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Sunday 24^th June wasn’t really a ‘race day’.

Young Louis (Dunne) and I had entered the Nottingham Bike Ride 100-miler months and months and months ago as a target of Louis’ for the year.

For me, it felt like a little bit of an added extra or a little bit of an add-on or even something which was a little bit too difficult.

So at 5:45 on Sunday 24^th I entered into the morning routine.

Up with the dog, big glass of water, try to wake up, try to be motivated, try to feel like doing 100-miler around the Nottinghamshire countryside was a good idea today.

Even at this late stage in the day, with a few weeks of crap training behind me but still 2,500 miles in my legs this year, I was having to convince myself that 100 miles was a good idea.

Louis arrived at 6:20, we check our kit and head down to the start. Like last year we had a coffee at the start (we were early) and then we lined up. We had promised each other that we weren’t going to kick the sh%@ out of it from the start. Who did we think we were kidding?

For two and a half hours on Sunday I remember exactly why I do this. Why I get up in the dark and ride a bike in a shed and why I go out in the rain with 15 layers of clothes on.

I remembered that sometimes, just rarely, it all comes together, for a short while, and it’s perfect.

The weather was amazing and so we went off the front.

A group of eight riders, each taking their turn, one of them a 15 year old boy. They wanted to protect Louis, to keep him safe and to take some of the effort because cyclists are a bit like that. It’s a sign of respect for how good he was for a 15 year old. But he wouldn’t let them. Everybody took their turn on the front, no one less than Louis.

There is something very beautiful about a young athlete who has been cycling for about a third of his life, something so graceful and so right.

We went through 50 miles in 2:20 (for people who don’t cycle, that is insanely quick)

All through that first period of the ride I wondered where the pain was in my legs, wondered where the heaving was in my chest, wondered where the depression was in my head that I wasn’t good enough.

None of it arrived. It was all just wonderful.

Then I took a wrong turn, just a tiny one, and then Louis and I had to chase uphill to get back onto the group and I think that’s the thing that broke him. At 55 miles he exploded like a firework. I was on the front at the time, pushing harder and harder again and I looked around and he wasn’t there.

One of the guys told me that he had ‘popped’ and I went back to find him.

I shepherded him into the feed station at 61 miles and tried to resuscitate him with Diet Coke but this time he wasn’t going to carry on so put his bike in the car and went home with his Mum.

We all have to learn that.

We can never know how good we can be until we’ve gone too far and Louis will have thousands of other days where he is insanely better than everyone else, not least because he had to stop on Sunday.

To cap off the incredible day, as I was leaving that feed station some guys I knew came in so I joined their group and away it went again for another 39 miles.

It never felt like a chore on Sunday for 106 miles.

I never felt tired and my legs never felt sore.

Whenever I asked anything of them they gave it back and more.

I had a day off on Monday and I rode with Chris and Joe for hills early on Tuesday morning, setting off from the house at 6:10. It was like I’d never ridden a bike before. I strained and stretched and heaved to get up the hills anywhere close to them. I was exhausted; it felt like I hadn’t trained once this year before that ride.

This is the paradox of training and race day and this is why I write this (at least this bit)

I’ll read back at this and remember when it’s dark, the reason that I’m carrying on doing this and I’m not stopping anytime soon

(Louis you were world class for 55 miles – your time is coming)

Blog Post Number: 1690