9 minute read
A Cornish pasting
David Parker’s early autumn attempt at the Cornish 100k in September 2021 was a lonely ordeal. Struggling from a lack of practice, and the effects of a lingering virus, he laboured on jellied legs through the picturesque landscape of windswept coasts and hilly lanes. These are his impressions of a tough ride…
I KNEW I NEEDED TO GO SLOWLY at first as this was my first ride for a month. But people kept passing me in a whir of derailleur and tyre noise – a whisper of noise behind me and then the rear view of a rider already vanishing around the corner ahead. After 10km I could feel the lactic acid burn in my thighs and my breath rasping in my throat, escaping in wheezing gusts.
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I wanted to keep up but if I did I’d surely run out of steam long before the end. I could have done with a friendly wheel to latch on to but they kept escaping me every time the road tilted upwards. It tilted upwards more than I wanted, more often than my vanishing will power could manage. After 15km I was alone, no-one else passed and I passed no-one. This is generally how I do Audax rides, in a world of my own, wondering if I’m actually on the right route, berating myself for being so slow. Distant views of Falmouth Bay opened up from time to time, reminding me I could enjoy the scenery as well as suffer.
By 33km I’d reached the second information point at St Antony, a tiny cluster of granite cottages around a creek. Beyond the encircling headland lay the open Atlantic with its green and cream rollers but here all was calm – small boats moored, the first yachts pulled from the water for the winter ahead. I searched the hamlet for a road sign with the right information. There were two cyclists taking a photo and I realised that nobody doing an Audax would stop for photos. The hamlet was otherwise deserted. I wondered where everyone else had gone.
Perhaps a banana would help? I couldn’t peel it while riding no-handed, and had to use one hand and my teeth. The banana may have helped but the flat lane that encircled the creek helped more. The sun emerged and the cerulean sky and deep green of the surrounding woods created a harmony of colour, the air bright, salt-washed and full of light. The first leaves of the autumn season skittered around the tyres, and thin skeins of gravel lay across the road left by the overtopping tide and storm waves from a couple of months ago.
I was riding around the head of the creek when, with all the savageness that Cornwall can muster, the lane rose vertically, tree-shrouded, dark and shaded, twisting out of sight. The Wahoo said 20 per cent and I could believe it. I sucked in as much breath as my meagre lungs would allow, pushing it out quickly again to allow time for another huge intake before my heart got any further up my throat. This was hurting.
I could see the top and pushed harder to get there, but I’d been deceived. There was more of the hill visible ahead. The lane teased twice more before relenting, allowing me to pedal more easily, bike wobbling, legs trembling, and my heart out of control on what felt flat but was still five per cent. High hedges hid the view of the sea which I’d been glimpsing all morning. The next control was in 10k and the road, I hoped, would remain flat.
Except this was Cornwall. Wahoo said “turn left” on to a steep descent, braking in a white-fingered embrace, gravel and leaves catching the wheels, trying to listen for cars coming the other way around blind bends. At the bottom, crawling slowly around the last bend I could see the lane rising in a mirror image of the hill I’d just descended. A sigh, bottom gear, brain in neutral and spin and puff, spin and puff. This was really hurting – and I still hadn’t seen anyone.
Through St Keverne, a village made of an unnecessary number of hills, its granite
A Cornish pasting
houses sunk deep into the ground to shelter from the Atlantic gales, its graveyard full of dead sailors pulled from wrecks. From here the road is more level – but “level” is a relative term.
And, as if to compensate for the flatness there was a headwind. I was on the treeless plateau of the Lizard peninsula on the Atlantic edge of Britain. There’s almost always a headwind here as the prevailing south westerlies blow unhindered. To my right was Goonhilly with its radar dishes pointing towards the sky, sending messages to space – listening to aliens perhaps?
All around were some of the oldest rocks in the UK, ground down through millennia to a highly resistant plateau, scattered with prehistoric remains. I considered the term “prehistoric” for a while because it deflected me from thinking about how weak my legs felt, and how my back was complaining. When does history start? How would the people of the Stone Age feel about being excluded from history? And why does everything hurt? Is it always like this, and do I just forget each time, or was it particularly hard today?
Turning south towards the Lizard village and the full weight of the wind, I finally saw some other Audaxers. They were going in the opposite direction,
Other people… some of the elusive riders sign on at the cricket pavilion
Give us a sign… David Parker tries to breath normally
having ticked off the Lizard, and heading for Helston. While it was nice to see people again, I wished they weren’t so far ahead of me. I could no longer delude myself that everyone else was just around the bend and if I just went little bit faster…
The information control in Lizard village is the public telephone number. I met a younger Audaxer writing it down and asked her for the number as I felt too tired to get off my bike. She joked that it was lucky no-one was using the phone. I told her that in the olden days we only had public telephones and we used to queue up to use them. She nodded her understanding, saying: “Oh yes, when you had to carry a phone card.” I’m too old. I meant when you had to carry a tuppenny coin. There was no point explaining.
There were Audaxers sitting around buying food and drinking and I saw my chance to get ahead of at least some of them by immediately setting off, while simultaneously trying to peel the cellophane off my home-made cheese sandwich and demonstrating again my inability to cycle no-handed. The wind was behind me now, and finally I got into some kind of rhythm.
Down into Mullion and then Poldhu beach – a crescent of sun-washed sand and successive lines of Atlantic rollers, a distant roar of surf and a whiff of sun cream. But then came the kicker – the road rose up the other side of the valley, starting at five per cent and increasing with every pedal revolution, sadistically I felt, to the last fifty metres of 15-20 per cent. That really hurt.
There was another information control ahead, and I felt the pressure of people behind me, although there was no-one is in sight. I didn’t want to stop, and urged myself forward, squandering stamina by standing on the pedals to get up hills a little quicker.
Past RNAS Culdrose. It was silent today as all of our naval helicopters appeared to be busy elsewhere – or maybe we have an agreement not to start a war on a weekend? Helston came and went, and there was still no-one in sight behind me. Then, a left turn up a quiet, gravel-skinned and deeply hedged lane which I didn’t think anyone else knew about – my own private short cut. It rose steadily, turning left and right in blind turns, the front wheel skidding on the gravel. I was pushing too hard, tormenting myself with the thought of being caught, ignoring the pain, pushing away the fatigue.
There was a noise behind, and turning I could see a flash of yellow tops, a posse from the One and All cycling club. They didn’t pass but stuck to my wheel. I couldn’t shake them and wasted too much energy trying. Then, blessed relief – the posse halted at the junction to allow everyone in their group to catch up.
I went on, alone again, to the next information control, a post-box, but I couldn’t find it. At the end of the village I turned back, cursing, the Wahoo which was chirping angrily at the change of direction. There it was – a mossy, greener than red post box. I could hear the One and All posse coming up the road and considered hiding until they too cycled past the post-box, giving myself time to get further ahead.
No, that would be wrong and anyway my flashing red light had already given me away. Moral dilemma solved.
On then, and up another hill that I hoped would be the last. Inevitably it wasn’t. The last 12k was, though, more downhill than up. I held off the posse for as long as possible but they caught me on the outskirts of Falmouth as my jellied legs could no longer keep up the pace on the rising road. I hung on to them and we finished together, no words exchanged but I felt happier to have kept up.
Of course it isn’t a race. The challenge is to finish but I am a competitive animal, denying my years and infirmities and wanting to win. Four and a half hours for a 100k with 1,400m of uphill wasn’t bad. It wasn’t good either but it’s as fast as I can go.
I had nothing more to give. The virus I thought I’d shaken off returned, and shivering and with swelling glands, I returned home in the afternoon sunshine, conflicted about why I even do these events and simultaneously looking forward to the next.
