Skenes Hill - The Aftermath

There's one thing I had forgotten about writing, sometimes you write things that you want to write, other times you write things that want to be written. I think this is one of those times.

The Climb - courtesy of veloviewer.com

 

The climbing diesel engine

Skenes Road is the KOM of Amy's Gran Fondo course. It is a bit over 9 km long and pretty relentless. Last year I had just wanted to make it up the hill without stopping, without injuring myself and with enough left in the tank to finish. This year was different. For some reason I got it into my head that I wanted to beat my previous time, even with my knees being somewhat questionable. Maybe it was the fairly ordinary events that had occurred the week previously or maybe I am just too used to racing now and can't dial it back, either way I wanted to hit the climb hard.

 
 

Passing people - really?

Just to be clear, I am not a climber. Phrases like "Dancing on the pedals" don't apply to me. I suspect the best thing that can be said of my climbing ability is that I get to the top, eventually. Mr Carl tells me my climbing is smooth, though I suspect that's just because I don't have any spare energy to waste on theatrics. I rarely get out of the saddle and tend to slog it up any hill like a poorly constructed diesel engine. But I do like a challenge and I wanted to get up that climb.

 
I hit the bottom of the hill hard and wondered why I was passing people. I concentrated on sensible things like keeping my heart rate under control and my cadence up. Managing the climb, trying not to blow up too soon. I had a feeling that I would eventually blow up, fall apart and collapse in a pool of sweat on the side of the road, it was just a question of whether this would be at the top, or halfway up the hill. And if it was halfway up, would I keep going?

Looks like a nice place to rest!

Climbing is a funny part of cycling, sometimes I think it's more mental than anything else. It hurts and it's hard work, so I'm at a bit of a loss why it captivates so many cyclists. Maybe it's the satisfaction of beating an inanimate object, something that doesn't change, something that makes you change in order to conquer it. A hill doesn't care what the weather's like, what injuries you have, that your boss is giving you a hard time, it's just there. And climbing, really hard climbing, allows you let go of that, until all that matters is the next pedal stroke, the next gulp of air and finally reaching the top.

Beautiful - just painful to get there

About halfway up it happened, I hit the wall. I had been going too hard for too long and my body said no more. Thankfully I can be pretty deaf to my body sometime (I suspect my physio/chiro/masseuse can attest to this). I knew I had made it up the climb last year and I wasn't about to not make it up this time. It became a battle of wills between my body and my mind.

I wish it were all down hill!

It's interesting the things you say to yourself at times like this. I no longer concentrated on the cadence and heart rate, the only number that mattered was distance and how far I had left. At one point in time my mind was so confused that I convinced myself I was a kilometre further ahead than what I was and it was devastating when I worked out my math was faulty. I kept telling my legs it was just over the next rise, just a few more pedal strokes then we would rest. But it wasn't and we didn't.

At one point I got really angry and my power returned. I was angry with my body for falling apart over the last couple of weeks, angry for never being able to keep up with Mr Carl, angry at so many stupid things. And some not so stupid work related things. "Turn a pedal in anger" was a phrase I had heard, but until that hill I'm not sure I understood it. I do now.

Anger can only get you so far, in my case I think it lasted about a kilometre before I was drained. Part of me could have happily stopped there, sated and done. But there were still about 3km to go.

Just what I wanted to see

And so I kept going, there wasn't much else I could do. One pedal stroke at a time and finally the 1 km to go banner appeared. Everything I had in me went into getting me up that finally km, steadfastly ignoring that part of my brain that kept reminding me that the top of this climb was only halfway through this ride. Light headed and completely drained, I made it to the top, grateful as always to see the amazing Mr Carl waiting for me just past the peak. I coasted to a stop, dizzy and drained, knowing everything I had, I left on that hill.

I can stop now!

So the question you're probably asking, did I beat my time? Yes, by 5 minutes, or there about. A very satisfying result, and yet I still wonder if I could do better. It occurred to me later that I had probably been fairly close to bonking, if not actually bonking. Apparently a banana and a Carman bar may not be enough to sustain me for 50km, especially when it includes a fairly substantial climb. Who knew? Even now, two days later, I still feel drained, depleted in energy and happy not to move. But I expect that won't last long, it better not, I'm going to race CX in five days!