Licking the bars

Everyone knows a long road somewhere. Just a plain old stretch of road that never ends. Mine is south of Madrid in July, heading for Malaga, usually late at night with my family asleep, the outside temperature 'down' to 27 degrees. Despite the late night espressos from a truck stop or three its just mind-numbing. Watching city signs for count-downs and hoping you can do your job. Just when it's starting to grind you into a tight, nervous ball half curled up in the driver's seat, you catch a hint of dawn and your neanderthal mind releases the last dregs of seratonin into your cerebrum to tell you you'll survive. Then comes the 150 kilometres of wheatfields followed by the tunnels to the coast. Suddenly 50km feels like 5 compared to the night you just put in. Then theres a family awake and arrived and none of the midnight monsters and figments of a tired mind to deal with until next year. Am I writing a travelogue? Nope. But if I could condense that trans-Iberian trip into a 25 minute sketch it would be the ten mile time trial I raced on Tuesday last. Why? For me the race against the clock has always been the race of truth. And in the last ten years I've been found out to be the liar. I used to love those events, really enjoyed the screaming pain. Could keep my focus for 56 minutes in a 25 miler. Real men aren't afraid of Time Trials. So I've plugged away every now and then. I just stopped enjoying them. Last Tuesday could have been that road south of Madrid or the road south of Tunis heading for the desert with it's little markers every kilometre, left by the French colonists. Because I had to pick a point every kilometre or so to strive for, a person, place or armco barrier to target, telling myself I could re-assess when I got there. Maybe twenty points on the road to ignore the pain 'til. Kinda reminiscent of that long drive was my approach to the race. I eased into it, coasting, saving energy up for the bad stuff to come. The only difference being that the strain cut in earlier. When it did I sat out on the hard-shoulder line willing trucks to pass, rode full tilt on the drags because it felt right and managed to get oil on the 12 sprocket a fair deal on the flats. Of course I was passed. But at five miles instead of five kilometres. Looking at my photo later, I sat tall, it seemed as though I was one giant drogue creating drag in enormous amounts. And thats how I feel on the long drive south, like a basking shark, maw wide-open, a creature so ungainly it doesn't belong in it's environment. Hurtling along in the thick, dark and empty Andalucian night. You just don't belong on a motorway in the land of the Moors and Romans. 120km/h cutting a swathe through history and civilisations is not right. Similarly, 25 minutes of enlarging your heart, battling every little devil your body can manifest, willing yourself to excel but wanting it all to stop in equal proportions is just...well...wrong. But then dawn arrives. Dawn in cycling terms is the realisation that there is just enough ether left on the rag to subdue your body into completing this farce. You sense the finish or you get a second or third wind or the road levels. Whatever it is, it works. Mentally, you smell the coast. After all the banter and fun while you are getting ready for the pain, at the end of the day the hard part is up to you. Theres a great crew at local events, just like your family in the back of the car. But the responsibility of traversing the dark night, whether to the lights of Malaga or to a lone man with a stopwatch on the side of the road...is all yours.