Bikes, bust ups and the highway

2013 started pretty much as expected. Well, a lot where 2012 left off. I'd only got back on the bike in November 2012 after being hit by a van. The Tour of Flanders lie ahead in March and I was getting miles any way I could. On St Patricks Day a few of us did the Lionheart out of Longleat in Wiltshire. Woke up to snow. The Ronde in Flanders was just weeks away and it was 160 miles or 250 kilometres. 

The announced that the 100 mile course was to be shut and all of us would be doing the 100km one. I was secretly relieved but that's 150km less than Flanders. It was so cold. It proved useful for fortitude training as the bleak, windswept Belgian landscape loomed with its "Flandrian" weather; it was obvious that fortitude training might be more important than biomechanics and oxygen transport work.

My hands hated it. I got frostbite on a building site in a freak storm off Lake Ontario years ago. Now my fingers don't react to the cold very well and on a bike it seems to be magnified because of the blood demands of the legs and having the hands only holding bars not moving.

Off to Belgium feeling under prepared. Kicking myself for not getting a turbo trainer.

Flanders was hard, hard, hard. It started well. Cold but well. I woke up at 3am and drove from Ghent to Oudenaarde to get the bus to Brugge at 5am. I was supposed to meet some people but it was so cold I took off. The first 100km are pretty flat and you with the large numbers we were going well over 35kmh without even trying. Then (because of the large number of people) a pothole appeared in front of me. No place to go without hitting someone, I bunny hopped it. My back wheel caught the far edge. Minutes later I had a pinch flat. I pulled into a recycling area off the road. Two others were fixing flats. I got out the co2 and inner tube and changed it. Put the co2 on and it all emptied before I could get it on the tire. Last container...same thing. Stranded. Everyone had gone by. There were groups of late starters going by and I took the emergency number out of my pocket. The one you call when you quit. I looked at it. I put it back in my pocket and waited. Everything in my world went completely black. I was just past a roundabout on the Belgian French border on what looked like an industrial estate. Alone. Flat tire and over 100 miles left of the 160. Then, a Belgian man with a flat tire pulled up. We chatted. He was on his third flat and said "there goes my chances of victory!" I laughed so hard. I told him about the co2. He let me use his pump and then called it a day and phoned for a ride. I got on and pedalled alone into the wind going east.

I kept going. The cobbles, the supporters, other riders soon brightened my mood. It was a very long day but by the time I'd reached the finish at Oudenaarde in the light snow, I felt like I'd done something epic. The hardest part of the day was overcoming myself on the French border. That will be with me forever.