The Kirks

When their family is away for the day most men have a little “me time”.  This normally involves slobbing around in your underwear  drinking whisky and watching Die Hard movies.  For some reason, when the family was away at Burleigh, I decided to see how far I could cycle in a day. I had already done a 160km ride round Cambridge but I thought I could maybe do 200.  As a friend calls it, “a marathon”.

It was a beautiful day in the morning and so the first 50km went pretty easily from Cambridge down to Saffron Walden.  No clouds and just a little bit of wind.  I stopped for my regular chocolate tiffin and a quadruple shot giant americano. The next bit was surprisingly easy going NE to Newmarket and the reason it was surprisingly easy was that the wind had got up from the SW.  I stopped for lunch in Newmarket and had sausage and chips listening to a really good busker.  Then it all got a bit horrible…

Although the landscape south of Cambridge is really nice.  Rolling farmland, woods, trees, pretty little villages, once you get north of Newmarket, it turns into…the Fens.  A flat blasted wasteland of huge fields with no hedges and no trees and dotted with crappy little towns like Soham and Earith.   It looks the way that I would think the Russian steppes to look like but minus the stark beauty, the high cheekboned women and the pristine snow.  It’s more fat arsed women and mud really.

Of course the route was going west right into the wind.  A 30km/h wind in your face is no bloody fun.  I’d done the first 100km at a 27km pace which I was feeling pretty good about but on the way west from Newmarket I was struggling to keep the speed above 20km.  Around 130km the distance really started to drag.  I noticed that the Earith Wind Farm was shut down due to the high wind which gave me a good 30 minutes of righteous fuming about the impracticality of renewable energy resources.  Oh, btw, everybody should read Sustainable Energy Without The Hot Air.  It’s a great book.  Then I got stuck at a railway crossing with broken lights and the police wouldn’t let me over for about 15 minutes during which I got really cold. 

The whole of the fens smells of leeks and onions since it’s harvest time.  They all fall off the lorries going to the storage depots and with the abundant road kill at this time of the year I could have made a pretty decent Rabbit Stew. Finally I turned left at Earith and headed back towards Cambridge and although the wind wasn’t behind me, at least it wasn’t in my face.   By the time the distance got to about 175km, I got a bit of  a second wind.  Back through Dry Drayton and Hardwick (which looks crappy enough to have been transplanted from the fens really).  Stopped for a chocolate bar and then battered on home.  I had to go round the block at home once just to get the distance up to 200.32km.

So, the stats:  200km in just under 8 hours.  Average speed of 25.2km/h.  Max speed 66.6km/h (the speed of the beast). 809m of climbing.  The route is on bikely as 200km Round Cambridge.

Lots and lots of music.  Prince was good at the beginning.  Listened to a lot of Busted and McFly on the way to Newmarket.  During the pain it was Thin Lizzy and ZZ Top.  And for the last hour, Tom Waits groaning poetry/songs were perfect.

So, I can do 200km.  I won’t do it again.  It was long, hard and lonely.  The bike was great and my LAACP meant there was no…err…unpleasantness but it’s a long long way.  Oh, and by the way, “Lance Armstrong’s Anti Cancer Pants” is a googlewhack.  Well, it’s more than 2 words but there’s no other site with that combination of words.

Now there’s a blog title which hasn’t ever been posted before. 

In response to the photos from the cycle ride I did up Puig Major and Sóller, a couple of people mentioned the rather natty yellow band round the left leg of my cycling shorts.  These are my Lance Armstrong Anti Cancer Pants.  My old cycling shorts were wearing out and causing all sorts of mayhem “down below” and so when I was in Mallorca, I went to buy some new shorts.  I’ve always liked bib shorts and they’re definitely the most comfortable so I was looking for some of them.  The shop had literally hundreds.  However, I found a pair made by Nike with the usual “swoosh” logo, a yellow band round the left leg and the legend 10/2 in the side panel. 

The 10/2 refers to 2nd of October 1996 when Lance Armstrong was diagnosed with testicular cancer.  Nike sponsored him at the time and stood by him during the whole treatment and recovery thing.  This is all breathlessly, annoyingly but in a strange way compellingly documented in “It’s Not About the Bike”.   So Nike now support Livestrong which is Armstrong’s anti cancer charity and the Nike 10/2 range donates money to the charity.  Armstrong seems to create a huge amount of ill feeling because he’s…err…pretty proud about winning the Tour De France 7 times in a row but his charity is a good thing.

However, an even better thing is that these are the best bloody cycling pants I’ve ever owned.  They’re incredibly comfortable, they don’t ride up and you can sit in the saddle for hours in them and you just don’t get sore.  They’re so good I had to go and buy another pair.

Buy a pair of them if you cycle.  Your bottom will love you forever and ever.

Mallorca is a cyclists paradise.  Fabulous quiet roads through sleepy villages, some serious climbs and a very cycle friendly environment.  I hired a bike from ProCycle in Port de Pollença.  It’s a fantastic place staffed by knowledgeable and English guys who really love cycling and cycling in Mallorca in particular.  If you’re cycling in Mallorca, hire a bike from them.  The bikes are good and they’re very helpful.  They also do a book of 14 or 15 routes round Mallorca starting in Port de Pollença.  Almost all of the routes go through Campanet where we’re staying which is pretty convenient. I’m training for a ride that I’m doing with a bunch of friends in Connecticut and New Hampshire in October.  This is actually a fairly hilly part of the world and training in Cambridge is a big fat waste of time since it’s so flat it’s almost two dimensional.

I’d done a number of short 50km training rides last week and a couple of climbs up to the Lluc Monastery but yesterday I decided to do the two big climbs in the Tramuntana mountains.  Puig Major and the Col du Sóller.  These two climbs are reasonably serious.  The Puig Major from the Sóller side is about as difficult as the Tourmalet climb that they do in the Tour de France although I was going to do it from the other direction.  The Col du Sóller from the Puerto Sóller side is much easier but, as I found out, from the Sóller side is a bastard.  Just to be clear though, neither of these climbs (the way I did them) is in the league of the big alpine and Pyrenean climbs that my friend Chris does.  So despite all the pain recounted below, remember that these are just wimpy mountains compared to what the real guys do.

The route that I did is on Bikely.  Bikely is a great side with loads of routes all over the world although it’s let down a little bit by the really crappy web servers that they use and the fact that the mapping software often crashes.  Map My Ride is better but has an irritatingly large number of pop up adverts.

So…I left at 6.30 am when it was still cool and the sun hadn’t risen.  There’s a fantastic cycle route from Campanet into Pollença down the Campanet lane which is rolling and smooth and has almost no traffic (or actually completely none at 6.30).  The 20km into Pollença is a great warm up and loosens the muscles.  You then turn left and cycle along the valley on an slightly upward sloping road.  It’s not steep enough to feel like you’re actually climbing but enough of a gradient to make it slower than you would like.  Then after 13km, there’s a much steeper kick up.  It pretty much goes straight up to the Col de Fementia.  I’d done this climb (and the absolutely superb fast descent into Inca) a couple of times last week so I knew what to expect.  Rather sadly last time I’d been passed by a 60 year old chubby lady who shouted a quick “Hola!” before leaving me for dead. This time I managed it in somewhat better order. 

Here’s me at the top of the Col with the magic of self timer cameras.  The sun was just rising and the view was superb.  Rather annoyingly there’s a downhill section and then another very steep kick to the top where the Lluc Monastery is.  The Bikely site has the elevation profile if anybody is interested.

There’s a cafe at the top where I’d stopped at before.  Large Coke, large black coffee, one croissant (and a couple of celebratory cigs).  Note in this picture there’s also the obligatory iPod.  If you’re going to spend 8 hours alone on a bike you need a lot of music.  Although nobody believes me, last week it was here that I saw a man running up the road playing the bagpipes.  Really.  Honestly.

Normally I would have turned left and zoomed down into Inca but this time I turned right to the Puig Major and Sóller.  The reason that the Puig Major climb is easier from this side is that you’re already at about 700m so there isn’t quite as much to do.  The scenery got even nicer, I experienced a bit of a “cyclist’s high” and battered my way up to the high lakes.  There’s a turn off to Sa Collabra which is supposed to be the steepest road in Mallorca.  I decided to give that a miss and keep on to Puig Major.  There’s two tunnels which were very scary until I realised that if I took my sunglasses off they got a lot less scary.  Finally, the last tunnel appeared, I rolled through it and came out on the Sóller side.  I slumped down in the lay-by and was joined by a Spaniard who had just climbed from the Sóller side.  He had no English and my Spanish is laughably bad.  We tried to talk but failed to communicate until I sad down with my head in my hands and breathed “Fuck…”.  “Si si si si fuck!” said the Spaniard.  The descent into Sóller is just outstanding.  The “max speed” function on the cycle computer registered 72km/h!  The fastest I’ve ever been on a bike.  I could see why it’s such a brutal climb the other way.  Mallorca is so cycle friendly that they have special signs indicating when the turn is particularly hazardous for cyclists.  Of course, I didn’t realise this until after I’d had a rather exciting rear wheel lock on a very tight corner.  However, fast descents on good tarmac are a real joy.  Carving turns through the bends and getting to use some of the fast twitch muscle which is unused on the way up.  Also a suitable soundtrack also helps.  In this case “The Boys Are Back in Town”…a cliché but a good one.

There was a strange nagging feeling in the back of my mind as I flew down to Sóller.  I realised eventually that I’d thought that Sóller was quite high and I wouldn’t have to do much climbing to get back out again but unfortunately Sóller is practically at sea level and so there was almost certainly a considerable amount of pain to come.  How right I was…

Sóller is typically Mallorcan with a beautiful cathedral and a very cute little tram that ferries tourists around.  Sort of like San Francisco but much smaller. I stopped in Sóller for more coke, coffee etc and also to buy some sunscreen.  It had started to get really hot and the sun was high in the sky and my milky translucent Scottish skin wasn’t coping well.  I managed to find a pharmacy that sold factor 50+ sunscreen.  This was a good thing but it reacted rather badly to being smeared over very sweaty skin and so I looked a little like an unfortunate victim of an industrial accident in a cottage cheese factory.

Suitably fortified I headed out of town to the Col de Sóller.  Not too bad to start but then after about 2km, there is a toll tunnel which goes through to Palma.  “No Bikes Allowed” it said.  So it was the old mountain road for me.  This was a truly brutal climb.  The temperatures were rising to 36,37 and it’s an endless series of vicious switchbacks.  One starts off thinking of other things to take your mind of the pain:  conversations, people, what you’re going to do next week etc.  Then you concentrate on the music.  I’d play games with myself trying to get to the next corner before the chorus started.  Then you just concentrate on the bike and your legs.  You regret every bit of excess weight.  I seriously considered throwing away my camera (or cutting an arm off) to reduce the weight. I regretted every bacon sandwich I’ve ever eaten in my life and every cigarette I’ve ever smoked.  I lost count of the times that I checked to see whether or not I had another gear that I’d forgotten about.  I tried to keep the pace above 10kmh (which for those of you used to imperial units is about 6mph).  The sun continued to beat down and about half way up I ran out of water.  That’s ok I thought, there will be a cafe at the top that I can buy something at. 

Finally, the top appeared.  I coasted over and stopped.  Massively dehydrated and totally and utterly spent.  The Col de Sóller isn’t that high and I thought of my friends who’ve done Mont Ventoux.  A bit steeper but nearly four times longer!  I’ve got a long way to go before I’m that fit.  There was a cafe at the top but it was shut!  When I stopped, I realised how much I was sweating because on the bike because you’re moving your sweat evaporates quickly.  I tried to beg some water from a couple of tourists who had stopped to take pictures but unfortunately they were waterless…or maybe the sweaty pink guy who looked like he’d been smeared with Philadelphia cream cheese was a little too scary.  The view was good though.

At least it’s downhill from here I thought.  The descent isn’t as fast as the Puig Major descent but still a lot of fun even with (for some strange reason) visions of cold gazpacho dancing in my head.  At one point I got stuck behind a lorry which was coming down from the Font Des Teix water factory.  There were hundreds of bottles of water in the back and I considered highway robbery.  Finally, I hit the bottom of the steep bit and turned into Bunyola.  It’s a steep climb (11%) into Bunyola which just about finished me but found a cafe and drank two large cokes in succession.  I filled my water bottle with another can of coke and got back in the saddle. 

Now it was just a grind home.  Down again into Santa Maria, the road was one of those tremendously flattering roads which looks flat but is in fact sloping a bit downwards.  You can spin along at 45kmh feeling like a proper cyclist.  At Santa Maria, I tried to take a drink from my water bottle and realised that in my confused state in Bunyola I’d forgotten to put the lid on properly.  So not only was I covered in blobby sunscreen, I was now covered in warm coke.  The sun was almost overhead and I cycled on the wrong side of the road for a while just to be in the shade of some trees. 

By the time I reached the plain, the temperature was still rising.  Every pharmacy in Spain has a green flashing cross outside it with a clock in the middle which flicks from the time to the temperature.  It was 41C.   Not just that but there was a headwind which was hot. When the wind is hotter than body temperature, it just heats you up.  I stopped in yet another cafe in Binissalem.  It was the first air conditioned cafe I’d been into and suddenly I realised just how much water I was losing through sweat.  The woman who ran the cafe had to get a mop!  After that, it was a ride on the designated cycle lanes through the fields.  Beautiful. 

I took what Isabelle calls a “teenager picture” – camera at arms length taking a picture of yourself.  Not flattering I’m afraid.  Note the cool cycling sunglasses which are in fact welding glasses from my local hardware store.  £4.99, indestructible and if I ever cycle through a welding factory, I wont suffer blindness…

A final very short and very steep 12% climb through Campanet and I rolled home.  I spent the rest of the day drinking water.

The stats are that I spent exactly 6 hours on the bike and 8 hours in total out on the road.  Total distance travelled, 135km which makes for an average of 22.5kmh which is unlikely to have Alberto Contador worrying about the defence of his Tour de France title next year.  Total climbing 1785m.  Max speed 72kmh, total calories expended 3890.  7 cans of coke, 10 cigarettes, 2 croissants.  It was, without a doubt, the hardest ride I’ve ever done and, without a doubt, the best day I’ve ever had on a bike.