Hampers

As I sit here at midnight nursing a clicky knee and hip like an old, faithful Labrador long past it's best before date, I'm trying to be upbeat. Another murky day rolls away to make room for more of the same but I won't allow myself to wallow in self-pity considering all the bad stuff that could befall me or mine.In a week's time the first of two Hamper races I hope to enter this year is on. Gammy joints or not and as I'm relatively cycling fit, I feel it's my duty to race them. You see, memories always quicken the pulse, harden your resolve and make you think you can re-live those times again. You know, the older I get the better I was. And for me, the Hamper races I have entered down through the years have always been eventful. So when I click in for the Conor McCabe next week on the 6th of December or the Wexford Wheelers hamper race on the 13th I'll be half living in the now and half in a land of nostalgia. As a young fella of twenty I won my first hamper race around the Barrowland circuit in New Ross in a two-up sprint. That was at the end of a devil-take-the-hindmost. I beat Dessie Kent up the drag to where Tesco is now and I thought I'd be turning pro soon after.It was one of only two hamper races I won! But it wasn't my best. That was 1994. King Kelly had just retired, seeing out his last season with Catavana, and to celebrate, the town of Carrick put on a neutralised sportif with over a thousand riders in it, the last 20-30km being a free-for-all. But it wasn't just a bunch of freds and trolls out for a Sunday spin. There was ICONS in the mix....Fignon, DaSilva, Stephen and Laurence Roche and a certain Mister Merckx. And I rode out of my skin. But its funny, it was BMX that got me to the finishing circuit in Carrick that day. When I hung out with a bunch of bike-nuts as a 14-year-old, a young lad called Val Dunne showed me how to wheelie and bunny-hop. I got the wheelie up to 200 metres and the bunny-hop routinely up to a foot. I'd like to say my skills got me all the girls but they didn't. Why do I digress? Well, it was that bunny-hop, learned in an empty Swimming Pool car park after dark as a kid that got me to the circuit in Carrick many years later. As soon as the flag went down it was chaos. For some reason, 998 cyclists that day thought they too were fleet Gods. When the pace went up, the uninitiated went down. Hard. There was a touch of wheels as a big split occurred and a frantic scraping of metal on tarmac. And, in a line-out, I looked up to see some guy flat on his back, his bike hell bent on blocking my path and without a second thought I was back in the swimming-pool car park clearing a chunk of wood that we used for practice. I thought I wouldn't clear the bike and I touched it's rear wheel as I went over. Yet I stayed up and was last man in the selection that made the circuit before the barriers locked us in to that furious rat-run around the river. I probably got 25th. And I was a good kilometre off the fight for the win but I do remember passing Laurence Roche up the drag off the bridge on the back of the circuit each lap and he returning the favour in spades on the flat. He was riding for TonTon Tapis as a pro and I was riding for the ham sandwiches in the hotel afterwards.I stood up to sprint for the craic and I smiled for a week after it. So I returned many times. When Mark Scanlon was World Champ he raced for the hamper in Carrick the week before Christmas and it was a shit-fest on a windy circuit [a couple of kilometres had grass down the middle and more bends than a yoga instructor on difene]. He disappeared up the road and made us all look like grannies shopping in Supervalu. Another year I was passed by Cassidy and Kelly. I had a HRM for the first time and knew when they went through our group and chatted that I was in for it. My heart-rate with 15km to go was 198. The Slaney guys ran a race based on Scarawalsh maybe 15-16 years ago in the middle of a big freeze.I won an uphill sprint against Johnny Carroll from Dublin and remember feeling bad because he had mudguards and all the winter gear just shy of a yeti. And my feet and hands were so cold I placed them in the fridge to thaw out. That last fact may not be actually true. But I thought about it. My brother Stephen rode bloody well that day. We loved hard races.And then Wexford Wheelers started having extraordinary events in the back lanes of Ferrycarrig. Fast and furious as no doubt the one on the 13th of December will be. Twenty years ago people would race with tinsel on their bars or helmet, perhaps a santa hat. Now its break out the carbon finery, catch up with your local peleton and dig deep. A real race with the fun afterwards over a cup of tea. I don't quite know what it is about their appeal. A mid-Winter test? A rehearsal for two months later? A chance to taste Belgian toothpaste and get stubborn dirt into your jersey? Funny, but whatever the reason I don't know anyone who races for a hamper!