Many people, when they hear of an idea that they like, respond by saying how good the idea is, and how much they like it. Not me. That isn’t the way my mind works. If you suggest an idea that I really like, my immediate reaction will be to list every single hurdle, issue, danger, obstacle or difficulty that I can think of.
It’s a response that makes a lot of people think I’m a pessimist, and I can sort of understand why they think that, but they’re really missing the point all together. I’m not listing the obstacles to try and convince you that it won’t work, I’m listing them so that together we can make sure it does work. I might even already have a solution for some of the obstacles I list, but unless I’m absolutely sure that my solution is a cracker I’ll still list the obstacle without mentioning my solution, because you may well come up with something much better if I just give you a few moments to think about it yourself. Basically, if I start telling you the problems with an idea it means that I think we can make it work, not that we can’t. If I think it can’t work, I will just say “nah, won’t work” and move on to something else. So it isn’t pessimism, it’s optimism, but an optimism that thinks the best chances of success come from examining all of the possibilities for failure (and then trying to make sure that they don’t happen).
What that means though, is that I always look at the possibilities of failure.
Over the previous few days, I had been looking at the possibility of failure very hard. I was pretty sore in a lot of places, but the ones that had me most worried were my knees (which got so damaged during IPWR in 2018 that I spent 3 months not riding at all, and then another 6 months building up at a frustratingly slow pace) and my achillies (which had brought my TCRNo5 to an end in 2017). Both of these had been hurting, and so of course my mind had been thinking about a possible forced retirement.
I knew when I started this year that I wasn’t going to win. A ten-year old friend told me the other day “well that’s a terrible attitude” and I guess I see his point, but at the same time I like to think it was a realistic attitude, and it certainly meant I hadn’t been feeling stress about being so far back in the field. I’d also set myself a fundraising target of $1 for every km I rode, and on day nine my distance ridden was greater than the amount I had raised, so no stress there. This meant that the only thing that made me think I couldn’t stop was that I felt a need to do better than my last attempt.
In 2017 I rode nine days to reach CP3 in Slovakia. As I approached the checkpoint I had been planning to pull out there but on arrival I realised I was just having too much fun, so I kept going into the evening. When I woke up the following morning though I realised that I was just in too much pain, and I couldn’t keep racing. So I lay back down in the comfy bed of the hotel I was in, and sent the organisers the message that no racer wants to send. I pulled out. It was the morning of day ten, I had got just past checkpoint 3 where I was in position 174, I had raced for 2,357km, and I pulled the pin. I still needed to ride that day, because I was a long way from a train station, but it was only 22km, it took me over 2 hours, and it was all back the way I had come and away from the finish line.
This year, 2019, I knew those figures (ok, I didn’t know them that precisely, but I had a rough idea of them…). The previous morning it had occurred to me that although another DNF was still a real possibility I was at least close to equaling my previous attempt. Looking at the stats now (with the benefit of excel and the interweb to remember all of the numbers for me) at the end of day nine this year I had reached checkpoint three and then continued into the evening. I had raced, so far, 2,424km and at CP3 I had been in 70th position. Basically, all I needed to do today was to get up, get on my bike and pedal it even a little bit towards the finish line and I would have bettered my previous attempt by any measure I could think of. As soon as I did that, all the pressure would be gone. I would feel that I could stop any time I felt like it.
I woke up in a beautiful bed of tall lush grass scattered with wildflowers just as the sky started to get light, and to my enormous relief I was feeling OK. I jumped up, removed all my overnight bandaging, packed my gear, jumped on my bike and started riding towards the finish line. As I did so the thought rolled through my head that I could now stop at any time. I kept riding, but now it was only because I really wanted to.
I was riding on a mixture of sealed bike paths and short stretches of good unsealed bike paths, and mainly skirting around towns but occassionally passing through and appreciating how pretty they were.
It was a beautiful morning, and even my breakfast was great. I had about half a kilo remaining of the speciality cake I had picked up in Sölden, and it was absolutely delicious. As I worked through the first half last night I had been trying to put my finger on the very familiar flavour but just couldn’t place it. This morning again I knew it was something I knew well, but it wasn’t until I was down to the final few bites that it struck me…
Rum. That familiar and delicious flavour was rum. I wondered if that had contributed to my good day yesterday, and even to how good I was feeling now!
Well, ok, I’ll be honest – the percentage of rum in it must have been very small, and a lot of the alcohol must have been baked off it as well, meaning that it should have had very little effect on me at all. That’s a shame, because I’d love to be able to blame the rum for the string of terrible decisions that came next.
Going to sleep the previous night I had noticed that my phone wasn’t working because it was out of credit. My data plan covered the EU at a flat rate, but not Switzerland or Serbia, and it seemed the time I had spent in those countries had been enough to use every bit of credit I had. Over the rest of the day I spent about 40 euro and three hours trying to add enough credit to make it last long enough that I could spend the additional 5 euro required to buy a week of credit outside the EU. It wasn’t helped by being in very poor coverage areas each time I stopped, but basically the problem was that it was just a dumb idea. The fact is I didn’t need a phone. All I needed to do was ride. My tracker was working, my navigation was working, I was fine and really didn’t need a phone at all. If I had been doing the ride 20 years earlier I wouldn’t have missed a phone. It was a “nice to have”, but even so I shouldn’t have wasted time on it.
You see I’m highly risk averse (someone asked me a while ago how someone who is risk averse could do an event like this, I said it was probably easier than for someone who isn’t risk averse to do two of them…) and always have a back-up plan. In this case, I actually had two other fully functional phones with SIMs with me. Eventually I realised that and went with one of them, but not before I wasted hours (and a great deal of money) on something I really didn’t need. As I said, it would have been nice to be able to blame it on the rum!
Much of the time wasted on it was over lunch. It was a stinking hot day, and I found a roadside restaurant with a substantial sort of a menu, and decided I should try most of it. I also reasoned that the whole process of recharging might be easier over WiFi. When the waitress brought my first course out I asked, in my best German, for the WiFi password. She looked confused for a moment, but then smiled and nodded. I tucked into some food while I waited. With the next course came a glass of red wine. I was confused. I asked why she had brought me wine. She was confused. She asked if I would prefer white. I realised that my best German really isn’t that good. Eventually she turned the the guy sitting at the next table smoking his cigarette and chuckling to himself (I suspect it was her son) and asked him what on earth I was talking about. He started to explain, then just went and got a slip of paper with the password written on it. The WiFi didn’t really help me in the end, but the trip to get there was amusing, and as my number one supporter later suggested I probably just really looked like I needed a good glass of wine!
Other than communication with my number one supporter and a little bit of on-the-fly route replanning the only benefit that the phone actually brought once I got it working was that it let me see what was happening in the race. I hadn’t been looking at dots much at all up to this point, but I suddenly wanted to, just as it became difficult. A big part of that was because I was eager see if my last minute decision to go through Switzerland was a good one or not. Because it was such a late decision I hadn’t looked at the route as well as I should have, meaning a bit more gravel than I wanted, but generally it was very nice riding and aside from the phone thing I was having a great day. Right up until I reached the closed road.
I think I must have been feeling a bit over sensitive at the time, but this sign really annoyed me. Much more than it should have. It made me so annoyed that I barely even noticed the beautiful sky until I looked back at the pictures afterwards. The lack of any reason for the road to be closed made me think that it was just because someone decided they didn’t want people to be using the road, but there was nothing to indicate that it wasn’t a public road. I swore a lot and was considering just riding through anyway when I saw a small bunch of riders coming by. I stopped and asked them if they knew of another way to get to Sugiez. They turned out to be a very friendly and helpful bunch who were headed that general direction anyway, and they were happy to show me the way. Riding along, having a pleasant chat and thinking how handy it was that I speak German (and deciding that the waitress simply hadn’t caught on to the idea of WiFi yet), my annoyance melted away. It is funny how quickly your mood can change doing something like this!
On reaching their village they waved goodbye and I cycled happily along for another 10km or so, until I saw a little food stand on the waterfront of Lac de Neuchatel. I happily rolled on up and asked about some food, only to be met with blank looks. They had no idea what I was saying. My German was not working at all. Maybe that last waitress did understand WiFi, and it was a problem with my German after all! And then I noticed that the signs were in French. It is a peculiarity that I am still amazed by in Switzerland that you can travel such a short distance and go from a place where everyone speaks German but hardly anyone speaks French, to the exact opposite, without any other indication of a border.
Once I figured out the language issues though I managed to get well supplied for the coming section, and merrily set off down the road. Then the road became a dirt road. Then it became a poor quality dirt road. Then it became a dirt track. Then a dirt walking track. Then a mud walking track. Then a mud walking track that was closed because it was impassable. A sign recommended that I turn right instead, away from the route I had planned. The right turn was more walking track, some of which was elevated boards over the marsh land, and some was just mud through the marshland. It wasn’t really ideal in the dark with 32mm slick tyres, but eventually I got through it.
Eventually I reached the other side of this particular reserve, and headed through a couple of towns before finding a perfect sleeping spot – at the base of a transmission tower. It seemed like a pretty quiet night… I had wasted a lot of time through the day, but still managed to cover 276km of pretty flat ground.
Settling down to sleep I realised that the next day would be an interesting one – it would give me an indication of whether my route choice had been a good one or not. I knew a few of the riders who had been very close to me at CP3 but then chose to go through Italy rather than Switzerland – it would be interesting to see if that paid off for them. For now though the priority was sleep.
Narrator: And at this point kiddies, the loyal followers were left pondering “Will we have to wait until #TCRN08 is over before we get Rowan’s #TCRN07 day 11 update?”
😁😁
Looking forward to it though. Patiently.