
Way back in 2005 a friend and I did the Cape Argus in South Africa. It’s one of the biggest Sportives in the world, and in 2005 there were over 35,000 other cyclists descending on Cape Town to ride 110km down the peninsular and back. I’ve no idea what possessed us to sign up for that. I think we did a few weekend rides around Richmond Park in London and a few big rides – including the Isle of Wight Diamond – and that was considered enough training. We’d ridden our bikes, therefore we had trained.
As it turned out, I didn’t do myself any favours on the day, despite my training. There was a 40km/h headwind in the first half down to Cape Point. It honestly felt like I’d left my brakes on. In fact, I stopped a couple of times to check if my brakes were rubbing on the rims.
You would think that the ride back up the peninsular would have been fast because of the tail wind. It wasn’t. It still felt like my brakes were on. I checked again – everything seemed ok.
After completing the race – I can’t even remember how I felt, but relieved would probably be putting in mildly – I parked my bike. The bikes were all slung on bars from their saddles. I had a post ride beer and some food and, on returning to my bike, I immediately saw the problem. I had not actually put the rear wheel in properly. While it had been hung on the bar, with back wheel in the air, it had actually dropped out of the stays! I count myself lucky to have only found out then and not in the middle of the route!
Isle of Wight adventures
No lessons were learned in the making of this ride
I didn’t really learn any lessons during those years. I paid a bit more attention to how I assembled my bike. But not enough to find out the reason why my toe had started to overlap my wheels on my mountain bike was because I’d put the fork on backwards. Not because my feet had grown overnight!
After having done the Wight Diamond (as I called it) during our training for the Cape Argus, I decided to have another go about fourteen years later, in 2019. By then, I had found out that there was an organised ride around the Isle of Wight in May every year. I had bought myself a nice new Canyon Grail, so I thought I’d do the ride on that. I remember that the last time I had done it with my friend, we had finished quite late in the day and they had run out of the pin badges to commemorate finishing the ride. We were probably more disappointed than we should have been at the time, but it was a really hard day!
I’m afraid to say that I don’t think I did it a great deal faster. There were still no badges left on arriving at the last checkpoint! I had been riding a bit more regularly before hand, and although it was hard, I did feel that I had got a reasonable level of fitness. I had a good day and met some women on the ferry over there. They were from Portsmouth and were just planning to do the half route. Anyway, they ended up doing the full route, so I rode with them all the way round. We enjoyed the feed stops and we kept each other’s spirits up. It’s quite a tough ride, so it’s always nice to do that in company.
Anyway, and true to form, during the ride I’d felt that something wasn’t ‘quite right’ with the bike. There seemed to be some play in the headset but I couldn’t quite figure it out. I tightened the headcap down, but found that if I knocked my front wheel or handlebars, the bars moved still slightly so they were not pointing in the same direction as the wheel. I had put hold the wheel between my legs and give the bars a shove to line it up again. Weird. It troubled me a little, but I didn’t really think too much about it.
After we finished the ride, we walked our bikes down to the ferry. As I lifted my front wheel up by the handlebars, there was an audible clunk and rattle and the forks dropped out of the headtube slightly. The bars became loose and ‘floppy’, turning from side to side independently of the wheel. It wasn’t the headcap. It was the actual clamp inside the headtube that wasn’t fully tightened. Another close call. I imagined what might have happened if the fork had done that during a fast downhill, or on a busy road.
The Isle of Wight is a great place to ride though. I’ve been over there and ridden around the island a couple more times since then. Each time I’ve felt stronger. It’s a good test of how well I am riding. The last time I was really happy about the ride and finished strongly. The tarmac is superb – it’s smooth and there are very few potholes. You don’t need to do it in one day either. You can take your time. It’s bike friendly and there are lots of trails on and off road which are clearly marked. You also feel like you are on holiday when you cross over on the ferry.
Fortunately, a lot progress has been made since 2019! I still have the odd mishap – who doesn’t? On the whole, the more experience I get by doing these rides, the more enjoyable the rides are. Less faff or worry and paring the preparation down to what I know works!
