Day Six – All my speed and grace…

…was gone. This was probably the lowest point of my ride, while also being a wonderful day. I woke up in a hotel in Zagreb with sore everything. My knees were stiff, my achillies ached, my butt was sore, my feet were still sore and I was feeling very sorry for myself. I took an honest look at how far I had to go and how I was feeling, and concluded that I was unlikely to make it to the finisher’s party.

This race can take a lot longer than you expect and it is always difficult to say ahead of time how fast the winner will be, but one thing that is known is the time and date of the finisher’s party. It isn’t a grand event, it is more a “everyone go to the same place for some food and/or a few beers” type of thing than a presentation dinner, but it is also the place where the winner is announced and you get to share stories with other racers, so most people try pretty hard to get there and I certainly wanted to be there myself, but I didn’t think it was going to happen.

The bandages on my knees had helped a lot overnight, and they were both visibly less swollen and feeling more free than the day before, but still they were far from good. My achillies felt about the same as it had the previous morning, so I was happy it hadn’t gone down hill, but again that was far from good and not sustainable. My feet were still feeling about the same. Basically, I was feeling pretty ordinary.

On top of that I had taken a big detour off my route to get into the pharmacy the previous night, and after a late sleep was looking at riding through the city in peak morning traffic. I decided it was time to just settle down and focus on doing what I could do, and not worry about what I couldn’t. I also decided, basically, that it was a necessary rest day and that I wouldn’t push at all.

I stopped very quickly for breakfast, and while I was there I made some more adjustments to my setup just to try and improve my chances of recovering as I rode. It was a good breakfast but when I came across a street stall selling amazingly good berries ten minutes later I couldn’t resist, so I bought a large quantity and ate about two thirds of them right there to the astonishment of the guy who sold them to me, then put the rest into my boat to fuel me as I rode.

In fact they were so ripe that it didn’t take much shaking and bouncing for them to start turning into berry juice, but since the bag they were in was somehow waterproof (I have no idea how) that wasn’t a problem either, and I was happy to drink the last of them as a berry smoothie.

The road was beautiful and it wasn’t too long until I crossed into Slovenia, and my memories of it as a beautiful place seemed to be ringing true. I passed by Lubjana, stopping on the outskirts for a good meal infront of the supermarket I bought it from, and not long after getting back on the bike I made one of the worst mistakes of my race. There were a lot more cyclists around now, and after a while one came up from behind me and asked if I was doing TCR. I’ve always loved it when dot-watchers come out to say hi, so I happily said that yes I was, and we chatted for a while as we rode. Then he asked me if I was going to Kranj. Yes, I told him, after a quick squiz at my map to make sure. Then he told me that the road ahead was one where bikes weren’t allowed, but that he could show me a different route.

The rules of self-supported racing have a whole lot of grey in them. Everyone knows that you aren’t allowed to have a team car beside you giving you water bottles, but outside assistance comes in many more forms than that. One summary is that you should race as though the race isn’t happening and you know no-one in the area. Now it is perfectly acceptable to ask someone for directions to get to somewhere, and really I think it would have been fine to get this guy to show me the way. There was just a little part of me though that was saying he had come to find me because he had seen my dot on the race tracking website, and this was outside assistance. In the end I told him, with a lot of gratitude, that I appreciated his offer but I thought my route was going to take me around the banned section anyway (after all, komoot said it was fine), so I would just follow it. He seemed disappointed but wished me well and headed off home (Hi Nejc, I should have listened!). I followed a few turns on my route, and five minutes later I saw the no bikes sign. Bugger. I turned around to back-track, and saw another one. What? That was the road I had just ridden down, and I was sure there hadn’t been a sign because after talking to that guy I had been watching closely. But I clearly wasn’t allowed to ride back up it. Disappointing. 

I spent a whole lot of time sitting and planning out a new route, but even that seemed to run into places where the road wasn’t, and things generally weren’t going well. At one point I found signs pointing to Kranj, but they seemed to be taking me down the only unsealed road in Slovenia, so I abandoned them and eventually met another local who confirmed that if I just followed the road I was on I would get there eventually.

Eventually I did get there, but it took about three times as long as it should have. That is the price I pay for not having researched my route more thoroughly.

After Kranj the next stop was Jesenice, and again there were some roads with no bike signs. There did seem to be a signed path adjacent to the roads, but the signs were pretty easy to miss in what was now complete dark, and I ended up doing quite a lot of back-tracking, along with the other racer who had caught up to me from somewhere.

Eventually I got out of the city and the road started to slowly climb again. The weather also got worse, and it felt like it was going to start raining hard. I spotted a public camping spot in Mojstrana and quickly set up under a handy roof.

I had only managed 219km and 1,300m for the day, but I needed to take it easy and I hoped that by doing so I would be able to keep riding, even if it was slow. There are people who pull out of this race when they realise that they won’t make the finishers party, but that was never my plan. My number-one supporter was giving me the time and support I needed to get there, and I wanted to ride into Brest, even if it took a while. The rain on the roof made a pleasant lullaby.