Att' BB200 Riders.

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Bearbonesnorm
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Re: Att' BB200 Riders.

Post by Bearbonesnorm »

Stuart above .....Yes that's it.
200k to me and my life is HARD. As for many others too I'd hazard a guess.
Absolutely Steve ... here's my recollection of the final few hours. :wink:

Riding a bike while asleep is a very difficult and hazardous undertaking. I'd been made well aware of just how hazardous, seconds earlier when the sleep monster snook up on me while descending a steep forest road at a rather ill-conceived speed. The strange thing about sleeping is the fact that you're completely unaware that you're in the land of nod, until something wakes you up. In my case, that something was a peculiar sense of falling, a feeling largely brought about by my front wheel taking an unplanned detour, rolling off the track and into a drainage ditch.

Opening your eyes to be greeted with the instrument of your impending demise, is a sure fire way to gain full consciousness instantly - it certainly obtains results faster than any alarm clock or lazy poke in the ribs ever could. Quite how I managed to avoid a body, bike, tree interface remains a mystery but suffice to say, the experience left me wide awake. I did what I could to regain a degree of composure, popped a jelly baby in my mouth for good measure and continued down the hill. Pete's tail light flickered through the trees but I wasn't aware that I'd actually caught him until I almost ran into the back of him - so much for being wide awake, eh.

I calculated that no more than 30 kilometres lay between where we stood and the finish, I told Pete the good news. I also knew that they'd be harder than any of the previous 170 we'd already ridden, I bit the head off another jelly baby and kept quiet. Food had long since lost any appeal, part of my mind kept telling me that I'd eaten a meal already tonight, another part kept reminding me that 'tonight' was over eight hours ago. Their bickering was of no concern, I'd gone well beyond eating and the ability to think about food let alone eat any, had deserted me somewhere in the Elan valley. We sat perched on a low wall next to the road sipping water and occasionally mumbling something incoherent to each other.

The sky was just starting to lighten when we resumed pedalling. We hadn't rested for long but the break had signalled the start of a new day and we needed to cover 20 kilometres before it dawned fully. I can't really tell you much about those 20 kilometres or the 3 hours it took to dispatch them. There was certainly some riding involved but the overriding memory is one of pushing, lots of pushing. I do recall an almost overwhelming desire to lie down and I have a faint recollection of feeling sick in between pushing and wanting to lie down. An orange hue was starting to emerge from behind the hills as we approached the gate that signalled the top. From now on there'd be more down than up and any remaining miles would be comparatively easy.

Opening the gate proved beyond us, we lifted the bikes over the fence and followed them. Grass quickly gave way to stone track and we pedalled. "How far is it now" asked Pete for the fourth time in what seemed like minutes. "Not far", "you said that last time" which was exactly the same thing he'd said last time I told him it wasn't far. We rode on in silence. I tapped the gps screen, I'd seen my average speed drop continually throughout the night and the previous steep hillsides hadn't done it any great favours. I tried to calculate how far we had to go and whether a speed of 'not much per hour' would get us there before the clock struck ten. The track we were on was one I know well, every bump, turn and dip committed to memory through repetition, yet I couldn't quite decide where along its length we were. Had we already crossed the stream or was it still to come? I couldn't remember. In some ways it's a little unfortunate that I couldn't place our position. If I'd known for sure that we hadn't yet crossed the stream, then I could have warned Pete about the steep, rocky singletrack that leads to it … great fun generally but not so much when your brain possesses the computing power of an banana and your reflexes are on par with that of a sedated sloth. Rather surprisingly and very luckily, we both rattled our way down safely and crossed the small wooden bridge. "Up there?" quizzed Pete, nodding his head towards the big rock slabs directly in front of us, "fraid so", I said, "but it's not fa”. Before I could finish my sentence I received an icy look that made me retract it. I pretended not to have spoken and one behind the other, we shouldered our bikes up onto the ridge.

We'd made it, nothing bar a direct nuclear strike was going to prevent us from finishing now. We were reborn, the early morning sun had put wind back in our sails and we were flying - but then it happened. There was something up ahead, it was too far in the distance to discern quite what it was but whatever it was, it looked quite large. A sheep? No too big. A cow perhaps? No, it's still too big. We continued towards it - a rhino, it's a f*cking rhino! I glanced across at Pete but he appeared oblivious to the threat that lay ahead. It can't be a rhino, I looked down at my handlebars and counted to ten. I lifted my head expecting to find it gone but no, it was still there. I stared hard at it, the rhino turned its head towards me and stared back. Why wasn't Pete aware of it? Because it's not real, that's why, I told myself. I stopped pedalling, "you okay?", "yeah, yeah, fine" I replied, all the time keeping my eyes firmly fixed on the monster ahead. The last functioning cogs whizzed round in my brain, come on, it's not real, how can it be real? I don't know but it looks real, not funny real, scary real, so maybe it is real. We were less than 30 metres from it now, perhaps it's friendly I thought, of course it is, rhino usually are and any the size of a 52 seater bus are especially fond of a cuddle. I placed my foot on the pedal and pushed the bike back into life. My desire to finish was obviously stronger than my fear of death but I was certainly in no rush to meet it - I pedalled slowly. We got nearer, I couldn't look. Instinctively I turned my head away and started the countdown to impact, 5, 4, 3, there were just two seconds left before we'd be level, 2, 1. In a last defiant gesture, I spun round to face him. If he was going to kill me, then he'd at least have look me in the eye while he did it … He was gone, completely disappeared, a leathery, horned killer the size of a bus had been replaced by nothing more than a gorse bush, a bush that stood just two feet off the ground.

I couldn't settle, the minutes following were filled with an odd mix of feelings, relief, anxiety and apprehension all vied for supremacy in my tired brain. I pressed hard on the pedals to catch up with Pete. He remained completely unaware of how close he'd come to been gorged to death by a giant rhino or that he nearly had to chase a screaming mad man through the tussocks and heather as he fled an imaginary creature. I thought it unwise to remove him from his state of ignorant bliss and besides, for all I knew, he was trying to out-pace a 60 foot Gorilla that was somewhere behind us.

The squeaky gate signalled both our arrival and our finish. "Well done fella" I said, "how d'you mean?". Perhaps it was my continual use of the words 'not far' that had upset Pete's internal trip meter. "What, you mean we've finished?". I uttered the words he so badly wanted to hear "yeah you've done it". The look of disbelief on his face gradually gave way to one of happiness. "Under 24 hours? I get a black BB200 badge?" he asked, "that's right" … although I couldn't help wonder how much time had been lost to a gigantic rhinoceros roaming freely across the Welsh hills.
May the bridges you burn light your way
notinabox
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Joined: Fri Oct 11, 2013 8:17 pm
Location: Nottingham/Derby border shhhh :)

Re: Att' BB200 Riders.

Post by notinabox »

Above. :-bd :shock: That is the 200 in 72 hours for me also :lol:
The noise goes quiet when I'm on my bike :)
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ZeroDarkBivi
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Re: Att' BB200 Riders.

Post by ZeroDarkBivi »

Stu, you have well captured the insidious nature of fatigue in that recollection, much better than any of the dry academic / medical presentations I have sat through. It's one of the reasons that, despite the adventurous and romantic allure, I am reluctant to have a go at ultra-long races on roads shared with vehicles, where an error by rider or driver can be fatal.
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gairym
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Location: Chamonix, France (but a Yorkshire lad).

Re: Att' BB200 Riders.

Post by gairym »

Stu, that's a great snapshot of the über-fatigue of this kind of silly endeavour!

I know that it's mostly suffering whilst it's going on but reading that just made me really jealous that I'll not be participating this year.

After about 20 hours of riding in 2014 I was entertained by some very friendly gently waving ewoks by the trailside (thistles in the wind) which had me chuckling maniacally to myself - fun times!
Last edited by gairym on Wed Sep 20, 2017 1:47 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Richard G
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Re: Att' BB200 Riders.

Post by Richard G »

I'm yet to have any of that, despite ridiculous fatigue caused my my utter uselessness at sleeping out on these things.

I think my brain is far too sensible for any of that sh*t. :lol:
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