If there was a better place in the United Kingdom to be riding a bicycle on Sunday the 18th of May than around the Etape du Dales circuit then I would like to know where it was.
Most people will know the outline of the Yorkshire Etape - 110 miles and 3,500 metres vertically with profits to the Dave Rayner Fund- but what miles and metres they are.
In every way the scenery dominated the route with breathtaking views and similar slopes creating a day that will not fade from the memory. The Coal Road, the Coal Road.
Type 2 fun has that effect I find. The pain seems to brand the experience into the brain.
The weather certainly helped with bright sunshine for the day although there were various estimates that the headwind for the southerly run back to Grassington RFC added 15 minutes to times. Harrogate Nova's Greg Ketteringham set the fastest pace for the day at 5:53, nine minutes slower than his pace in 2013. Along with 2007, this was the third occasion he has clocked the best time.
For the less gifted riders out on course, and there appeared to be quite a spread from those who looked as if this was probably a not abnormal ride except for the number and timing chip to the more nervous types who were setting all sorts of personal bests in completing the event -- sub six hours seems otherworldly.
My rather more real-world 9:24 put me 677th of 882 finishers (numbers seemed to run up to 1,100 or so).
It was a long and lonely second half into the wind. Riding in a group would definitely have helped and I tried to prevent jealousy eating me as club bunches of various affiliations swept past in well-rehearsed lines. The one occasion I managed to attach myself to a pack of seven or eight and enjoy the benefits of drafting it only lasted 15 minutes as we all stopped for the feed stop at Moorcock Inn.
In one of only a couple of discordant notes all day, I heard complaints at the lack of any food at one of the feed stops, but heard others praising the grub and even noting that they'd eaten so much that they suffered on the next climb. I wonder if the two were connected? The other grumbles were about the delay in getting away at the start. The staggering of groups of 20 meant there was a snaking queue around the car park and a 45 minute wait to cross the line. It wouldn't have been much fun if it had been raining.
Overall, the organisation struck me as top notch. The signs were good, while the tricky descents had marshals on them and St John's ambulances at the bottom, which was probably very sensible if a little unsettling. I saw only a couple of casualties and they were walking wounded, literally in the case of the bloke pushing the bike with the handlebars snapped clean in two. Entrepreneurial ambulance volunteers could have made a packet selling nips on an oxygen mask at the back of the field.
It was a very hard but magical day in a beautiful part of the world that left a peloton of Technicolor memories imprinted: the beep of the finish mat, the astonishing views from the top of Fleet Moss, the swooping descent to Hawes, the shock of the arrival of the spiteful start of the third climb, the Samaritan in need of a dope test who told me "you're smashing it" when I was doing anything but, the moonscape across Tan Hill, the Coal Road, the Coal Road, winding past the viaducts, the relief of reaching the 80-mile mark (one climb to go), the base of the last climb, the black lamb dithering in front of me and the banana skin in the middle of the road on a downhill hairpin turn.
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