As a first event of the year the Barrow 100 Sportif is a cracker. Helped by sunshine and seasonal cold, to all participants it feels like coming home. And that's just the sign-on! In reality it is different things to different people. We all want to shake off the carnage of Christmas and see where we stand.
However some of us want to complete, others compete, yet more want to delete. 100k is no joke. Just cycling that distance in one go takes it out of you. Add in trying to stay with 180 other humans, each and every one with a different viewpoint and goal and completing isn't a given. Competing is another kettle of fish. Some live on Zwift. Some do 15 hours a week. Some turn themselves inside out in the shed/ garage/ mancave doing ferocious efforts in the depths of Winter. Some just go cycling when they can. ALL arrive on February 10th with a hunger that no food will fix. Road hunger.
And what of delete? Last year's poor form. A change of club that brings pastures new. Past mistakes; Not enough food and drinks. Over/ under-dressed. Mistakes to be rectified, problems to be solved. Delete the past, evolve, learn.
Weather apps, surfers, old farmers and TV channels are scoured for the wind, temperature and moisture content of a three hour segment on a given Sunday. Your kitchen table begins to take the shape of a meteorology laboratory what with your apps and laptop. Makes Met Eireann look stone-age. Clothes choice is whittled down as weather patterns are confirmed. Saturday night, as your friends sink pints and flick peanuts in the air to catch like seals would a fish, you have your gear laid out in order of putting on. Tyres at requisite pressure [grippy/ not too slippy]. Salt in the bottle. Bananas and gels. Everything charged.
Thank God, out on the road all is forgotten. It's a meet and greet. A reunion on a grand scale. Platonic speed-dating. "Ah Jaysus how are you lad???", "Good my friend!", and we are all back together again in a social sense, moving up and down the lines like soldiers on the Somme. Then without further adieu the poop hits the fan. We turn towards a cutting wind that comes at us from the Comeragh mountains. It smells of ragged sheep and icicles. Conversation stops. All we hear is a headwind licking past our ears, parting our eye-brows and stretching what was a 200 metre, smiling, cycling snake into a one kilometre long road kill. By kilometre 25 you've got it or had it. This wasn't the plan. Neither was seeing full-timers or those back from Gran Canaria attack like there's a first place. The soup at the finish will be delicious but I don't think it's a prize. So the horse has bolted and what's left are 'riders' or 'hiders'. Riders keep pushing at the front causing momentum to move us all forward. Hiders sink into tiny gaps and shadows, unable to be up the road making the race. Instead they stay out of the wind, conserve energy and leave the work to others. They can fit their front wheel into the one inch of road you leave in the gutter, in order to arrive at the last few hills rested, 50 mile-phantoms. And the other riders, the ones that didn't make the split in the headwind; They are the day's real winners. A slog in a small group or solo is a religious experience akin to purgatory. You hope to make it to the finish but most of your day is suspended just above hell. Any old goat can hide. Real cyclists are the ones that look like ghosts at day's end.
Picturesque Inistioge is an oxymoron. Here is where grimaces and pulled faces and pure carnage constricts the best of us and hands us our hopes in a bag. Everyone feels the few kilometres of vertical. No jersey or wheels or gears or prayer prevents pain up there. Gravity turns your blood to gravy and your hopes to mush. Your incantations to God fall on deaf ears. It's your own tough if, instead of twelve o'clock mass you are waylaid on a hillside in South Kilkenny by your own short-comings. A decade of the rosary won't lift cramp or double-vision. But if you pray long enough you'll crest the hill and breathe again.
New Ross is a beautiful place. After 99 kilometres of self-inflicted mutilation, arriving at the town limits is akin to seeing the promised land. Or a Saharan mirage. Minutes later you are holding a group post-mortem with your similarly dead-legged friends. Wolfing down the prized soup and eating the weight of a Spanish climber in sandwiches. A wave of euphoria, the release of the endorphins of relief, and in no time you are bigging-up next year. And then you try to stand up....
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