Will Hayter is a member of the MarathonMTB.com Race Team.
Now two and a half months since breaking my collarbone, I’ve found, as with previous injuries, that the comeback is all about “firsts”.
The progression seems to have gone something like this:
1. First time I couldn’t feel the two ends of the bone clicking against each other
2. First time on the turbo
3. First time on the turbo with both hands on the bars
4. First time on the turbo with both hands on the bars and actually putting weight on the left one
5. First time back on a bike outside
6. First time riding to work through the mean streets of London
7. First race – a 10 mile time trial, done on a road bike
8. First race in earnest – a “sporting” 14-mile time, on full TT rig, skinsuit, pointy hat, etc. – damaged arm resting on the tri-bars over bumpy, unpredictable Surrey roads
9. First time back on a mountain bike
Those latter two “firsts” were just this last weekend. I even managed a podium position in the time trial, although I would not like to pretend that the field was the most competitive.
Getting back on a mountain bike was a real pleasure. It was a nice gentle introduction to the dirt: 22km on familiar trails, using the opportunity to take my sister and a friend of hers out for their first ever mountain bike ride.
I say nice – in fact it was pretty unpleasant in some ways: 11 degrees and raining all day. This was June, and I’ve ridden in better conditions in November. To add insult to injury, this came on the back of the driest April and May in the UK in living memory – I have been cursing missing the chance to ride my local trails in what must have been once-in-a-decade conditions. Rain or no rain, I was just happy to be back out on the bike.
And believe it or not, it was the same bike I was riding when I hit that hole in the Absa Cape Epic. Unsurprisingly, the front wheel I was riding that day is history, although the rim and rotor have been most kindly rebuilt into a new guise by my cousin Ben, designer at London’s rightly renowned Condor Cycles and occasional wheelbuilder par excellence [and place-getter in Red Bull’s Chasers event in Bristol last year – ed.]. The integrity of the frame and forks is testament to the products of Fox and Scott respectively. Although there are a couple of chunks taken out of that nice white paint on the Spark, the damage seems to be superficial.
As well as cruising down some favourite trails, I went down a couple of drop-offs, just to make sure I still could, but made every effort not to get carried away and take too many risks with a dodgy collarbone.
The next “first” to notch up though is the first mountain bike race. In this respect I seem to have entirely gone against the whole “gentle introduction” maxim. First race back is Original Source Mountain Mayhem, the UK’s biggest 24-hour mountain bike race, in Herefordshire, near the Welsh border this weekend. So far, so OK, I hear you say – presumably this is a team event and it only means riding for a few hours. Well, no, unfortunately not. This is the full Monty – 24 hours solo. I entered it back in February, and am racing it alongside my London Dynamo clubmate Stuart Spies.
It’s not the first time – evidence of the brain and body’s ability to forget discomfort and suffering if ever there was any – as I’ve done this race before, in 2006. But it was going to be the first time that I thought I could be competitive, having come a long way in terms of fitness in five years. But given that this is the first race back, the main goal will be to come through with collarbone intact, with a good chunk of hard riding under the belt. Anything after that, for example in terms of results, is a bonus, but I’m not expecting much. Apart from anything else, I am expecting mud, as the weather forecast is its usual British self – some heavy rain forecast for before the race and during the first half.
It just gets bigger after that, with entry now confirmed for the TransAlp 2011. I’m racing with another London Dynamo clubmate, Frenchman with an English name, Lionel Richardson. No doubt he’ll be along at some point to introduce himself, and then we’ll be reporting in from the race.