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If you click the link below and watch the video of stage 2 of the Haute Route Dolomites, and you watch very carefully, you’ll see my face flash up in the first 15 seconds or so.

You can watch the video here.

That is what I did at the weekend, I rode the Haute Route Dolomites on my bike.

It’s been in the diary since November 2017 when David (Nelson) and I decided that that would be this year’s (2018) thing and over the course of the training and the masses of trials and tribulations that it brought to both of us, we decided it would be our last thing.

Tragically (for me and David) he was unable to come due to a freak but significant injury, and for a short while I was left to travel on my own until Simon (my coach) stepped into the breach to come with me.

The Haute Route series are mythical in cycling, particularly the events, but in recent years they’ve decided to water things down a little to allow idiots like me to have a go at a 3-day event; these exist in multiple places around the world.

There is no doubt that Dolomites is one of the hardest of the 3-day events due to the number of hills to climb and the severity and steepness of these hills.  

We travelled from Manchester on Thursday morning, leaving the house at 3am and arriving in Predazzo in the Dolomites about 2pm.

The travelling is quite difficult as you have to travel with your bike in a box that you’ve dismantled days before. You also have to take an extraordinary amount of kit with you in an extraordinary small space to try to cover all eventualities of mechanically break down and kit requirement.

In my time in the Dolomites over a period of days, the temperatures ranged from 2 degrees to 28!

This route is not for the faint hearted, at the briefing on Thursday night in a cinema in the town of Predazzo it was easy to tell, as Simon put it, ‘there are a lot of guys here who have come to kick heads in’.

And so, here comes the metaphor bit…

There were times that weekend when I wondered what I was doing there, times in my lonely little bare room (I joked it was a monastic cell) I wondered why I was away from my family and what the point of all this nonsense was for a boring old dentist from Scotland via Nottingham. 

Worse than that, there were times were on my first day (the hardest) that it was literally so dark that I wanted to climb off my bike, get on the bus and go home.

I had tried to prepare as best I could for this, for about 9 months. Trying to ride to 4,500 miles and losing over a stone in weight, but on Friday it never felt like enough, not even nearly enough.

At the second feed station, at the top of the second hill (out of four) we were told we were 10 minutes away from being cut off and swept up on the bus and out of the race.

It wasn’t supposed to be like that, I was supposed to be better than that.

Simon sent me on, he had come under prepared because this wasn’t his event, he had stepped into the breach at the last minute.

I rode the best I could for the rest of Friday, but the final climb was brutal, up to the ski station at Sella.

When I finished, after about 7 hours, I thought there was no chance that I would start the next day.

Simon said he wasn’t going to ride the following day so I hitched up with a girl called Suzy who was third in the ladies competition and was staying at our hotel.

We all had breakfast the next day, Simon, Suzy, me and Roy from Sports Tours who we had travelled with (he was totally amazing) and we set off to the start line.

The thing about cycling is the thing about life, one day can be terrible and the next day can be paradise.

Day 2 (the video of which is above) was without a shadow of a doubt the best day I have ever had on a bike.

It was so easy in comparison to Friday and I met so many wonderful people, saw so many wonderful sites, views and roads that brought me to tears.

The last day was a time trial up a mountain past the ski station where the Giro has finished five times before.

It was brutal with the last 4km at an average elevation of about 15% (that is really steep). It took me 47 minutes and I sobbed into my handle bars at the end.

Why would I bother with this?

David and I told each other for the last few months that this was the last time we would do this, I told that to my wife too, but they took a picture of me on the last climb which changed things.

I was rolling back down the hill after I had finished the time trial with my medal around my neck and my wind jacket on when the official photographer stopped us and asked if one of us would cycle back up past the Tag watch sign because he needed a picture for the sponsors.

I’ll talk about that picture in tomorrow’s blog, but they took it, I saw it and now I never want to stop.

I don’t want to stop doing these events because they’re not supposed to be easy because life it not supposed to be easy.

It’s a balance and a juggling act. That’s the game. That’s what we’re in for. Some days are dark, like Friday, and some days are so bright, like Saturday and generally, on these events, I see both sides and I understand just a little bit better.

David, I’m sorry. We have to have a chat because we still have places to go.  

Blog post number: 1775