I tried, dear reader, I really tried to spare you my tortuous account of the extra 80 km I rode on the day of the 2008 Pickering Brook Cyclosportif event. I called for volunteer scribes. I waited a week for them to put up their hands, but sadly their hands and/or pens were otherwise engaged and the response was memorable only for its absence.
It began with the arrogant notion that my form was good and a slipshod observation that Pickering Brook was pretty much straight east from home and couldn’t be more than thirty-odd clicks away so hell why not ride to the start? One reason might have been that a sober assessment of the route put the distance closer to forty. Another could be the required pre-ride climb into the hills up Welshpool Road, and oh yeah the almost inevitable headwinds out and back. Still an idea is an idea and needs to be followed through…
So I rolled off into the inevitable easterly at 6:15, wondering how long it would be before the first bike-toting car would cruise past. Not long as it turned out and I got a bit of “have a left this a bit late?” feeling as an ominously shaped shadow swept past me only five minutes up the road. Expert analysis of the receding shape revealed a mountain bike, and I relaxed into my long eastwards plod.
Taking it easy made it seem easy and the wind though strong was steady enough not to be annoying. Somewhere along the way I saw or imagined I saw a chap in a bright green top stooped by the side of the road sweeping up broken glass with a dustpan and brush. Must have been an angel.
As I approached our usual Sunday exit from the Roe Highway bike path I realised I’d forgotten to review the route I had planned from there through to Kelvin Road and on to tackle the hill via Crystal Brook Road. Not wishing to lose time stuffing around I figured it was best to stick with what I knew and carried on to Welshpool Road.
I’d not been long off the bike path when the first of what became a steady stream of cars with one or more road bikes on the roof, on a hook-rack, in a trailer, or just stuffed in the back went past. So far no other fools doing it the hard way, until as I got closer to the hill I saw a bike in the distance. Perhaps it was the incentive of having someone to chase, or just an odd desire to be seen by as many people on their way to the start as possible, but somewhere there I decided to switch my route from Crystal Brook Road to Welshpool Road. At least I could be sure most of the passing traffic would be sympathetic to a cyclist this morning. Of course I hadn’t counted on O’Dirty and his passengers who hooted and jeered as they flew past, or Paddles and his crew, who allegedly contemplated the ultimate insult by offering me a ride.
As the hill started to bite I rapidly gained on the bike ahead. Its rider seemed to be doing it tough, lots of out-of-the-saddle stuff, wrestling the bike from side to side. As I got closer I could see that he looked fit, in a Charles Atlas sprinter kind of way. But given how slowly he was going and with such apparent difficulty it was hard to understand why he was running the chain in the middle of the cluster. I rolled passed quietly as any friendly words I could think of felt disingenuous.
The Crystal Brook servo was reached easily enough but I was then in for a reminder of how the top part of this hill drags on and on before finally cresting long after you think you’ve gained the summit. The wind was wearing me down and I still had a good ten kilometres to the start. At least I had some downhill to enjoy for a while as I turned into Canning Road behind another rider who’d come from the north. I caught him after a while and we buddied up for the final run in to the Pickering Brook sports centre.
First up, find the lads I thought. But I reconsidered when I spotted a short queue for coffee and decided an espresso was in order. Cup in hand I wandered toward a cloud of red and white shirts I could see swirling around O’Dirty’s car. It was just knocking on eight o’clock, giving me forty minutes to stiffen up before the ride.
After The Doctor’s superb flying start at Pinjarra and the general chaos at York it was clear there was no point in being late for the start. Last minute calls of nature also seemed to be passé as a full crew consisting of your wordy scribe, Blinder, Cookie, O’Dirty, Paddles, Spunker, Stuey and The Doctor waited in line with plenty of time to spare. But no it was indeed too good to be true as Paddles contrived a way to get his front mech stuck on the small ring. “You’ve got five minutes, so take your time”, I soberly advised O’Dirty, and the sarcasm I hadn’t meant was immediately picked up by Stuey.
Surprisingly or perhaps not with O’Dirty as chief mechanic we were ready to roll on time and were soon on the superb back loop of the Pickering Brook course for the first of three laps. We seemed to be going quite well so it was a little surprising and disappointing that we were passed fairly early in the ride by several teams, but such is life on the road, and we in turn soon passed other teams.
My recollections of specific events on the ride are now vague and disordered. I think we were still on the first lap when The Doctor’s rattling beast decided to throw its chain in disgust at the noise. A few of us tarried up the road wondering why it was taking so long to get going again while minutes ticked by. Post-race examination by O’Dirty would reveal that the rattling had so simple a cause as a loose cassette, which may have contributed to the chain coming off, methinks.
Somewhere still early in the ride Stuey had a brief lapse of form and the squadra rossa had to be reined in to get him back on. From there though we rode as one, as pictures of a great red eight-headed beast rolling down the road will testify.
I think it was at the start of the last lap that a big lad from team V decided to show us what a plonker he was by time-trialling past us on a blind corner. He’d dropped his strung-out team, whether through form or fear or just plain good sense I couldn’t say, but it was soon apparent that he was no climber as the Coglioni passed him en masse on the pinch that followed. Surprisingly and perhaps wrongly he was offered no words of advice.
It was definitely on the last lap that a discussion took place at the back of the bunch, the gist of which was that we should take shorter turns on the front. This would probably have made sense from the start with a team of eight but made more sense now as we simultaneously tired and searched for an extra leg for a fast run home. It took a while to get this going without surges and a few of the lads took a while to get the idea that they could serve the team best by dropping back before they were knackered.
This all went out the window on the last descent when Cookie decided it was time to do a Cookie and take off down hill at maximum speed and let the devil take those who couldn’t keep up. Blinder struggled to hold second wheel and the rest of us hung onto his coattails to arrive out of breath but invigorated at the start of the final climb.
The last turn to the finish came and we positioned Spunker at the front. As the wearer of the new-fangled timing band he had cannily rolled across the start last and would complete the plan to shave a second off our time by finishing first. I tried to give him a lead-out before succumbing to temptation and racing him to the line in an undignified manner. This is something we should avoid in future events if they persist with the timing band approach, which is obviously open to all kinds of dubious practices. I can only hope the rest of the Coglioni had the balls to keep up and lend a false air of order to the scramble.
Meanwhile Spunker had not seen the finish line and continued to sprint valiantly up the road dragging his tongue on the unforgiving blue metal stones in the road. All in all it was a great ride despite the mechanical. As has been recorded already we still managed to beat our time from last year by a couple of minutes. The post ride provisions were excellent as usual and my only regret was having to prefer coke to beer in fear of the ride home. Not much to be said about that except that the cycling gods were obviously pleased with my efforts since they chose to keep the sea breeze at bay and maintain the easterly til I was safely home with a metric ton and a half in my wheels.
Perhaps we will yet see a full report from the Due Coglioni - I can report that they all enjoyed the day and got home unscathed by flat or fall. They looked in fine form each time we passed them, especially the last. I hasten to add that we were going in opposite directions - Digger was apparently adamant they would not be caught by the red team from behind.
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