The bike was serviced in rushed attempt to get some miles under the belt, late Saturday night. 6am alarm call brought me to my senses and I dressed in my mothballed Lycra and headed out into the dreary Sunday morning mist. Fortunately the first 1.5 miles was downhill to the Bristol Harbour basin where the ancient SS Great Britain was still asleep. The cold ripped through my clothes and I shivered, cursing my bad choice of early spring attire - I thought I was harder than this.
An hour later I had passed Bristol Airport and the first of 5 climbs for the day was under my belt and was starting to feel warmer, but already the winter layoff from any long distance cycling was nagging my hamstrings and calves.
The usually busy A38 was quiet for a Sunday morning, the smell of manure from the Somerset levels was quickly replaced by the plastics factory of Bridgwater. The GPS read 35.5 miles, I was feeling strong and only another 51 to go.
Incredibly Taunton appeared 40 minutes later, I had zipped along, trying to keep the speed over 20mph as much as possible, I was eating the miles and so settled into a smooth rhythm as the sun burnt off the low cloud and I began to feel real heat.
The next 32 miles to Exeter along the old road, criss crossed the M5 several times. It is downhill all the way and didn't seem to take anytime at all, I used the time to feed and drink as much as possible and enjoy the stunning Devonshire rolling hills and the flat Exe floodplain.
Everything started to go wrong just as I left the city limits of Exeter, I was on the Longdown road headed for Bridford and cycled over some glass from a broken car window, a deep cut appeared in my tyre and I heard the hiss of the inevitable puncture. It took 10 minutes to patch the tyre and fix the tube and I was off again. Something was different this time though, I felt as if I had left my legs on the side of the road and the new ones were faulty. With just over 4 hours in the saddle the journey had taken its toll and I had found my limit of cycling with no training - 76 miles. The last 10 were hell, I had nothing left and limped my way up to the fringes of Dartmoor, cursing myself for not feeding properly, biting off more than I could chew for the first ride of the season and for wearing the wrong clothes.
I moved so slowly up the 19% hill to the village of Bridford, that my Garmin didn't even register a speed. I was digging deep, trying to recall how I motivated myself across Greenland when I was in pain and wanted to stop, I turned the volume up on my iPod and screamed the lyrics out to the GooGoo Doll's 'Iris' to somehow distract myself from the pain, two ramblers walked down the hill past me laughing, they said it gets steeper round the corner....and it did, but I was determined not to walk.
The finish line appeared and I sat back on my saddle and punched my fists into the air, as if I had just won a hill stage of the Tour De France. I was over heated, dizzy and felt sick. 86.6 miles in just over five and half hours....happy days, bring on the Sunday 10th May when I repeat the ride again!
I gave my usual schtick at the Ice Bar recently; a fitting venue for teaching a group of stressed out executives at the end of a long day meetings and presentations about what to do if they ever found themselves at the bottom of a 50ft crevasse without a rope. It is not hard to draw parallels between a 60 day expedition to delivering a project on time and to budget at work. Success is often dependent on the very same set of core skills namely good communication, excellent team work, good leadership and meticulous planning.
